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1/48th Boeing B-52H Stratofortress (Sanger vacuform)


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11 hours ago, bar side said:

Very nice & 1/48 is a great scale for a B52. There seems to be a suggestion of a KC-135 in 1/48 but surely the only other kit to come near this.  A Herc would just look tiny.

 

There is a 1/48th KC-135 by Combat Models... potential mid-air refuelling diorama?

 

6 hours ago, k5054nz said:

Fantastic, what an exciting project!

 

Now, will HpH's announcement mean more or less Sangers sold?

 

I imagine that the potential price of the HpH kit means Sanger's sales won't be effected too badly. £160 v £500+?

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Just a walk in the park for you Tom...should be a lot of fun, (lugging it around the shows may prove interesting, you might think about hiring a van!).

 

Personally, I'd go for an early Chrome Dome H (with Skybolts?) or how about the later camo H with two D-21s. 

 

B-52H with D-21 drones 

 

Only joking...you'll have your hands full with just a standard model, (now if they could only get around to finishing the 1/48th V-Bombers).

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7 hours ago, tomprobert said:

 

There is a 1/48th KC-135 by Combat Models... potential mid-air refuelling diorama?

 

Love their website - apparently the KC-135 is due to arrive in 2012!  Only 6 years out of date.  Was watching one circling towards the Hall today & thinking it would look good.  Would make my F-111 look small, although I would rather have a VC-10

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Very interesting project!

I see you got a short tailed version. Well done, so it'll fit anywhere, once it's completed!!!:rofl:

"Darling, are you happy?..I chose the compact version!!!":rofl:

I'll follow you with interest!!!:yes:

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Evening all :)

 

Kits of this nature mean that intake trunking is always a problem - here you can see that when the fans are placed in position in the forward nacelle, they are left hovering in open space, quite unlike the real aircraft:

 

Posted Image

 

So, I've been experimenting with some plastic pipe of the correct diameter, and once I'd cut it to the correct length I glued it to the nacelle fronts (after opening them up of course):

 

Posted Image

 

And the result is not too bad at all - once they've been blended in with some filler I think I may have a passable solution to the intake problem:

 

Posted Image

 

Now I need to consider a similar solution to the exhausts... and then repeat the process three more times.

 

Until next time,

 

Tom

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9 hours ago, kev67 said:

Yes most definitely - there's some other smaller vents to do as well so lots of work ahead before I can close the nacelles up.

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Looking good Tom, suitably sized brass tubing would do the trick with the exhausts. One thing though..those intake tunnels look rather far apart, might be an illusion because the sloped forward fairings aren't done yet, but not sure, (out of interest are the ancilliary equipment  bulges included under the cowls?)

 

B-52H TF33 pod

 

Bit of surgery maybe?

Edited by general melchett
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On ‎01‎/‎02‎/‎2018 at 10:17 AM, general melchett said:

Looking good Tom, suitably sized brass tubing would do the trick with the exhausts. One thing though..those intake tunnels look rather far apart, might be an illusion because the sloped forward fairings aren't done yet, but not sure, (out of interest are the ancilliary equipment  bulges included under the cowls?)

 

B-52H TF33 pod

 

Bit of surgery maybe?

Yes - I think the spacing is a bit out on the kit. The problem is the original moulding of the engines - the forward fairings and the spacing between the engines have been moulded too wide I think, thus forcing the engines too far apart. To correct this, I'd need to split the whole nacelle top-bottom down the vertical centreline, take a strip out and reattach them so that they are narrower... this could then have the knock-on effect of making the nacelles as a whole too narrow... I'm going to have to have a careful ponder over that and whether it's worth it. The solution might be to have a play with the centre fairings and make an illusion of sorts.

 

And no, no ancillary fairing bulges...

 

Tom  

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I think I'd go down the route of splitting each pod into four sections and working on them in two parts that way you can ensure the correct diameter fore and aft. Otherwise, the fairing idea is a good one although it's always going to look a bit odd when viewed from above. Normally I would say that amount of surgery is one big faff but for a man of your plastic-fettling experience, it would really be business as usual...after all what is vac building if it isn't spending an inordinate amount of time cutting up sheets of white, bendy plastic!

 

Shame about the bulges but then you're not likely to pick it up to look underneath all that often.... I hope.

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Hi Tom,

 

I usually shy away from making suggestions to anyone with your experience, but I couldn’t help but notice that, in bar side’s photo, the intakes have a slight teardrop shape.  You could close a little of the gap by fashioning your own intake openings that way (a snap for you)  Also, the kit pod sides seem to be pretty straight to me, almost no curve in to the opening at all.  In the photo, there seems to be more of a curve toward the opening (a bullet with the tip cut off).

