Modelsvit 1:72 Antonov 225 Mriya

[Flankerman]

Yes - but you don't need BOTH arms.....

 

All my parts are so old and worn out, I wouldn't get enough for them !!

 

Ken

[melvyn hiscock]

This is great, it is the first time I have seen a 1/72 model that has a time zone running across it!

[Wolfhound32]

On 17/06/2020 at 12:52, TheFlogger said:

I wanted to buy one but my wife said I need my both kidneys a lifetime  🙂

[Wolfhound32]

On 17/06/2020 at 14:55, melvyn hiscock said:

This is great, it is the first time I have seen a 1/72 model that has a time zone running across it!

Lol!

[Wolfhound32]

After some busy weeks I finally found time for some 'Mriya-modeling'. Today was a hot day outside; 31'C.

It was even hotter in my hobby room, an almost unbearable  33' C :

 

 

It was a nice temperature for helicopter model building. the rotor blades would immediately hang in the correct position..  

 

Anyway, still busy with the An-225 engine project.

First I sprayed part of the intake halves dark grey:

 

 

The engine intake keeps giving me a headache. How do I ever fill and sand the seem of the 2 intake halves after glueing the parts together with the fan blades ring in position?

The fan blade ring is very fragile after I glued 16 fan blades to it. If one blade will break during sanding, it's almost impossible to fix it again.

 

Option 1:

I thought of masking the fan blades carefully with Tamiya tape, but too risky, a fan blade will come of for sure during removal of the tape.

Thereby, Tamiya tape on bended fan blades will not provide a neat masking-line in the intake for spraying.

 

Option 2:

A hard intake-cover. Scratchbuild a kind of plastic intake cover. A good protection of the fragile fan blades, and no 'wobbly' masking line for spraying.

So I made 6 circles of thin plastic from Evergreen Plasticard:

 

I drew 6 circles of the same diameter as the fan blades ring:

 

Then I used my RC Lexan-cutting scissors for cutting the circles out of the sheet:

 

 

After that I sanded the circles smooth.

Then I divided the cirkels in 8 parts...

 

...and carefully incised the lines with my hobby knife. 

 

1 Of the 8 lines was cut through:

 

Ok, I will explain.

 

A normal thin plastic circle placed for the fan blades ring is nice for protection, but I will NEVER get the circle out of the intake again after I glued the intake halves together. 

So the circle has to be like an 'aperture'; adjustable in diameter, so after sanding and filling and spraying I can take it out of the intake again.

This way I have a bendable, slight cone-shaped adjustable plastic circle which protect the fragile fan blades:

The picture shows a slight gap between the intake and the circle; this is easily to adjust by pressing lightly on the outward bending cone. 

 

So...

I can only hope this experiment succeeds, otherwise I have a new intake-project ahead..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[melvyn hiscock]

Cunning....

[Wolfhound32]

Ok, as we all know, the construction of these engines is a complicated project. I will keep the explanation of these steps short.

 

-I glued the turbine halves together, with the fan blades inside;

-I glued the engine halves together with the turbines inside:

-Then I filled and sanded all the seams and attached the exhaust rings to the engines.

As these rings are slightly oval-shaped, I marked the best position of the rings with a stripe to glue them the right way:

 

 

 

Meanwhile I treated the 4 engines from my Modelsvit An-124 kit the same way, that'll save me some extra work later 

So there I sat in my hobby room, sanding and filling 10 Ivchenko D18 engines at a time..:

 

-I attached the intake rings to the intakes;

-Then I filled and sanded all the intake seams smooth.

 

Finally I had engines in 1 piece, no more loose parts waiting to be sprayed or sanded. Yess!!

I only need to attach the spinners to the fan blades center, but that's after I sprayed the intakes white.

 

I thought it was best to construct the pylons now, as they are part of the engine construction.

I had 2 choices;

-attaching the pylons to the engines first, and later this to the wings;

-attaching the pylons to the wings first, and later on the engines to the pylons.

