/me is back! :yahoo:
I've been deported to a construction site for a supervision, but I'm finally back; no more helmet and reflexive jacket (at least for a while) make me hope in some progress...
/me is back! :yahoo:
I've been deported to a construction site for a supervision, but I'm finally back; no more helmet and reflexive jacket (at least for a while) make me hope in some progress...
QuoteOriginally posted by BeatClub35
My friend built this model in 1/72 scale: http://www.cardarmy.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1895
um, and I thought that 1/48 is small enough...
great built indeed, grats!
well, Ric has a bomb! but don't worry, we'll keep the world in balance...
it's only the basic paint, I want to add some weathering and correct some flaws, and finalize with a layer of matt varnish so it's not so glossy (e.g. the "crack" on the nose is almost invisible in normal light, but the glossy surface combined with light I use for taking photos make it stand out a lot)...
btw, if I'm not wrong, the bomb should represent a 500 kg one, which should have bracers between the tail fins - both 250 and 500 kg bombs had them (the bomb as built from the kit seems to fit somewhere between 250 and 500 with its size, at least in my case; but it's closer to a 500 kg one)...
did you think about fixing the antenna pole to the canopy yet?
I'd like to make the antenna itself from "chemlon", which is a synthetic wool - it can be unraveled into very thin threads which are very elastic (on the airplane, you can push it even to the fuselage and it returns back without any damage), so it's really great for things like this... the bad thing is that the thread produces a lot of tension, so it needs to be fixed to quite strong hardpoints...
cutting the bottom part of the base to align the top of the seat with the top of the partition should keep you on the safe side... or, in worse case, i think you can always bend the headrest - which is what I rely upon, although I'm quite sure that the seat will fit under canopy even if it's a bit higher than the partition...
but agreed, the seat base is too big.
QuoteOriginally posted by Sparrowhawk
Looks like an aircraft from the computer game "Crimson Skies". Weird, but highly attractive.
aaah, crimson skies... I guess I know my schedule for this evening now - what kind of b*stard are you, martin?
the first picture - just frame it and call it art!
OK, test built of underwing bomb pylons was succesful... Here you can see approximate position on the wing (the future - let's call it correct - position of the cross is sketched in red). The lenght of the pylons will have to be adjusted using the overlaps on the middle part...
QuoteOriginally posted by Ricleite
Pawell, are you sure that the pilot's seat is at the correct height? I didn't yet glue the seat in my model because it looks like the base is too high
The seat on the photos was already lowered by cutting about 1/3 of the bottom horizontal strip of the base. I hope the height is correct now, the top of the seat should be a little bit above the partition behind it - the canopy looks like a bubble a bit at this place... I've already tested it with the canopy skin and it looks ok...
EDIT: it looks like some of the seats were not parallel with the partition, but more like bent below the armored headrest - see attached photo of D5.
wow, very nice!
I'm still waiting for the printer, so I moved to a glueless modeling - first unfold skin for underwing pylons (bomb rack). The model was done in Google's SketchUp using 3-view drawings as a starting point, then unwrapped with Unfold plugin for SU. It's damn small in this scale (about 3 cm in length), but I think it can be built.
The things are getting more complicated now, because the marking (the black cross) on the underwing side is in (probably) wrong position and collides with the pylon. Acording to photos of real Stukas, the marking was probably positioned closer to the fuselage, approximately in the middle of the outer half of airbrake... I think I'll try to build the pylons and if I'm satisfied with the result, I'll try to edit the wing and move the cross...
So - the last batch of images for today. I need to print fuselage skin one more time, because I did some unsuccessful tests with varnishes; the printer is out of order at the time present, so I'm working on bomb(s), propeller...
BTW, the kit is missing the underwing bomb racks... Hopefully, I'll be able to convert that complicated round shape to 2D and then back to 3D...
as you can see on attached image, I made a serious mistake - I forgot that I had cut the whole cockpit skin in two parts, so I glued the former with instrument board too high, onto the level of cockpit floor. The whole part marked in red should be below the cockpit floor.
Of course, I found it out when test-fitting the completed cockpit into the corresponding fuselage part. And YES, I secured all the joints with A LOT of glue from the invisible side... :gaga:
Anyway, after some complicated and almost non-destructive surgery, the patient survived and so did I.
and now the promised pictures: cockpit after assembling most of the parts together...
Hi Michael,
I've used approx. 0.15 mm copper wire and 0.2 mm and 0.3 mm lead wires.
