striker8241

Hi, All, I finally got around to updating my bomb truck trailer. The first one was just too short to carry a full load of 750lb bombs to the aircraft. The tractor is from the first bomb truck. Below is a picture of the real bomb truck with the long trailer. It has a load of twenty-four 500lb bombs for the pylons, instead of the usual 750lb bombs. I used the rear wheel assembly from an Academy M35 2.5 ton cargo truck. The rest of the trailer is scratch built. Below is a comparison of the length of my original bomb truck trailer and the new, longer version. And here is the finished trailer. The tractor is from the first bomb truck. Cheers, and thanks for looking! Russ

Thanks, Steve! Much appreciated! Cheers, Russ

Ye Cats, Ray!! That's amazing!! All the work you've done to correct so many defects, and you haven't thrown it in the bin yet 😀! And the interior and other details you're adding are excellent! Keep at it - I've got to see how this turns out! Cheers, Russ PS: I never realized how much bigger the C-17 is than the C-130 till I saw your pictures...

YW Ray. Wow! What plane is that??

Really a phenomenal build! You must have nerves of steel. BTW, if you are still looking for a source of fine wire that is easily bendable and even solder-able, try taking a piece of co-axial television cable and carefully cutting away the vinyl cover (the cover is only about 0.5 mm thick). Inside should be a woven shield made up of hundreds of very fine tin-coated copper strands. Looking forward to more updates, Cheers, Russ

No, I tried that at first, but the thing shattered, so I used the clear windscreen as a template and glued strips of styrene together for the window frames, as shown below. The wrap is flexible enough to cover all of the side windows at one time but it's too difficult to get all the wrinkles out and you're fighting against time while the Future dries. I found that doing each row of windows at a time worked much better. The front three windows were best done one at a time.

Really impressive work! Love your internal strengthening and detailing. Will be watching this for sure! Cheers, Russ

Hi, All, I just wanted to run something by you. After I replaced the front cockpit clear window piece with individual mullions, I ran into the problem of how to get realistic-looking window panes. I tried using glaze, but it produced recessed window panes as shown below. This was unsatisfactory because the window panes on the C-130 (and many other aircraft) are flush with the skin of the aircraft. Also the glaze is difficult to apply to large openings, especially ones that are slanted, so it looked really bad on the front three panes. In desperation, I tried using clear food wrap. I applied a bead of Future around the window openings with a small brush and then stretched the film across it, as shown in the photo below. That worked very well. The food wrap clings to the plastic but the Future doesn't dry right away so you have time to stretch it and get out any wrinkles. Also, the Future can be re-applied and it won't cloud the edges of the food wrap. I trimmed the film about 0.5 mm away from the panes. Below are the finished windows on my model. This was tricky because I had to apply them over a painted surface. This technique gives a nice clear and flat window surface that is flush with the outer skin, a feature you can't achieve with the painted canopy or using glaze. And it's durable (so far) and easy to clean. One con is that you will have to mask the windows before painting. I haven't tried that yet. If you want to do the portholes, they should be done from the inside. I would grind and sand down the inside surface around each porthole to about 0.5 mm thickness first; otherwise, the windows will look too deep. Since I already had a lot of detail inside I couldn't do this and had to use glaze instead. Anyway, if you should decide to try this technique, please post your results, opinions, and any suggestions, here. Thanks and Cheers, Russ

Thanks, HAJO!

Thank you, C2J, for the good words!

Many thanks, Ray!

Hi, All, Well, this beast is finally finished. It fought me to the last antenna, and what little hair I had left is now in my trash can. Below are some pictures. Many thanks for looking, and for your interest and support all these many months. Cheers, Russ

Thank you, Ray! And you are so right. I'm tickled pink to be finished with this one!

Thanks, Steve! Great to be back!

Thanks, Guys!