Quailane Posted January 1, 2011 Share Posted January 1, 2011 Alright, so I'm building this plane which may or may not have flown operationally. The Ar 234C was a real aircraft, and examples flew operationally towards the end of the second world war, at least of the bomber -3 version. Supposedly a single -4 reconnaissance version was built and flew operationally, but hard evidence on it, and whether it flew as a bomber or reconnaissance aircraft is unknown. Anyway, some info about the plane. I paraphrased this from memory of a bunch of sources I found on the aircraft. The Ar 234C was an improvement on the Ar 234B. It featured 4 BMW jet engines instead of the two Junkers engines found on the B model and the Me-262. The BMW engines were smaller and provided less thrust, but their lower weight and smaller size allowed four to be fitted onto the airframe. This improved the performance of the Ar 234C dramatically. Takeoff runs were greatly reduced, the plane could climb faster and higher, top speed was greatly improved upon, and operational range was increased. The new Ar 234C was capable of reaching transonic speeds and pilots reported control surface fluttering; the "mach barrier" was unknown to German aircraft engineers at the time the airframe was designed. Its speed was second only to the Me-163 rocket plane in WWII. Two versions of the airframe were built. The Ar 234C-3 was a bomber variant. It had two forward and two rearward firing 20mm cannons, and the capability to carry a single recessed 1000KG bomb under the fuselage and/or a couple of bombs underneath the engines. The C-4 maintained the same capability to carry bombs, but it had its rear-firing armament removed (and possibly some fuel storage) and replaced it with cameras in the rear fuselage. The Ar 234 in WWII was used mostly as a reconnaissance plane. Its high speed and altitude made it almost impervious to interception. All in all, this is one cool little plane. It isn't very big and is about the same size as an F-4 Phantom of the same scale. I was bad and actually started it the same day I joined the group build. I only glued and basically painted a few basic pieces though. I will post pictures later. If there is time in this group build after I complete this, I'll also build another Arado recon plane, this time a pre-war Ar 95. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
yardbird78 Posted January 2, 2011 Share Posted January 2, 2011 Let us assume that the plane made at least one flight, either a test flight or an operational flight with the photo equipment on board. Therefore, it qualifies for this GB. A small headstart in building is OK. Please post pictures when you get a chance. Darwin Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Quailane Posted January 23, 2011 Author Share Posted January 23, 2011 Let us assume that the plane made at least one flight, either a test flight or an operational flight with the photo equipment on board. Therefore, it qualifies for this GB. A small headstart in building is OK. Please post pictures when you get a chance.Darwin Well "Paper projects are OK," so a real plane should be more than OK. Anyway, I didn't touch the kit again until a few days ago and I have pictures I took yesterday. Not a whole lot more has been done since then. Here is what I did as soon as I heard about the group build: A shot of the cameras. I've seen a lot of built Ar 234B's and C's online, but most seem to be bombers. The cameras are quite fiddly to install. I prepainted all the pieces, then installed them into one side of the fuselage before putting the halves together. The camera lenses were "glued" in with future. I don't think much at all will be visible when closed up and painted. Now the airframe as it sits right now. All the red stuff is Bondo glazing and spotting putty mixed 50/50 with Testors liquid cement. It is a first for me. It goes on real thin and is easily paintable, but it shrinks a lot when drying so it needs a couple of coats. I masked it off here, but most of the time it shouldn't need much masking. I'm not one who can ever get panel lines to glue in perfectly, so I needed lots of it. Besides that the kit has enough sink marks to fix. I'm also not happy about some of the panel lines that are kind of "blurred" if you catch my drift. I just placed an order with Tower Hobbies for more paint and modeling supplies I need to keep going on this build. I'm working on the engines and cockpit for now. I'm kind of dreading the clear canopy pieces. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
yardbird78 Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Nice work so far. I like the camera installation. Darwin Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Quailane Posted February 24, 2011 Author Share Posted February 24, 2011 I just want to say that the clear parts on this kit are kicking my butt. I thought getting rid of the seams would be just like on the Hasegawa F-16's canopy, but this is much more difficult. Instead of just a seam, it is a ridge. There is lots of detail within about a millimeter of the seam which was hard to protect. I think it is ok now and ready for future, but there is still kind of a seam and a tiny bit of detail was lost. Still that was small potatoes compared to the masking required. There are lots of little windows, compound curves, and they mostly have very rounded corners. Grr, that is going to be a bear. I might even decide to do it by hand if I get desperate. The last trouble is having to glue the nose of the plane onto the rest of the fuselage. The number one complaint of the Hasegawa/Revell Ar-234 tooling is the fitment there. I need to finish up the cockpit and just hope for the best. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
yardbird78 Posted February 24, 2011 Share Posted February 24, 2011 Good luck working with those "challenges" ! ! ! ! ! Darwin Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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