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L390 - Encore un Amiot! Stealth bomber, 1930s style. ** FINISHED **


TonyOD

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48 minutes ago, dogsbody said:

 

If you look at the 0.17 time mark, you will see that the props are handed, rotating inwards from the top.

 

Chris

 

Well spotted Chris

I should get new glasses :nerd:

cheers Pat 

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I was planning on a lie in this morning but SWMBO was snoring like a tractor so I got up and tinkered with the interior a bit.

 

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I’ve got a little bit more involved in this than I had planned to. I think the important bit was to put an upper floor on for the pilot to sit on, and just as  importantly to do away with the clear view through the model from top to bottom. I’ve also put a lower floor in and a frame behind the upper nose turret. The makings of the double decker steering column are a length of fuse wire. The internal bomb store on the port side I knocked up from a leftover Westland Wessex floor and some more bits of margarine tub lid. It’s probably not quite tall enough to be accurate but it’ll do. Must’ve been a squeeze to get past it to the dorsal gun! Couple of seats, an IP and that distinctive “handrail” around the ground floor and that will do it. How much of this will be visible is anybody’s guess, I’m not brave enough to attempt thinning the transparencies!

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Looks terrific,

Please try the fit of the front turret and I would recommend some tweaking of the side windows at the end where they meet the entry hatch, as they foul.

Also the very front window of the observer lounge will need a bit of fettling to enable it to fit.

You will save a lot of time and :swear: later on !

Cheers Pat 

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46 minutes ago, dogsbody said:

Tony, I can't see your last photo. Only this: spacer.png

 

 

 

 

Chris

Weird. Using Postimages, showing OK this end?

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This evening’s quandary... tellement de vitrines, and how am I going to mask them all? Some of the internal glazing has the barest sliver of surround to glue it inside the fuselage, almost certainly not enough bite to cope with the inward pressure of removing masking tape without popping out... and once that fuselage is closed, there’s no going back. Maybe go with Maskol on the more precarious ones. And you weren’t wrong about that fettling and fouling, @JOCKNEY

 

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10 minutes ago, JOCKNEY said:

'm currently have a personal battle with the Smer decals, and I'm losing

Any good? Chocolate scheme, same unit I think.

 

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1 minute ago, JOCKNEY said:

Yep they are virtually the same as I'm currently battling with.

I'm about to post some pictures in my build thread.

Those of a nervous disposition are advised not to look !

Yours if you think they’d be helpful.

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On 11/14/2020 at 11:10 AM, JOCKNEY said:

Youngest twins 15th birthday today

I only just clocked this. Does this mean:

 

a) Youngest twin's 15th birthday today - you have twins, but they emerged either side of midnight, so have different birthdays?

 

b) Youngest twins' 15th birthday today - you have two (or more) sets of twins, and the youngest of these was born on that day 15 years ago?

 

c) Neither of the above?

 

Either way, belated happy birthday, young 'uns.

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Hi Tony

 

Mrs Jockney and I have 2 sets of twins 15 and 18 years old.

We had 4 kids under 4 so life was...... interesting as you can imagine !

Older twins are 19 next month, time flying doesn't it 

 

Cheers Pat

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20 minutes ago, JOCKNEY said:

Mrs Jockney and I have 2 sets of twins 15 and 18 years old.

We had 4 kids under 4 so life was...... interesting as you can imagine !

 

 

Oh my word! Yeah they grow up fast though. Mine are 22 and 20, but were considerate enough to come along one at a time though!

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7 hours ago, JOCKNEY said:

Hi Tony

 

Mrs Jockney and I have 2 sets of twins 15 and 18 years old.

We had 4 kids under 4 so life was...... interesting as you can imagine !

Older twins are 19 next month, time flying doesn't it 

 

Cheers Pat

 

Ooh! That must have made life interesting back then and probably still. 

 

Our three girls are all 2 years and 2 months apart. Exactly 2 years and 2 months. To the day! So at one point there was an infant, a two year-old and a four year-old running around our house. Then the teenage years! It's been so nice, now that they're all adults. 

 

I love them so much!

 

 

 

 

Chris

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Haven’t got much done this weekend, ordinarily I like to get out and about in the hills but with this mockdown they’re off limits again, so last night I did a cheeky wild camp at a local and probably frowned upon location. (There’s no trace of my ever having been there...)

 

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And this afternoon I’ve been for a bike ride with SWMBO.

 

Tonight I’ve knocked up some seatbelts for the two pilots out of a wondrous material, the thick foil that is used as a seal on big  tubs of Tesco Gold coffee.

 

And I’ve been fitting (and test fitting - sage advice from Mr @JOCKNEY) some of the see-through bits. Masking will be combination of tape and Maskol, the latter for the ones where I don’t think they’ll stand much inward pressure without popping.

