galileo1 Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 (edited) Great progress, Anders! Love how the Tomcat is shaping up. Nice trick with the wing bladders. Regarding this: I have not seen this detail anywhere except on the bladders depicted in the DACO book so perhaps they are not common to all Tomcats. Still, I thought it was an interesting detail to add. check the below link...There's a pic in the thread with a Tomcat showing those braces. http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index....amp;pid=1823326 Rob Edited April 7, 2011 by TOPGUN Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted April 8, 2011 Author Share Posted April 8, 2011 (edited) Great progress, Anders! Love how the Tomcat is shaping up. Nice trick with the wing bladders. Thanks, Rob! Regarding this:check the below link...There's a pic in the thread with a Tomcat showing those braces. http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index....amp;pid=1823326 Rob Thanks for the link, I knew I had seen Darren's WIP on his new product somewhere here on ARC before. Not sure we are thinking of the same detail and sorry if being a bit unclear earlier, but what I was referring to is the small rectangular detail located between the braces that I added after the first layer of Magic Sculp had cured. EDIT: Added edited pic to show what I mean: Don't know but I have only seen this detail present on the bladders pictured on page 33 in the DACO book. Hopefully it is not some kind of prototype feature... Again, thanks Rob! Cheers, Anders Edited April 8, 2011 by Anders_Isaksson Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted April 17, 2011 Author Share Posted April 17, 2011 (edited) A minor update today. After a few final adjustments I considered the bladders done. First the cured Magic Sculp was cut back a few mm so the added thickness would not interfere with the upper wing glove. Then lines of rivets were added using a Rosie The Riveter tool. Hmm, at this pace I will be happy to get this build finished before the end of the year... To further slow things down I got the idea to try and pose the port side daily door hanging open... so not much else to do but get started with the saw and see how it would turn out. I also opened up the holes for the two larger latches (or fasteners?). There are all in all six smaller latches on the door (three on each side, shown inset) but for practical purposes I decided to leave these closed. While the real door seem to be made up from two panels sandwiched together, I decided to keep it simple and work with the plastic as provided, so no more scratchbuilding to be done here. Left to add is the actual engine interior... hmm. :D I don't have much information on what the interior should look like (two pics in the old D&S title). But with the door hanging down (instead of being fully opened) there won't be much visible, so I guess less is more here. More to come... Edited April 17, 2011 by Anders_Isaksson Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted April 19, 2011 Author Share Posted April 19, 2011 (edited) Recycled parts from the discarded jet pipe and a little scratchbuilding left me with something I thought could work. A bit rough but not much will actually be visible. Also, I did not bother to fully detail the upper part of the interior as this will be completely hidden by the door once installed. As can be seen I changed my mind and decided to completely remove the door to make masking and painting of the interior easier. Painting was kept simple by applying an overall metallic colour using a Tamiya spraycan. A few layers of Mig's Dark Wash helped to add a little depth and an give an overall grimy look. Again, not much will actually be visible through the opening once the interior (and then the door) is in position. Now I think I can install the intake trunks + MLG bays and move on towards the painting stage... Edited April 19, 2011 by Anders_Isaksson Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JohnS Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 Nice detail. Looking great Anders. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
sharkey Posted April 20, 2011 Share Posted April 20, 2011 Nice inside work! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
andrew.deboer Posted April 20, 2011 Share Posted April 20, 2011 Ya beat me to it, bro. Always thought it would be cool to show the daily doors hanging open the way they did so often operationally. Just enough realism without the pain that would be involved with doing the same with the weekly doors. Excellent work! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TomcatFanatic123 Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Recycled parts from the discarded jet pipe and a little scratchbuilding left me with something I thought could work. A bit rough but not much will actually be visible. Also, I did not bother to fully detail the upper part of the interior as this will be completely hidden by the door once installed. As can be seen I changed my mind and decided to completely remove the door to make masking and painting of the interior easier. Painting was kept simple by applying an overall metallic colour using a Tamiya spraycan. A few layers of Mig's Dark Wash helped to add a little depth and an give an overall grimy look. Again, not much will actually be visible through the opening once the interior (and then the door) is in position. Now I think I can install the intake trunks + MLG bays and move on towards the painting stage... Yep! That'll do. That'll do nicely. Great work ! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted April 21, 2011 Author Share Posted April 21, 2011 (edited) Thanks a lot guys! Ya beat me to it, bro. Always thought it would be cool to show the daily doors hanging open the way they did so often operationally. Just enough realism without the pain that would be involved with doing the same with the weekly doors. Excellent work! Yes, opening up the daily door sure makes a difference, as it was so often seen that way on the real thing. But I will limit my work to the port side only, for this build one door will have to be enough. Not much progress to show since the previous post but I have assembled the MLG bays (each part first sprayed Tamiya white primer from an aerosol) and installed them together with the intake trunks. The bays fit pretty good, there are a few minor gaps but I hope some more paint will close these up. Either way I will not spend any extra time on this area. The two solid vents marked by the arrows will problably remain solid. That is if I don't change my mind before closing up the fuselage, but right now I am short of any suitable PE mesh. Thanks for looking! :) Edited April 26, 2011 by Anders_Isaksson Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted April 27, 2011 Author Share Posted April 27, 2011 (edited) And I am back at the exhaust area... just a brief visit this time. The Aires items arrived a few days ago and I could not resist working on these a little. Needless to say, the details of the various components are (as usual) quite exquisite. But as these are designed for the Hasegawa kit a little tweaking will be necessary. First, I choose to assemble the jetpipes a little differently compared to how they should be installed on the Hasegawa kit, resulting in a shorter jet pipe section as the kit engine shrouds will not act as a spacer (as per the Hasegawa style assembly). Instead I choose to fit the jet pipes inside the HB shrouds. However, the shorter pipes will hopefully not be too visible. The nozzles fit fine on the HB shrouds but the jetpipes are a tad too wide to fit inside all the way back and does not quite reach the nozzles. Speaking of the shrouds, here is a quick comparison between the Hasegawa and HB parts. The former has too many panel lines (reduntant lines highlighted in red) while the latter lacks any panel lines whatsoever. The madness... :wacko: I will not bother with scribing the missing panel lines, instead I plan to cheat and just draw the panel lines on the surface after painting. The aft end of each pipe was sanded down to better fit inside the shrouds. Dry-fitting the pipe reveals a quite prominent gap still present at the aft end where it should meet the nozzle. A section of plastic strip was glued inside to act as a bridge between the pipe and nozzle. The nozzle dry-fitted shows that the gap is still there, but thanks to the added plastic the transition is now somewhat less prominent. Naturally, the gap will not be as visible on the pipe with the closed nozzle. The finished jet pipes, just waiting for the nozzles to be painted and attached - after the added styrene strips have been painted. Yes, those pipes are bit short in appearance but I have decided I can live with that. BTW, the interiors for the pipes were primed in white and painted in a suitable buff color, and then weathered with airbrushed coats of black. However, the finished effect does not show up well in the pictures above but it look a lot like my earlier attempt on this 72nd scale Tomcat build. Thanks for looking! :) Edited April 27, 2011 by Anders_Isaksson Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted May 1, 2011 Author Share Posted May 1, 2011 On to the wings... which I want to model with flaps and slats (leading edge flaps?) extended. First, I would like to point out anyone who has not already seen this that Dave Aungst has made a good write-up over on HS about how to get the best out of the Hasegawa 48th scale Tomcat. Prepared with this information I had a look at the flaps (cross-section is incorrect on the Hasegawa kit, which is described by Dave in his article). From what I understand when looking at the HB flaps I would say they got the profile correct, resulting in better looking flaps when compared to Hasegawa with the flaps in the lowered position. If built with everything retracted both kits produce identical wings (apart from a few slight dimensional differences regarding width and length of the slats), so the above discrepancy applies to lowered flaps only. The components making up the HB wing assembly. Like Hasegawa the HB wing also feature a separate eyelid door. The wing assembled with everything up and the eyelid door flush to the wing looks relatively painless. View of the underside, reaveling some putty is needed for each flap section. As can be seen there is not enough room to fit the eyelid door towards the outer flap hinge. The door is only dry-fitted which is why there are gaps also at the inner area of the hinge. Another view showing how the door is pushing the wing halves out of position. Reducing the thickness of those thick pieces of plastic connecting the eyelid segments served to help the situation somewhat... ...but a prominent ridge is present on the underside after gluing the wing halves. By now I decided to simply file these down and make them disappear. Continued in next post... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted May 1, 2011 Author Share Posted May 1, 2011 (edited) Continued from previous post. I noticed there is a detail missing from the flap hinges. As those empty holes were so easily spotted I decided to add the missing actuators from some styrene rod. First a series of holes were drilled to make room for the rods. Rods attached to the flaps into tiny pre-drilled holes. And the flap dryfitted. A rather quick fix that makes a little difference. Just a note on the flaps. I corrected the panel lines on the topside of the flaps by deleting one incorrectly placed panel line and scribing a new line at a more proper position. Also, that panel line running along the trailing edge should not be there, but it will stay on this build. It should be pointed out that I have not spent much time on comparing the exact location of the hinges compared to drawings, I was happy to find the correct number of hinges at rougly the right location. :) Next, perhaps the slats... already see a detail to fix there regarding the downward angle of the slats. :wacko: Edited May 1, 2011 by Anders_Isaksson Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Honza K. Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 Perfect manual Andreas! Thank you. I have a cat now postponed to energized. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dom Posted June 24, 2011 Share Posted June 24, 2011 Hy, Any news ? Dom Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted June 25, 2011 Author Share Posted June 25, 2011 Perfect manual Andreas! Thank you. I have a cat now postponed to energized. Well, I know the feeling... I really need to get some energy back for my build also. :P Thanks Manuel! Any news ? Thanks for asking, but no real news to share. Have been mulling over the slats and how to best deal with them. If built in the extended position 'as is' they will certainly look a bit off. While pondering this I have managed to build a 1/48th Tamiya Hetzer and get some paint on, but that is really for another forum. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
eagledocf15 Posted June 29, 2011 Share Posted June 29, 2011 This looks good!!! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted July 1, 2011 Author Share Posted July 1, 2011 Thanks eagledoc! Those slats... time for a deep breath... or maybe not. No kit is perfect and this one has its fair share of annoying issues - the slats just being one of them. <_< Comparing the Hasegawa and Hobby Boss slats to the drawings in the DACO book (and leaving out any discussions on whether drawings really should be used to measure against) reveals that HB has the edge regarding basic dimensions, the cord of their slats being closest to the drawings. But when looking at the slat actuators it is clear that Hasegawa does the better job by molding these at a downward angle so the slats will extend forward and down as per the real thing. Hobby Boss has the actuators molded horizontally (very much like the Fujimi 72nd scale Tomcat) which does make the slats sit at a strange angle, extending only forward. Looking at built-up examples of the Trumpeter 32nd scale Tomcats reveals the same problem with the slats. So what to do? After some pondering I decided to simply slice off the actuators and later glue the slats directly to the wings and use my Mk I eyeball to set the correct downward angle for the slats. In this pic I have painted the slat section in Tamiya AS-12 Silver (straight from the spraycan) to be able to represent the aluminium leading edges of the slats. Removing the actuators to overcome the problem is not entirely correct as the gap between the wing and slat will disappear, but I can live with that as long as I can build the wings with the slats extended. True, the actuators are now missing completely, but I will problably try to scratchbuild a set of new ones, if I am up to it when everything is assembled. Moving to the tail assembly. These are made up of two parts each, nothing strange here. But the rudder upper hinge line is missing and there is a prominent sink mark to fill. More work... To prepare joining of the upper and lower main fuselage halves I installed a few scrap pieces of styrene which will serve to strengthen the assembly. Some filler was required to make the seam disappear. As can be seen the modified bladders have been installed at this stage. Gluing the forward part of the main fuselage presented no problems. However, the section behind the glove vanes can be a weak area that can crack during further handling. To