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skippiebg

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About skippiebg

  • Birthday 18/07/1956

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    Sofia, Bulgaria and London, UK
  • Interests
    Airliners, design engineering, scale modelling

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  1. I received my two last week and have only superlatives to describe them. Am glad to report that Vitaly, the man behind X Scale, is planing other DC-8s. too. I have given him what info I have on the DC-8-40 (Conway powered) and am standing by with more if needed. Slava Ukraini!
  2. Hi -- The stance you are describing is technically know as "rotation." The tailplane does not move -- it is set ("trimmed") in the takeoff position during the set of procedures known as the "before takeoff checklist." The elevator (the movable aerodynamic control surface at the trailing or rear end of the tailplane) would not necessarily be deflected at precisely this moment for a complex set of reasons. All control surfaces move for very brief periods: observe the ailerons if you are sitting in an opportune position when you fly next -- you will see them perhaps deflecting for a quarter second or so. Moreover, the elevators might actually be deflected in the opposite direction: once a control surface moves in one direction, the handling pilot immediately moves it in the opposite direction -- otherwise, the aeroplane would continue the manoeuvre until it is inverted and performing a loop or else a tonneau (one or more full rolls or corkscrew manoeuvres). Bicycle riders perform the self-same to/fro movement with their bicycle handlebars -- otherwise, they would end up riding in a circle. Finally, the elevators deflect very little -- again, observe how minute the aileron deflections are. So -- the tailplane would be deflected a few degrees nose-down but the elevators are best left undeflected. Funnily enough, a different set of control surfaces (all four of them on a 747-400) might be deflected quite visibly. These four surfaces together form the aeroplane's rudder and are positioned at the rear end ("trailing edge") of the fin or (vertical stabilizer in US parlance). The rudder sees very limited use in any flight -- only during the takeoff run and immediate climbout, and again only during the final stages of the final approach and during the landing roll. It induces a sideways slip which helps in those stages of flight by keeping the bank angle neutral. Pilots use the rudder quite energetically during departures in high wind. Hope of help Happy modelling!
  3. See up thread for a mention of relief decals. The technology, incidentally, is nothing to do with 3d printing. Instead, it is rather old and very simple: perhaps you've noticed how the black images on monochrome xerocopies stand slightly proud of the paper surface. Some 40 years ago, relief business and visiting cards printed this way briefly became all the rage. Decals took their time...
  4. Airfix and Welsh are equally accurate. The vacform company appear to have simply taken the Airfix kit and moulded it as a vacform without changing any aspect of it. Back in the late 1980s this was common when there was a shortage of a certain kit or other. (I am very fond of the vacform company and have used its procducts for decades, but this is the plain truth in this case.) Airfix has the added virtue of having plentiful surface detailing. What is more, this surface detailing is extraordinarily true to life, as shown by an excellent set of drawings done by a Mr Cooksley and published by Aeromodeller magazine over 60 years ago: the Vanguard is arguably Airfix's best-detailed airliner kit of that long-gone period. The detailing is raised, however, in contravention of current orthodoxy. You can't win 'em all... Sadly, the shape is off: too bulbous and hook-nosed curvy at the front end (the real thing has a slab-like slanted Roman-nosed flatness to it), too droopy and curvy again at the tailcone (making it look frumpy as opposed to the elegant spindle of the real thing), and too thick at the extreme tailcone. Of these faults, the nose is by far the worse. These faults apply entirely equally to each kit, however. --- Edit: I had the vacform kit and sold it on untouched at a swapmeet many years ago. The above is based on my memories of comparing it with a repop of the Airfix kit some years later.