As for the copper one, I got a whole life supply from a domestic electric cable - with a multi-strand cores, not the solid ones. Lead wires are said to be used for balancing the weight on baits for fly fishing, but several hobby shops repack and resell them here. They come in 0,1 mm steps from 0,2 mm up to 1,0 mm.
A good reserve of the wires is invaluable indeed.
next, when putting it all together, I made a mistake which required some dramatic surgery - but I haven't downloaded the photos yet, so I'll post them with the comment in the evening.
so - that's all for now, folks.
The instrument panel was quite simple, I just had to adjust the colours before printing it, making it more contrast and brighter a little bit, so the details stood out. The top part is almost "from the box", just with some levers and pull rods made of thin copper or lead wire. At the bottom part, I scratch-built the floor window (or at least a parody of it) with its control lever. The rudder pedals were not so difficult as it looks and moreover, they're hard to see anyway, so maybe detailing the leather straps with the fasteners was somewhat pointless - but it's there and I know it!
The seat in the group photo is in progress, later I had to replace the whole bottom part, because it was too high. The seatbelts were made from a cigarette paper and thin wires as usual, painted with a mix of acrylic paints. The upper straps didn't come out very well and they seem too short, plus the metal clips at the ends should be triangular and not like this, but I was not strong enough to rebuild them...
The
then I moved to the cockpit - for easier assembly, I cut away the left cockpit wall and built it separately. Most of the instruments are not placed exactly, compared to historical photos, but my decision was not to modify it, just to add some details like wirings.
The instruments themselves are mostly cuboid blocks of various sizes; to help myself building them in this scale, I put a cardboard rectangle (or other suitable shape) into them before closing their walls.
Gunner's seat was tricky a bit when it came to shaping it into the correct shape, but I'm quite happy with the results, especially with the seatbelts added.
Uh, and the blue oxygen bottles were made from evergreen round plastic profile, but at the end, they're almost invisible.
As promised in Ricleite's thread, here's my construction report - the cockpit is more or less complete.
I guess there's no need to introduce this popular kit from GPM nor Stuka itself, so I'll skip to a story, a story so horri-... um, well.
I was browsing my archive of paper models one January day (it's a cardboard box, actually), thinking about chances to build some of the planes and about the certitude of not building others, when I came upon the Stuka.
It has an interesting camo scheme and a beautiful texturing, but it's a huge plane without much detail for its original scale (for my likings at least). That's why I've come to a resolution to downscale it to 1:48, which is a common scale for plastic kits. I did some tests with small parts to see if it can be built and when I found only one really problematic part, which is the barrel of MG 17, I've decided to give it a try.
So, here's my progress so far: I started literally from the bottom - the wheels, because I had drawn the paper parts for the tread pattern of the tires and I couldn't resist trying how it fits.
reinforcing the model with pieces of cardboard or even metal pins and injection needles is what I do all the time as well; could it be some kind of professional deviation of civil engineers?
your stuka looks great so far, keep it up! =D>
and, mmm, mine is in 1:48 - i did the maths by heart, so it might be inaccurate a bit...
please rebuild the seatbelts... they were soft, just freely hanging on the seat...
BTW, just a note - there's an inaccuracy in this kit, which disturbs me a bit. As far as I know, flame dampers on exhausts were installed on D-7s and D-8s (so they could be used as night fighters), not on D-3s. I'm still not decided whether to change it to regular exhausts or not, it seems to be quite complicated because of smoke marks on the fuselage... Plus, I'm thinking about opening the cowling and showing a bit of the engine, which would require removing the dampers... Well, we will see...
hi ric,
i haven't been here for some time, so seeing you building this kit at the same time as I am is a very nice welcome...
there's one minor difference on my stuka anyway - it lacks some 40 percent of size...
report coming as soon as the cockpit is finished...
QuoteOriginally posted by RobsonIs this a kind of Rubik´s cube at the top of the helicopter?
Hi Rob,
let's make a quiz out of it...
[Blocked Image: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/ELEC_AN-ALQ-144_On_Apache_lg.jpg]
the shiny thing behind the prop is:
a) stroboscopic disco light for long boring iraqui nights
b) part of AN/ALQ-144 IRCM (IR jammer)
c) modernized Rubik's cube in shape of octagonal prism
[Blocked Image: http://www.kolobok.us/smiles/standart/mda.gif][Blocked Image: http://www.kolobok.us/smiles/standart/mda.gif][Blocked Image: http://www.kolobok.us/smiles/standart/mda.gif]
QuoteOriginally posted by Yu Gyokubun
Today enjoyed machine gun build just following kit instruction
in fact, it's a 30 mm automatic cannon M230, not a machine gun...
anyway, your built is great as always...