 

Modelsvit finally helps you here with recognizing part numbers; they numbered the different pylon parts!

 

This is because the left 3 pylons are formed to the angle of the left wing, and so on for the right wing.

Great, as you don't want to make a mistake while glueing polystyrene parts to a polyester wing..

Even the manual is very clear about the parts placement and position under the wings:

 

And here you also have to attach positioning pins to the pylons to make a firm construction possible.

I chose to attach the positioning pins to the wings, so I can 'click' the pylons to the wings later on:

 

Like this:

 

I also decided to attach the pylons to the engines first, and later on this to the wings.

That way it's easier to adjust the correct angle of the 'hanging' pylons, should that be necessary.

If you need to adjust the position of the round engine to an already incorrect positioned pylon it will make things worse..

 

So I attached the engines to the pylons first:

 

 

As you can see, still needs additional filling and sanding. Man, never had a laborious kit like this one 

 

But first i just had to test fit the whole thing to see the behemoth with it's engines under the wings!!

So I roughly taped the engines to the wings for a quick look:

 

 

...And now all 6:

 

 

A Tiger Moth for scale..

 

 

 

Great !

Now on with filling and sanding so I can glue them firmly to the wings. I'll keep you updated!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Wolfhound32]

Ok, after a few weeks of absence here some little progress I made with the An-225 kit.

 

Back to the cockpit section. 
As there is no indication in the hollow nose section to attach the flightdeck to, I constructed a rib made from Plasticard and 4 'contact points' in the nose section.
Now I can join the rib (with flightdeck) firmly to these contact points with tiny screws. 

 

Like this:

 

 

 

As this model is a real tail-sitter, I will have to add serious weight in the front section.
I will integrate this weight (several long M13 bolts and nuts) with the Plasticard rib so it will stay in place. Therefore I made a Plasticard T-shaped construction-table which will be attached through the rib to support these bolts. I first drew the position of that table...

 

...and this is the table. I will wait with the final attachment until everything is ready, including the cockpit. 

 

Testfit of the flightdeck section with the transparent cockpit window part, to check the correct height and position of the windows with the glareshield.

 

I noticed earlier that the flightdeck was positioned too low relative to the cockpit windows, so I corrected this with a new Platicard rib. 

 

As I studied some pictures of the flightdeck, I noticed that the An-225 has a raised section on the glareshield for the autopilot and EFIS.
Modelsvit has provided this kit with a flat glareshield, so I decided to build this raised section from scratch.

 

A slightly angled part of white polystyrene from the spare parts box will do.

 

now I only need to respray the glareshield semi gloss black.

 

After that I applied the instrument decals.

 

The yokes from the An-225 are slightly bended forwards, so I bended the yokes a little.

 

Time for inspection of the flightdeck...

 

...and time for a beer ;) 

 

 

 

Enough cockpit for now, time for the next project in this project: the mighty 32 wheels landing gear!

I spent quite some time only studying the complicated construction of the gear... So many parts, and this needs planning.

 

 

 

I first collected all the sprues with gear parts...

 

...wheels and wheels....

 

...and lots of tiny parts.

 

I started with sanding the wheel halves. 

 

But before assembling these halves you need to construct rims which consists of 3 parts.

 

These parts are tiny, and need to be trimmed from flash from the sprues. 

 

Did I mentioned there are also brake disc parts for each wheel..?

 

Here are all the parts for the wheels together.

 

Even the main fitting consists of several parts.

 

 

The bogies consists of 2 parts.

 

So I decided to put all those little parts for each gear in separate numbered bags.

This way I know which part belongs to which gear, as there are differences in right and left landing gear.

Even in front and aft gear..

 

 

 

It's a very delicate job, first dryfitting those tiny pieces before applying glue.

 

 

To be continued..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sabrejet]

Crazy stuff! I really enjoy your posts and this is an epic project, done very well indeed.