  5. I have the original Aeromodeller Comet 4B drawings and can mail them to you if you send me your email address by private message. Plus, I have the Comet 4 and 4C wing tanks self-drawn to the same scale, if that helps (together with the extra wing span and associated difference gubbins). I downloaded Flying Scale Models' April issue and, sadly, the drawing is vastly different from the excellent Aeromodeller one of 1960 (or similar vintage). It is very basic and clearly wrong in many aspects. In my experience most flying model drawings are rather wanting in precision -- it seems our flying model brethren's slogan is "close enough is good enough"...
  6. Got the Aircraft in Miniature Comet 4B and have to say, the wing centre section underside is indeed beautifully unfussy and properly represented. Much better than the Airways Vacform one which has some amount of "squash" (as if someone has sat on the engines' tailpipes) and not enough toe-out at the rear. The aft end of the wing/fuselage fairing is properly represented, with a "kick-up" and a "prow." This again being an area where Airways Vacform fails, showing a rounded fairing which stays level. Only criticism is the amount of sanding still to do (but I have a mini-sander-and-Hoover rig , pity my poor neighbours) and the smooth-as-a-baby's-bum surface. The latter I find much preferable in my old age to fussy detailing. (Can't be bothered to post piccies here, and anyhow the pros-and-cons of 72 scale Comets is slightly off-topic.)
  7. Hope to get it tomorrow, fingers crossed! Will let you know. They have one. Risking being accused of libel, I'd say they took a good look at Airfix... The engines as shown in the side and front elevations are insufficiently deep. It is as if they got squashed by about 20-25 percent in that plane only. The rest of the issues are minor. Of them, the biggest is that the bulge beneath the rear spar is not shown. This shows, as halfmoon bulges, at the outboard engine (both top and bottom) and reappears beneath the centre section. The nose is a teeny tad off, which I only discovered when comparing it with Guy Montagu-Pollock's 3d model and its flat projections, kindly shown on his website. The Comet 4's sexy bits, of course, include the two pinion tanks, which the venerable Cooksley drawing utterly sadly does not show! I did draw them and I believe the results are on Britmodeller (I lost them a couple of laptops ago). I'm not claiming my drawings are correct or anything, but I suspect Mach 2 are a noticeable tad too short. Welsh's 1/144 Comet ones are also a tad off. The pinion tanks seem to be karmically unable to be represented properly, with the 144 scale aftermarket geezers also making a thorough hash of them... I'm currently 3/4 hr from the Nimrod at Manchester Aivation Viewing Park, but the similarity with the Comet in the engine and centre section area is practically nil. My nearest Comet is also three hours away at Duxford. I know from experience that IWM staff are very protective of her (and rightly so!), rendering any attempts to get too close and personal -- let alone wave tape measures around -- void. Also, the metallic silver they painted her undersides in makes things very indistinct. Add to that the general gloom in the exhibition hall... Give me the old days when she decaysed slowly outdoors in her Dan-Air garb! Given all this, alongside any live Comet visit, I'd warmly advise a thorough trawl of Guy Montagu-Pollock's website which has many hidden gems and resources.
  8. Hear, hear! The Comet 4's engine area is critical if you want a true model. There are gulleys between the engines on the top, but at the bottom the gulleys are much shallower. Moreover, near the the aft end the two engines become completely "Siamesed," like those of Concorde, before becoming sharply separate again at the tailpipes. This, plus really rather odd (if very interesting) thrust reverser outlets and grilles. The only good drawing is the Aeromodeller one of a Comet 4B, and even that has its failings... Guy Montagu-Pollock's digital Comet model for flight simulator programs gets it 100 percent right. Here is a back-of an-envelope sketch of mine that I hope you can all see (the prescribed method of sharing photos fails for me...) https://photos.app.goo.gl/ojQMkbXxEpxiwPZf8 Thank you very much for the rundown on Welsh Models. I was toying with getting one, but won't now. I have sanded the living daylights off the Mach 2 bottom engine area (having backfilled it with Milliput first) and am toying with going at it with diverse files to sculpt it further, but fear it won't be strong enough to withstand handling. https://photos.app.goo.gl/gHwUxFrdrM8rCNHy7 I am awaiting a Transport Wings Comet 4B package, hopefully tomorrow, and am happy to read what you've written about it. (It's the old Aircraft in Miniature mould, I hope. Remember drooling over it at Hannants Colindale much-missed shop two decades-odd ago and deciding that She Who Must Be Obeyed might, just, take a more than usually dim view of my acquiring one... Plus the large package was definitely not "deniable" at the doorstep.) From distant memory, the Airways Vacform has issues with the critical engine area -- not enough toe-out at the aft end among others.