QuoteOriginally posted by cyana
Errrrr ... what about ground vehicles ???
Good point here... But we usually call them ground targets...
Hi all,
after a long time of thinking over, I've finally bought Terry Pratchetts Unseen University Cut-out Book. The book itself is a masterpiece, so I couldn't resist building a test built out of it. When I've realized the true size of the whole building complex, I've decided to scale it down to 50% of original size.
The base is added so that the model doesn't get lost so easily... It's not exactly perfect plus it needs to trim the edges with some wooden lath.
Anyway - behold, The Boathouse!
oh my... 1/16? it's furniture, not a model...
watching this one closely, this plane is waiting in my archive for a long time, so i hope i'll get to it some day...
the ailerons are used to roll the plane along the "long" axis - from the physical point of view, it's done by increasing the lift on one side (by turning the aileron down) and decreasing the lift on the opposite side (by turning the aileron up). This means that the wing with the aileron down goes up and vice versa, thus rotating the plane. Of course, this also means that the plane gains a yawing momentum which rotates the plane along its vertical axis (because of change of lift vectors for each wing).
the one who wants can always learn... and it's better than dying stupid...
EDIT: here is a basic introduction to flight physics:
Hi all,
thank you for positive echo.
I'd like to make a final conclusion that could maybe help anyone who will build this plane, so let's do it:
The design is very good and everything fits well without a great effort; I'd like to point out only a few minor issues:
- the main landing gear is not very strong - it's glued to the walls of wheel wells only, so it doesn't provide a firm support. I would suggest using some kind of additional support - e.g. a hollow needle glued to the wing's frame, into which the wire supporting the landing gear could be inserted.
- the inner and outer part of canopy frame have the same size - so the inner one is not possible to glue inside without modification
- the two propeller blades are just mirrored, which means that the weathering printed in the kit is on leading edge on one blade and on trailing on the other one - but this can be fixed easily
- the white-blue strip on the fuselage behind the cockpit doesn't continue on wing-to-fuselage fillet
As for my mistakes, I'd like to focus on two of them:
- the upper surface of the wings is not as smooth as I'd like it to be; after gluing the skin onto the frame, everything was OK - I used chloroprene glue to avoid deformations of the skin from water contained in PA glue. During the next steps, the formers became visible anyway, probably because holding the plane in my hands by the wings. I'll need to think up something to avoid this next time, but I'm not sure yet - maybe putting some kind of filling between the formers (polystyrene?) could do the trick... I'll try it on my next plane and keep you informed.
- for the antenna, I've used a synthetic wool called Chemlon - the thread consists of a huge number of small fibers, which are incredibly flexible - great so far. The problem is that it's necessary to use two or three fibers in this scale - and this means that the antenna wire itself produces a lot of tension; the antenna post was not strong enough so I needed to modify it several times, which resulted in some minor damage of fuselage. Next time, I'll need to prepare a "hard point" in advance to fix the post.
QuoteOriginally posted by lriera
Pawell, I am sure Yu know this ;), now he is only trying the aileron fit.
yep, you're definitely right - I wouldn't dare to underestimate Yu-san like this, but I thought it would be better to note it anyway.
just a note: the ailerons are in wrong position - one must go up and the other down...
but anyway, very nice work.
and two more - detailed views of opened cowling...
Ok, here are the images - with poor lighting, since it's rainy today. I'll wait for a better day and retake the pictures for the "true" gallery.
The display base is not my original idea, I've seen something similar (japanese flag in shades of gray) somewhere in plastic kits gallery, but I can't find it now - but the credit belongs to the original unknown modeller...
hi all,
I've stopped this recolor a long time ago indeed - for two reasons:
1) at first, I've put it on temporary hold because I didn't have reasonable printer at disposal
2) temporary hold became a long-time one - mostly because huge amount of work which was necessary to get something well looking from raster lines
Leif, thank you for your offer, I've sent you an email.
it's done! :yahoo:
hopefully, i will add some photos tomorrow when Oscar gets back from Prague papermodellers meeting...
prepare for landing... gear!
as for the oil cooler, as Martin wrote, it sounds pretty logical to place the cooler shaped like this one right behind the propeller - but I'd guess it's not the best solution for a military plane, as every hit means high risk of damaging oil cooling system - so it probably wasn't a great idea to engage in a head-on combat...