[Norman]

Wow what a great build and Thank You ! i now feel sane again !! and here was me thinking 'I' was mad

 

Keep up the great work 

[Matthew1974]

Wow!  When I was serving in Afghanistan we’d sometimes see the contracted An-124s at larger airfields and I thought those were huge.  Your 225 looks to be quite an amazing display piece.

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Absolutely skillful build of a phenomenally challenging kit and remarkable subject!

Amazing!

Cheers

[Scooby]

Nice build! I’ve sat in the cockpit of the 225, really weird to walk on the titanium floors, lots of flex. I also towed it, lots of stories on my time around this aircraft.

[Wolfhound32]

@Sabrejet @Norman @Moa @Matthew1974: 

😊Thank you very much! 

 

@Scooby: Wow!! I envy you...

My biggest wish is to see it land and walk around this behemoth once, and also walk inside it..

But it has visited the Netherlands only twice until now, and one visit was on a military base. 
So I try to follow it on FlightRadar24 and see if it will visit Germany or somewhere nearby soon, but they don’t always show the destination airport..?

 

But what an experience it must have been that you’ve towed it...  that’s epic!!

 

[alt-92]

I remember well the display of the An-225 at Farnborough in 1989, even fitting a 28mm wide-angle wasn't enough to capture the beast on the runway

For fun's sake:

The 'dear me' at 2.12 is a sentiment many of us felt then!

 

 

 

[TonyOD]

Ye gods. 'Tis a monster.

[Wolfhound32]

12 hours ago, alt-92 said:

I remember well the display of the An-225 at Farnborough in 1989, even fitting a 28mm wide-angle wasn't enough to capture the beast on the runway

For fun's sake:

The 'dear me' at 2.12 is a sentiment many of us felt then!

 

 

 

Thanks for the nice vid alt-92! This makes me doubt again which version I will make.. 

This Farnborough version with Buran or the modern version with Blue-Yellow striping.
Both are impressive..

[Screech]

Oh My Gosh!  What a beast!  First your C-5, now this one?  Whoa man you must have some serious display areas for these beasts!

[Wolfhound32]

Yes, the mighty Mriya and it's complicated landing gear... what a project.

I start to understand the complexity of the gear due to the highly detailed parts in this kit, and it invites you to not just cementing everything together but to add details.

Today I constructed the main wheel bay with the side ribs that hold the separate gears and suspension bars.

These are the rib parts:

 

..and these are the parts:

 

The mid-section of the wheel bay with next to it the sprue for the nose gear wheel bay:

 

...and this is the almost complete main wheel bay construction:

 

Each rib has holes in it where the gears and suspension will fit in:

 

I'm a little concerned about the strength of this wheel bay construction...

The ribs are attached to the sides by only the front side. A tricky job, as I had to use a 90’ angled hook to help me attach the ribs in a perfect 90’ angle to the mid-section.

I hope these ribs are able to sustain the weight of the complete An-225 when finished, as the rib-construction is not very sturdy...

This is the weight of the model says Modelsvit:

 

After construction of the main wheel bay, a testfit to see how it will fit in the fuselage:

 

 

Looks ok, but closer inspection reveals a gap between the last ribs and the fuselage:

 

 

..so that will need attention later with the final assembly.

 

Next the gear suspension. These are 2 different types:

 

 

 

 

The same with the main gears, these are also 2 different types, so seems logical that there are 2 types of suspension needed.

First the parts of suspension no 17:

 

It looks easy, but I had to dry-fit the parts firston their pivot points:

 

..after that bending them in the correct (tri)angle:

 

 

..and then add some cement to the points. Ready, repeated this 3 times and on to the parts of suspension no 18:

 

As these suspensions consist of only 2 parts which need a correct angle to the gear, I'll store these parts in a numbered zip bag till the gear is ready for assembly.

 

What still needed to be done was the rest of the main gears.

This type of gear was really tricky.. it needed several parts being put together at once under different angles as you can see:

 

 

The parts W8, W11/13 and W10 need to be assembled all at once with different angles.. As if I have 3 hands..?!

So I first carefully dry-fitted the parts this way:

 

...and immediately added a little drop of cement on the attachment points. Phew! 