  9. Authentic Airliners sell 1/144 scale relief decals for vortex generators. Not specifically for the VC10, but can be adapted. Making ones from scratch can be an exercise in stultification :)
  10. Thank you all! I'll go with dark, almost black/green blue logos and titles. Seems reasonable enough...
  11. Thank you -- worked for me as instructed by you. I have those photos, lovely Daks, DC-4 and Argonauts and all. The blue has lots of green in it, and lots of black. But the other elements..? Are they black or blue? I'd go for black, but I'm asking for confirmations.
  12. Can't seem to find any reliable colour photos of the early EAA Comet colour scheme. To be sure, there _are_ some colour photos, and even some colour illustrations to boot. Most, however, date back to the early 1960s and are not at all what I'd call reliable. Okay, the shade of the blue cheatline is sort of down to my fantasy -- rather dark navy-ish, I fancy. But -- are the "East African Airways" titles in blue or black? The latter, I fancy, but... And what about the other elements, like the winged lion emblem? The scheme has a kind of classic smartness about it, with some jolliness, like the short-lived four flag (Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, and Zanzibar) design... [Some of the flags have since changed.] The latter VC10 design looked fine and very go-ahead, but I find the earlier paint more interesting. (I would, wouldn't I...) Any help appreciated and thanks in advance!
  13. Thank you so much, T-21! (Great forum for other topics, too!) I love the techniques and especially the way the author, Pin, has handled the wing "dihedral break." The dihedral break (as de Havilland/Hawker Siddeley termed it) is very evident from the front and not at all evident from the rear. Sanding (as I propose on Britmodeller) does not really cut the mustard. Cutting the whole wing doesn't, either. Best/only way of doing it would appear to be as proposed by Pin.
  14. Ah, yes, the wing... There are two differences, both minor(ish): - after about 150 aeroplanes, right at the turn of the 1960s, while still making straight-jet DC-8-20/30s and "leaky turbojet" or "bypass" Conway-powered DC-8-40s (okay, it had also made a handful of turbofan DC-8-50s by then), Douglas switched to "the four percent wing" -- one with 4 percent greater chord. It had a slightly sharper leading edge. To appreciate how much four percent changes the appearance of things, take a look at a BUA, Ghana or RAF VC10 or any Super VC10 -- these had a four percent chord extension covering just the inboard two thirds of the wing, making the difference immediately obvious -- look for a notch or break in the leading edge for a before-and-after picture. (There must have been some magic about the figure of four percent in aerodynamic circles, since both Douglas and Vickers went for it! In both cases, it cut drag by quite a lot.); - all DC-8-62s and DC-8-63s had 3ft/91.5cm longer span -- 18in/46-odd centimetres each side, or about 6.3mm in 1/72 scale. This was added to each wingtip. It did not affect anything else; undercarriage track and engine distances from the centreline all stayed the same. (Here I am ignoring a very much earlier and very minor wingtip extension which was retrofitted to all machines built until then -- a few dozen of them, if I remember right.) If one were feeling manic about showing it, I'd imagine the sharper leading edge of the four percent wing could easily be represented by a strip of plastic card/length of Microstrip glued to the leading edge and faired-in with filler. All the better if you are doing a DC-8-63 since this version had "underwing" pylons so no fiddly mods to make the pylons conform to the new leading edge! The wingip extensions would be fashioned from plastic card.
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