 

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The sprue gates are a bit too cosy with the parts and I’ve damaged the edge of the middle window on the starboard side, I’ll probably switch it with the one furthest left so it’s tucked under the ring out of the way, a bit less obvious hopefully.

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Slow but steady progress, the interior is nearly there and this week has been mainly about the masking. Bit of surgery required to cut down the wheel fairings as they were absent from Amiot no. 106 at this stage in its life, just need to keep the axels and enough plastic to stick them on the legs.
 

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Hopefully will have the fuselage zipped up and the wings on within a few days and after that I think it’ll be a fairly uncomplicated  home straight.

Edited by TonyOD
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I think that'll do it for the interior.

 

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I was going for "beige" with the overall colour and used Humbrol 71 "oak", it isn't quite as yellow as it appears in these pics!

 

While it's a long way from any kind of scratchbuilding masterclass, I'm reasonably pleased with it as the kit doesn't offer any interior at all, just a gaping void which would be pretty obvious with all those windows, thick as they are. I've added to main elements of the interior:

 

  • upper and lower floors from bits of margarine tub lid
  • pilot's and co-pilot's seats from the spares box (originally from a Fairey Barracuda I thin) with seatbelts made from foil from a coffee tub seal
  • double decker steering column from fuse wire
  • steering wheels from the spares box - the pilot's is from a LeO 451 and I think pretty accurate, the co-pilot's downstairs is from who knows what and looks a bit anemic by comparison but it won't be very visible
  • navigator's perch and table from spare bits
  • internal bomb store from a bit of Westland Wessex floor and more bits of margarine tub lid
  • the distinctive "handrail" around the ground floor from fuse wire (actually interior photos show this to be a light framing on the windows. Many profiles show a vertical element to this halfway across each window toom but I can't see that in any photos).

 

I also made an instrument panel but found it doesn't fit because it fouls with the lower front lip of the pilot's canopy, but I've painted a little i/p on the interior of the canopy instead. I thought about some pedals, for about seven seconds, and decided I couldn't be bothered.

 

It's all pretty crude and to be honest any small sense of realism was lost the minute I glued in those dirty great windows, but I need as much gluing surface as I can get to reduce the risk of popping when I take the masking off.

 

Weirdly I was missing a piece, the plancher auxiliare that the dorsal turret sits on. I'm presuming this would be a transparency to give the impression of spade below the turret but it's nowhere to be found, I might have thrown it away by mistake, so I made a new one out of a bit of transparent plastic (razor blade packaging) and backed it up with a couple of bits of clear sprue. Not ideal bit like the rest of the interior it will be all but invisible behind a coke-bottle transparency.

 

Thanks for looking in!

 

 

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Fuselage fun... the fit of the underside transparencies is pretty poor, leaving gaps so big it would be fearsomely draughty for the crew. I even had to put a shim in the gap on that “prow” bit to give the filler something to sit on. It’s going to take a bit of work to clean this lot up.


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Edited by TonyOD
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It would have been more draughty in real life Tony. Take a look at the crew access grid/flap. It seems to be open metalwork.

 

Amiot-nose-flap.jpg

 

The ladder behind the wing is stowed through the grid into the lower fuselage and the basement crew climb aboard that way. As it sits in the picture, it's set up for the pilot to get into his seat.

 

What a plane!

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10 minutes ago, TonyW said:

It would have been more draughty in real life Tony. Take a look at the crew access grid/flap. It seems to be open metalwork.

 

Amiot-nose-flap.jpg

 

The ladder behind the wing is stowed through the grid into the lower fuselage and the basement crew climb aboard that way. As it sits in the picture, it's set up for the pilot to get into his seat.

 

What a plane!

Yeah I’ve seen that before, you have a point! This explains why pictures of the crew have them dressed very warmly!

 

This is a kit that’s crying out for some aftermarket... some nice resin engines and a PE set to include interior detail, that grille and the ladder, which appears to be stowed hanging on the wall during flight.

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Got something that resembles an aeroplane, in as much as the Amiot 143 can resemble an aeroplane, when it looks more like an anvil, a doorstep or a grand piano.

 

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Legs on. Pretty straightforward, just had to drill two pairs of holes at the wing roots. Best give them plenty cure time.
 

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Edited by TonyOD
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Nice progress. 

No matter how many times I look at this aeroplane the fuselage looks upside down - I might just get one and build it that way as a whiffer, (says the Devil on my left shoulder). 😈

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Great stuff Tony 

 

You will get a much better view of the alloy wheels now that you have removed those spats  !

 

Don't worry I'm confident from the current ugly duckling a beautiful swan will emerge. :giggle:

 

Cheers Pat 

 

 

 

 

 

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I'm at the "waiting for paint to dry" stage, not a lot to look at right now but she should be looking stealthy in the next few days.

 

In the meantime I found this lovely video of the Amiot - several Amiots, actually - in action, some great close-ups. There's an underwing crew access door that I didn't know was there. 

 

 

Edited by TonyOD
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