I repeated this 6 times (3 times left and 3 times right gear.. yes, there is a difference also in left and right).

After that every gear separate in a numbered zip bag to keep control of all the separate parts.

 

When I had all the 14 gears partly assembled, it was time to make the decision how to make the gears adjustable in height. Why?

Because Modelsvit advertises on Facebook with a selfmade 'shock absorber' in the gears:

https://en-gb.facebook.com/modelsvit/videos/an-225s-landing-gear-shock-absorber-optionnoteclarification-nose-landing-gear-of/379041379351643/

 

As I think it will be quite tricky to get all the 14 gears perfectly level and on the same height, I started brainstorming how to achieve this spring-suspension.

It would be the solution to get all the wheels level as a shock absorber sets it's own height, and you don't have to use cement.

So I examined the different parts of the gear, especially the hinged parts as I want to make these functional.

I thought of drilling tiny holes through the pivot points and adding a little axle to replicate a hinge..

 

So I used my Dremel drill standard with clamp standard to drill a 0,5 mm test-hole in one of the pivot points of the gear:

 

First check the correct angle of drill relative to the parts:

 

Here you can see the 0,5 mm hole:

 

..and here with the iron wire 0,5 mm axle:

 

..so this works! I decided to give it a go for all the parts, and as you can see the piston can move inwards...

 

..and outwards the shaft of the gear:

 

 

I needed to check the drill constantly on slightly molten plastic, but easy to remove with a sharp knife.

 

 

..and here are all the gears in their numbered bags waiting for a test assembly in the main wheel bay.

 

 

Ok, so I managed to reproduce an almost fully functional shock absorber for the gears; the only thing is I just don't know how Modelsvit managed to get their shock absorber spring-loaded...

That must be a very tiny and strong spring! This is so small scaled, I just don't know how to solve the spring part of the suspension. Anyone an idea..?

 

But the result is ok, at least now I can adjust the height of all the 14 gears by 0,5 cm:

 

 

 

 

To be continued...

 

 

 

 

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

I am speechless....

Excellent work.

I have no engineering background whatsoever, but I would tremble at the mere thought of letting such Behemoth rest on that millipede L.G.

 

[Wolfhound32]

@Moa: Thanks 😊! 
I’m a little worried also the gear won’t be able to carry the weight..

Not with the Buran on top for sure!

[RupertTheBear]

Sweet Jeebus that's massive! I've got the 124 in 1/144th scale and that already takes up so much space...for the 225 in 1/72th scale I probably would need to move house first

Looking forward to the final result!

 

[iaf-man]

On 10/4/2020 at 7:37 PM, Wolfhound32 said:

@Moa: Thanks 😊! 
I’m a little worried also the gear won’t be able to carry the weight..

Not with the Buran on top for sure!

Great build!!!!

you and I probably have to go to the Masoch cafe in Lviv/Lvov,which is in Ukraine 🙃

you should go first to be whipped by the waiters(you already started this kit,mine is still waiting)

https://lasoon.net/eng/lviv/restoran/mazoh-kafe

 

[Marklo]

I’m afraid I am an Engineer 👩‍💻  

 

What about packing the inside of the piston with a cylindrical slug of something spongy ie punched out rubber sheet or packing foam, even cotton wool would give you a bit of compliance. You can get 1 or 2 mm metal punches very cheaply from eBay.

 

Oh and btw amazing work. I struggle to make two identical assemblies for anything, your skill and patience are an example to us all.

Edited October 9, 2020 by Marklo

[Wolfhound32]

7 hours ago, iaf-man said:

Great build!!!!

you and I probably have to go to the Masoch cafe in Lviv/Lvov,which is in Ukraine 🙃

you should go first to be whipped by the waiters(you already started this kit,mine is still waiting)

https://lasoon.net/eng/lviv/restoran/mazoh-kafe

 

Whipped... lol!! Nice café..

 

So when are you going to start your kit? It's fun, try it..