Catching Pictures in the Air

[Tomoshenko]

Brilliant mate. Wonderful and useful skills and techniques on display: miniaturisation, human cloning, levitation, alchemy oh and the vac-forming, soldering and painting is okay too...

[Spookytooth]

One step further down the line Tony.

Looking very nice on deck sir.

 

Simon.

[Martian]

I love the way you have got the cable laid out.

 

Martian

[Hamden]

 

Stunning workmanship which won't be completely hidden when you close up the fuselage

 

    Roger 

[71chally]

That really is a feast for the eyes Tony!

[CedB]

What they said, with knobs on! Amazing stuff Tony, as usual

[Brandy]

Stunning job on the figure poses and painting Tony, they really look the part. I haven't painted any figures since I was a wee lad. The Airfix Napoleonic Black Watch and Scots Grey I think they were, also my first exposure to using thin plastic sheet (for the webbing straps). I need to dig them out next time I'm home!

 

Ian

Edited April 19, 2018 by limeypilot

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Fabulous! 

[perdu]

Very good Mr Tony, your Baronship

 

I really really do like your crew skipper, top job

[AdrianMF]

Stop! It's a great diorama right there...

 

Super figure animation and painting. 

 

Regards,

Adrian

[TheBaron]

On 19/04/2018 at 7:22 PM, Tomoshenko said:

Brilliant mate. Wonderful and useful skills and techniques on display: miniaturisation, human cloning, levitation, alchemy oh and the vac-forming, soldering and painting is okay too...

Now say that in a husky voice to the beat.

Thanks Tomo.

On 19/04/2018 at 7:04 PM, giemme said:

Exciting!

Thanks Giorgio. I've had the odd tremor myself seeing it come together after being a scattering of parts for so long.

On 19/04/2018 at 7:27 PM, Spookytooth said:

Looking very nice on deck sir.

Thanks Simon. With all those figures it's been weirdly like organizing an episode of:

23 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

I love the way you have got the cable laid out.

Cheers Martian. From a newly-qualified mariner I take that as a professional compliment!

23 hours ago, Hamden said:

Stunning workmanship which won't be completely hidden when you close up the fuselage

Almost - but not quite! Thanks for that Roger.

22 hours ago, 71chally said:

That really is a feast

 

20 hours ago, CedB said:

with knobs on!

Thank-you James and Ced. More kernobbery to follow in a moment or two gentlemen.

18 hours ago, limeypilot said:

Stunning job on the figure poses and painting Tony, they really look the part. I haven't painted any figures since I was a wee lad. The Airfix Napoleonic Black Watch and Scots Grey I think they were, also my first exposure to using thin plastic sheet (for the webbing straps). I need to dig them out next time I'm home!

Same for me Ian - if you can excuse the tentative attempts I made on the Barracuda and Swordfish previously - this is all that remains of the Baronial Home Guard, painted when I was about 12 or 13, back in the late-seventies.

What lacked in skill was made up for with a freestyle enthusiasm:

I can't recall who made this last lot and too lazy to look it up tonight - Britain's? England's? something like that - either way the spring's long-gone from me mortar (sounds like a dubious euphemism!):

Oh the childish pleasures of pinging matchsticks in erratic arcs from that mortar into the fireplace and watching them flare up on the hot coals...

9 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Fabulous! 

Dahling, you're simply toooo much.

7 hours ago, perdu said:

I really really do like your crew skipper

I think that's them sorted out now Bill; time to move on to that big silver thing wot's wrapped around them. 

4 hours ago, AdrianMF said:

Stop! It's a great diorama right there...

But sir, the big boys will shout and get angry if I don't put the wings on....

 

Now, postbag done and fresh from smashing my smartphone to bits by the side of the house whilst doing one of those tedious electricity meter readings that the damn power company seems unable to organize itself to do these days, I can at last relax a little and reveal that barring curtains for the top of the cockpit, this insides are now finished:

All remaining seating, pole supports & etc. have all been secured with Araldite. As always there is this internal debate about what level of detailing to go down to at a particular scale:in this case I feel we're at a point where there is sufficient of an expression of the actual aircraft, and any further egging is liable to end up with diminishing returns as you end up breaking off more of the stuff already stuck on than the small amount that you're adding.

