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Aviation: Men in Tights. The Montgolfier Balloon!


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On 21 November, 1783, two men flew above the earth, untethered in sustained flight, for the first time. They were Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes, aboard a balloon designed and built by the brothers Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier. Here's a contemporary image:

 

Mongolfier_zpstwm3n6wf.png

 

I'm going to build a model of that.

After checking the Tamiya and Airfix catalogs and coming up short, I cast about for other sources of a kit. And I found one! A company called Fiddler's Green makes lots of interesting card model kits, including one of the Montgolfier balloon.

 

So, I bought the kit (being eight or so A4 PDF pages), printed them on my ordinary inkjet printer, and used contact cement to attach them to manila folder stock:

DSC_5901_zpsb21n6brd.jpg

 

Note the Tricolor flags, which wouldn't have been in use until after the Revolution. Aside from that, the kit looks perfectly suited for my purposes here.

Let the cutting begin!

DSC_5900_zpssyx9jfgt.jpg

 

 

 

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An excellent choice for prototypes. Good idea to check the Tamiya catalogue as well.  I can only share your disappointment. 

 

I made a lot of card buildings for my son's railway and learned the hard way to use the proper card glue. 

 

Good luck with this build.

 

Colin 

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A superb choice MT :). It's good to have another 18th Century subject in the Group Build, I think that's three now; a Submarine, a steam engine and now a manned hot air balloon. It's also good to see another modeling medium, card and paper models are rather lovely and demand quite a few different skill sets.

I remember pictures of this in a book on 'Early Aviation' when I was a child - many decades ago.

It may just be my computer, but at the moment the pictures aren't displaying - I would love to see them. Fiddlers Green make nice models - looking forward to this, welcome on board to the Group Build!
Best regards
TonyT

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Here's what you need.

On the face of its just white glue but when doing paper modelling its really much better than anything else I ever tried. It tacks immediately and dries quickly with a very strong bond.

 

ad57-roket-card-glue.gif

 

Probably available in your local hobby shop.

 

Colin

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Watching with interest, I've decided that if there's a return of the blob (anything but injection mould) GB, I'd enter with cardboard.

What scale is this? It seems to come with a crew, but they look a bit tourist and anachronistic from what I can make out.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here's a quick update. I've started to form the four quarters of the envelope:

20170514_161903_zpslyjwm30p.jpg

 

These quarters aren't done. I'm still closing those gaps and getting the curves right. To close the interior parts of the seams (where I can't reach with a clamp), I am using neodymium magnets and large hex nuts, sandwiching the paper between them. It's an effective clamp that can be positioned anywhere.

 

As for the scale, I don't really know. That's a 15 cm ruler there, so the whole thing will be maybe 45 cm tall when finished. Looking at the illustration in the first post of this thread, the balloon appears to be roughly 10 times the height of the guys. So, figure 20 meters or so. That would make this roughly 1/45 scale.

 

 

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On 2017-5-14 at 1:37 PM, Mach Turtle said:

neodymium magnets

Wow that is a bit 21st century for a 16th century balloon model. 

 

 

Colin 

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For the scale, if you round it to 1:43 it becomes O gauge in railways or round it to 1:48- people were shorter then! Either way there may be some figures available.

looks awesome so far

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