reduce the risk of this happening I cut a piece of styrene pipe to suitable length and flattened it slightly. The piece was installed using plenty of glue, strengthening the bond between the upper and lower fuselage half. More to come later, thanks for looking! :) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dom Posted July 2, 2011 Share Posted July 2, 2011 Hy, Nice job ! Any front picture to see the result of your work in the intakes ? Cheers. Dom Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted July 2, 2011 Author Share Posted July 2, 2011 (edited) Thanks Dom! Here are a couple of pics showing the area. A can be seen the underside of each intake trunkings has got a sort of twisted look to them, and the characteristic flat surfaces has been somewhat lost. But I don't think I will try to correct this - too much sanding and rescribing etc involved for me to bother. Note that the forward intake ramps has not yet been installed, quite apparent from this angle. My modified intake lips look better, although I think they are still not 100% there yet. If I was to do it again I would probably make a cut along the outboard wall of each intake trunk (as discussed in a post earlier in this thread). Edited July 4, 2011 by Anders_Isaksson Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Zigi Posted July 2, 2011 Share Posted July 2, 2011 Great job Andreas!!! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted July 2, 2011 Author Share Posted July 2, 2011 Thanks Zigi! Forgot to post this overall pic showing all major components dry-fitted together. This thing is starting to outgrow my photo studio! :) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Uncle Uncool Posted July 2, 2011 Share Posted July 2, 2011 Anders, bloke! Me's completely lost for words here... Work's beyond impressive! Psst, psst... Scuttlebutt has it that the whole designin' team in HobbyBoss are to contact ya very soon for some retoolin' advice of this kit; me's givin' ya the heads-up, mate. Ya hear? :lol: Cheers now, Unc² Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted July 2, 2011 Author Share Posted July 2, 2011 (edited) Well, thanks a lot Unc²! ... Psst, psst... Scuttlebutt has it that the whole designin' team in HobbyBoss are to contact ya very soon for some retoolin' advice of this kit; me's givin' ya the heads-up, mate. Ya hear? :lol: ... Is that so? Well, they are welcome to sit down for coffee and discuss the pros and cons of a certain Tomcat kit anytime. :D But I bet there are a bunch of people who could be better suited to teach HB a thing or two about this aircraft... ;) I can just as well add the ventral fins to the ever growing list of things that can use some attention. True, this is not a major issue but still... HB has included the tow bar attachment hook (albeit in the extended position) but apart from this detail I think the Hasegawa part looks better as it is slightly longer. Once again, a comparison with the DACO drawings show that the Hasegawa part is closer to the real thing thanks to its length, although still a bit short compared to the drawing. Apart from being shorter, the HB item just looks a bit clunky. No doubt the HB fin can be modified fo look better, but I may choose to go with the Hasegawa item - just to speed things up a bit. Edited July 2, 2011 by Anders_Isaksson Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Tomcat Tweeker Posted July 4, 2011 Share Posted July 4, 2011 (edited) I can just as well add the ventral fins to the ever growing list of things that can use some attention. True, this is not a major issue but still... HB has included the tow bar attachment hook (albeit in the extended position) but apart from this detail I think the Hasegawa part looks better as it is slightly longer. Once again, a comparison with the DACO drawings show that the Hasegawa part is closer to the real thing thanks to its length, although still a bit short compared to the drawing. Apart from being shorter, the HB item just looks a bit clunky. No doubt the HB fin can be modified fo look better, but I may choose to go with the Hasegawa item - just to speed things up a bit. Remember now... The HB fins set in a recess on the nacelle where as the HAS sets flat on the nacelle..... Probably a couple of swipes of the back of a xacto knife on the base of the fin to make it set further in the recess should make it the right height Edited July 4, 2011 by Tomcat Tweeker Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Anders_Isaksson Posted July 4, 2011 Author Share Posted July 4, 2011 Remember now... The HB fins set in a recess on the nacelle where as the HAS sets flat on the nacelle..... Probably a couple of swipes of the back of a xacto knife on the base of the fin to make it set further in the recess should make it the right height Ooops, you're most definately right here and I don't know how I could let this difference in design slip by... can I blame the heat? :wacko: ;) I haven't gotten that far as to dry-fit the different fins, will have to do this ASAP. Thanks for pointing that out! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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