 

Ill advised, of course you know it already.  Please ignore this reply and apologies  for butting in. 

 

Dennis .

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Good Lord Tom !

Congratulations ! I'll follow this thread if you don't mind ?

Yup, Viet Nam era Black and SEAC camo will be the best, in my mind...

Sincerely.

Corsaircorp

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Two suggestions, speaking more to overall structure rather than the engine nacelles:

 

The 1/144th scale Revell B-52H (The SECOND one; not the re-box of the Crown kit) is a lovely little kit that might be of some help with late-version B-52H details (i.e., SATCOM fairing on vertical fin, extended aft fuselage mod, location of ejection hatches on forward fuelage, EVS pods, etc.)

 

Secondly, an added bonus is you could use Evergreen or Plastruct strip to depict the fuselage stiffeners that ran the length of the fuselage. Would probably help a lot in the structural integrity department, and they are depicted in the Revell B-52 kit.

 

running away now...

 

-d-

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Hi Tom,

 

Awesome project!  I'll be stopping in regularly!!

 

I have some reading to catch-up on with this project but it looked like you were considering suggestions on how to finish it.  I started a B-52H project in 1:144 that was to be a primer for a 1:72 B-52H of the following...

 

B-52-no-tail.jpg

 

Here is an article on the AVIATIONIST on the anniversary of the flight...

 

https://theaviationist.com/2014/01/11/b-52-no-tail/

 

Here is a video discussing the mission...

 

 

 

The aircraft was in a very colourful finish at the time and is visually interesting.  It is also a unique, historical event.  Very interesting and a monument to professionalism and excellence in aviation in the face of everything going wrong.

 

Cheers!

 

Pastor Rich

 

PS>  I find it very interesting that Boeing was flying this mission with AGM-28's

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Tom,

 

You might want to check this: http://fg786.blog87.fc2.com/category178-63.html

Wrong kit (ID models' BUFF), wrong version (NB-52B), but extremely elegant engineering solutions to quite a lot of problems.

Google translate works reasonably well...

 

Cheers,

 

Sébastien

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  • 2 weeks later...

Afternoon all,

 

A little more progress has been made on the engines...

 

I did think long and hard about narrowing the nacelles but decided against it in the end as it was going to be more hassle and work than I was prepared to undertake. The problem is the fact that if I removed a slither down the centre of the nacelles to bring the intakes closer together, this would mean that the exhaust cones couldn't have the correct gap between them and thus the pylon wouldn't fit where it joins the nacelles at the rear between the exhausts. I did then think about just removing the forward, larger bypass section and narrowing that, but that would result in the forward section being narrower than the rear section... problems that would be very difficult to overcome - therefore I decided life's too short and carried on regardless. The model will never grace a competition table and I've never been too bothered with absolute accuracy, so sod it! 

 

So... the rear of the nacelles were opened up and brass tube of the correct diameter was cut and glued firmly in place. These were banked off and I'll have a scratch around in the spares box at some point to find something to represent the rear of the hot section in due course and bung 'em in. The white metal fans were added to the rear of the plastic pipe intakes - later on these were reinforced with more plastic card to avoid the risk of them ever falling inside the nacelles:

 

Posted Image

 

With the internals done, I then joined the top and bottom halves, blending them in with filler. The forward sections containing the new intake trunking was also blended in with filler, and contours smoothed in. I've been playing with some Milliput and have begun building up the fairing in between the intakes to lessen the effect of them being too wide apart, but some more fiddling will be needed here as and when:

 

Posted Image

 

Next I'm going to start detailing the rear of the bypass section and make the  vents so characteristic of this section before starting on the pylons. Stay tuned!

 

All the best,

 

Tom

 

 

Edited by tomprobert
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On 2/13/2018 at 2:09 PM, Sebastien said:

Tom,

 

You might want to check this: http://fg786.blog87.fc2.com/category178-63.html

Wrong kit (ID models' BUFF), wrong version (NB-52B), but extremely elegant engineering solutions to quite a lot of problems.

Google translate works reasonably well...

 

Cheers,

 

Sébastien

I've had a good read (well look - my Japanese is a bit rusty!) of this build and it is out of this world... if mine is even a quarter as good as that I'll be over the moon! Lots of really useful tips though...

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Well this puts me waiting for a new tool Vulcan rather than building Airfix's current one into perspective doesn't it!  :D

 

Huge admiration for attempting these... does rather make me think why bother with a 'kit' at all, given the amount of scratch building involved!!!

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