Those pole supports are a major concern in this regard, those sticky-out bits already having nearly resulted in a couple of near-disasters getting caught against my cuffs and going boing. Boing - as you know yourselves - can so easily lead to ping!

In the gloom of the interior there is now enough to arrest the eye:

Something of a tableau when viewed in total...

....though I'm still trying to work out what music should be playing - possibly Little Richard:

which seemed to work rather nicely for the helicopter infiltration at the start of Predator iirc.

 

Also added are the maps and magazines to the cockpit area:

Only just visible to the side of the maps on the navigator's table is that tiny Jeppeson flight computer - I was determined to get it in though only hope that somebody doesn't come along and comment how out of scale it is:

To the right of the empty chair vacated by the radio operator is the Dec 1959 copy of Playboy, whilst Time magazine has been tucked into the radio racks:

Need to stick the top of the cockpit buklhead back on and then it's time to stick this to a fuselage wall:

I'm off to buy a new phone.

Thanks for watching, as ever.

 

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[giemme]

Impressive!

 

Ciao

[rob85]

Gosh Tony that’s dam impressive work! It looks amazing 

 

Rob

[CJP]

Wot they all said - great work mate

CJP

[keefr22]

Brill....!!   

 

K

[Brandy]

Fantastic stuff.

I also had those figures on the metal bases, plus boxes and boxes of Airfix ones, most of which ended up as air rifle targets!

 I almost bought some more Airfix Napoleonic figures last night....may yet do so!

 

Ian

[Pete in Lincs]

11 hours ago, TheBaron said:

though I'm still trying to work out what music should be playing

Beach Boys? Not sure which track or why, but it works for me.

 

I just did a catch up. Good job I'm sitting down. Love it!

[CedB]

Marvellous stuff Tony, just marvellous. Well done that man!

[perdu]

OK let's write the sound track for the movie Tony's bound to make next

 

I'll start

California Girls has to run during the pick up, maybe a little Jan and Dean too

 

It looks great in there Tony

 

[keefr22]

1 hour ago, perdu said:

California Girls has to run during the pick up,

 

Unless they miss the capsule when it has to be Wipeout...! 

 

Keith

[perdu]

Did you see the movie?

Second bite got it

 

😨

[bbudde]

Exzellent Tony!!! As all others above. Great, fiddly work.

[TheBaron]

16 hours ago, giemme said:

Impressive!

 

Ciao

You have no idea how much delight it gives hearing that from someone who paints as well as you Giorgio. 

13 hours ago, rob85 said:

Gosh

 

12 hours ago, CJP said:

Wot

Cheers Rob and CJ - glad that you are enjoying the floor-show. It's not quite Vegas in there....

12 hours ago, keefr22 said:

Brill

Not sure how I feel about it reminding you of a fish Keith...but 

11 hours ago, limeypilot said:

 I almost bought some more Airfix Napoleonic figures last night.

That just seems to be another way of saying that you are absolutely definitely going to buy them Ian, if you don't mind my saying so.... 

 

(Let us know what they look like when they arrive...)

4 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Beach Boys? Not sure which track or why, but it works for me.

 

3 hours ago, perdu said:

California Girls has to run during the pick up, maybe a little Jan and Dean too

 

1 hour ago, keefr22 said:

 

Unless they miss the capsule when it has to be Wipeout...!

Splendid hepcats - we'll nail this Pelican 9 mixtape yet! 

Everybody do the dinosaur!

 

(That's for little T Keith...)

 

3 hours ago, CedB said:

1 hour ago, bbudde said:

Exzellent Tony

Szank you Benedikt!

 

Ah. Saturday morning. Mercifully still too much dew to consider cutting the grass (or more accurately bellowing at our eldest to drag the Briggs & Stratton across the sward) and although the front flower beds do need a severe de-triffiding, I'm not inclined to put the coffee mug down yet. Matters of import, priorities an' all that.

 

I've decided to break the next few weeks down into two successive phases.

 

Fazed 1: Sort out fuselage profiles and inner wing section mating prior to installing interior and closing-up. Scribe and rivet, Add canopy.

Fazed 2: Look at all the wings, separate control surfaces and remove surface detail. Scribe and rivet prior to attaching to the Pelican.

 

Unfazed by realizing the amount of work involved in this, it was out with the Box Brownie for  a close and unflinching survey at the various flaws that need addressing in the next stage of operations. Where's me box of bits?

The decals I don't need (with the Silhouette now installed on the premises the kit's stickers are surplus to requirements if anyone wants them?) whilst the instructions have long since gone AWOL (though were only a discretionary item by this stage in the proceedings tbh). Digging about in the above I retrieved the upper surface and wing stumps and taped it into place to build up a snag list:

The sundry vents and bumps on top look perfectly acceptable (with a little delicate thinning out of their orifices perhaps for the back set over the main spar) when compared to the actual aircraft. Possibly a little shave with a scalpel on the front dorsal pair as well to sharpen them up, but nothing excessive.

Canopy fit to starboard is, as they say, within tolerances:

To port though is another matter:

A gap of about 0.75mm is the result of me clumsily 'over-tidying' the edge of the cockpit sill, so I'll need to reinstate this with a sliver of plastic. Also to add in the above photo are hinges and a handle for the side door, which I'll knock up from brass at the same time as making the top hinges for the BT a bit later on.

 

The top also has issues caused by yours truly - a raised 'lip' along the canopy/roof seam:

I'd noticed this in facgt at an earlier stage and had periodically puzzled over how this could have crept in whilst working out what to do about it. I think I have the answer - based upon I tbelieve  having focussed on getting the interior space inside the cockpit visually 'right', without sufficiently taking in to account the outer profile.

 

In simple terms, the thickness of the original roof transparency on the kit  is over-scale compared to that of the actual aircraft windows (naturally), resulting in the overhead control console and ceiling profile being lower than they appear in the actual aircraft. In custom-building the side windows and framing to match the proportions of the actual aircraft therefore, this has resulted in the overscale thickness of the kit part being displaced upward now instead, giving a better sense of vertical clearance inside but producing the outer lip that you see.

 

Rather than file anything off of the bottom of the canopy and make it then look plain wrong, my proposed solution is to laminate some thin strips of plastic across the top of the fuselage so that the seam of the roof matches the frame of the canopy.  At its farthest point this mismatch is still less than millimetre, so although it will obviously result in a slight alteration to the aircraft profile, such a procedure will be a less obvious adjustment I'm thinking than having a canopy that looks so obviously wrong regarding its window-proportions.

 

A similar issue is evident at the rear where the vacform and kit parts meet:

By my estimation about 50% of the disparity you see above is simply due to the flexibility of the vacform plastic. As you can see here and on the port side also:

There are triangular gaps at the wing roots also that need addressing, however as all of these areas are above the interior ceiling I've a lot more options available to correct the mismatch in profiles, partly by constructing some robust bracing cross-structures to the inside of the roof in order to both stop the rear vacform flexing when the BT is fixed on, as well as getting the vacform to conform to the profile of the kit rear wing-spar section better, as you can see here:

I'm thinking a mixture of some inner lamination to the vacform roof to thicken it, resting upon an foundational inner box structure of perpendicular supports that in turns sits on the top surface of interior ceiling. I'll knock up some sketches later for something light and strong and not too Gothic....

 

Before sticking the wing stumps on after that,  I also want to cut-off and properly articulate the flaps:

as based upon @71challys previous perspicacious advice that these might have been displaced for extra lift I went hunting and in these photo, that does indeed appear to be the case:

 

Kudos again James!

 

Finally, to avoid later regrets, I removed all of the interior transparency masks from windows and portholes - which all seemed to performed as required:

Nose doesn't quite meet though.  

More plastic strip

....

That's the plan of action then for the forseeable.

Not sure how much time I'll get to start any of that later but I'll start throwing some sketches together as a visual snag list when opportunity knocks between other duties.

 

Enjoy your weekends me dearios whatever you're up to.

Tony

 

Ps. A mellow vibe to end on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

Saw this and instantly thought Sci fi drop ship! Obviously, Baron, you know better.

16 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

something light and strong and not too Gothic....

Yes. let us draw the line at fluted columns.

 

Music? Old prop job, how about good vibrations. Throttle back a bit & Simon & Garfunkel start the Sound of Silence. Both contemporary with the aircraft I think.

[Martian]

This is so good it just has to be at Telford this year! That's a Martian Befhel BTW.

 

Martian