Arado 234 B/C***FINISHED***

[PeterB]

As the WWII jets and rockets GB did not get through the bunfight I thought this might fit into this GB instead if I went for a prototype of either the B or C - I will decide which later.

The kit comes with parts and markings for a production B-2 and C-2/3 but I can change them if needed.

 

Pete 

[Col.]

You've selected another interesting and uncommon subject Pete  Am I correct in thinking there's a choice of cockpit sections as well as engine configurations contained in this kit?

[pheonix]

I used to have one of these kits but sold it some years ago when I cleared my collection. A very interesting subject: I will be following.

 

P

[PeterB]

On 11/16/2022 at 4:04 PM, Col. said:

You've selected another interesting and uncommon subject Pete  Am I correct in thinking there's a choice of cockpit sections as well as engine configurations contained in this kit?

Certainly is Col, although there are a few other changes they have missed out - modified u/c or perhaps just the wheels for instance. They also provide the V-1 to fit on top of the C-3 version! Now if somebody just made the A version with the take off trolley and narrower fuselage that really would be interesting!

 

Pete

Edited November 17, 2022 by PeterB

[Col.]

17 hours ago, PeterB said:

Certainly is Col, although there are a few other changes they have missed out - modified u/c or perhaps just the wheels for instance. They also provide the V-1 to fit on top of the C-3 version! Now if somebody just made the A version with the take off trolley and narrower fuselage that really would be interesting!

 

Pete

I did notice the V-1 in there as well Pete, nice bonus with the kit, tempted to find one for myself now

[PeterB]

I have decided I will build this as a C-3 prototype but in the background I will be refurbishing my old Frog kit of a B-2 - that won't officially be in the GB or the Gallery as although it is in bits I doubt it would pass the 25% rule.

 

Anyway, there is no mention of ballast in the instructions but it will clearly need some so before closing up the fuselage I have added some - I have also opened out a few locating holes.

No room in the nose as you can see below.

That joint certainly will need some filler! Frog provide a crude seat, figure which I am not using and an IP which goes in the glazed part.  I might add one or two boxes and a stick to make it look busier. The build should be pretty quick but we will not tempt fate!

 

After the original A model prototypes with a wheeled trolley for take off and skids for landing, Arado decided to accept the need to fit a tricycle undercarriage which involved widening the fuselage a bit - they had hoped to avoid the extra weight and drag that entailed, causing a drop in speed. The A & B models had twin engines, but it was decided to try to fit an extra pair to provide more power. They were unsure what the best configuration would be and so initially tried two individual pods spaced out on each wing, but found that pairing them worked better, so that was chosen as the configuration for the production versions of the C model.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited November 26, 2022 by PeterB

[Col.]

In my opinion based on what you've shown in the background your companion project will qualify due to the work required during a full break down and rebuild refurbishment

[PeterB]

Thanks Col

 

Yes I have stripped the fuselage but the wings and engines are still glued together so in terms of the actual build it is well over 50%. Of course it is a simple build so a lot of the work will be creating an undercarriage,  painting and putting on decs. I will show it throughout the build. but I don't think I should put it in the gallery.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

I have "improved" the cockpit a bit - no claims to total accuracy.

Couple of side consoles which were in the real thing and a stick with a wheel on top - not quite the German shape mind you as I think it is from a Mitchell! The IP will go in front of the stick in this C version.

 

The 234 was not provided with an ejector seat,  and Eric Brown quoted the Pilot's Notes on bailing out -

1. Reduce speed to 220 kph (137 mph).

2. Uncouple the control column and throw it forward.

3. Jettison the roof hatch.

4. If possible dive sideways under the wing leading edge.

As he commented, "a distinctly shaky proposition", particularly if the engines were still running I guess as the gap between them and the fuselage was not that great!

 

Pete

 

[JOCKNEY]

Great stuff Pete

The Arado is such a spectacular looking aircraft, and being a Frog kit, you've got me hooked 

Best of luck.

Cheers Pat 

[PeterB]

Ok, I have done similar work on the cockpit of the old B I am refurbishing so here they are side by side for comparison.

The nose of the B is slightly shorter with less glazing so there is a panel on the wall to the right of the seat - it would be over the glass if I tried that in the C. I built the old kit wheels up on the stand - I have filled the stand slot and cast new wheels but will have to fabricate the legs based on the new kit. I thought I had read that due to the very limited space for wheel wells the retraction/extension was a bit complicated and involved swivelling the nosewheel wheel round to lie flat but illustrations seem to show that was not the case - the rear of the well was apparently quite deep. Had I have realised that earlier I could have made a box interior for the wheel behind the seat! The main wheels just went forward and up.

 

Pete 

Edited November 29, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

On 11/27/2022 at 10:50 AM, Col. said:

In my opinion based on what you've shown in the background your companion project will qualify due to the work required during a full break down and rebuild refurbishment

Hi Col,

 

I have been thinking about this and yes the wings/engines look like a fairly large part of the build already glued together, but in reality they are only 12 items out of a potential 57 or so I could end up using if I was building this OOB. I am actually going to have to make/replace 16 items from scratch, and then there is the painting and decals.

If you accept the B is under the 25% rule I will put it in the gallery - but in any case I will continue to show the build alongside the C for comparison. Doing a refurb actually increases the amount of work required to a certain extent, such as filling, building the undercarriage etc, not to mention two doses of oven cleaner to get the ruddy paint off, which did not make me popular with her indoors due to the smell!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

[Col.]

I don't know about the accuracy of your cockpits Pete but they certainly look the part.

 

10 hours ago, PeterB said:

Hi Col,

I have been thinking about this and yes the wings/engines look like a fairly large part of the build already glued together, but in reality they are only 12 items out of a potential 57 or so I could end up using if I was building this OOB. I am actually going to have to make/replace 16 items from scratch, and then there is the painting and decals.

If you accept the B is under the 25% rule I will put it in the gallery - but in any case I will continue to show the build alongside the C for comparison. Doing a refurb actually increases the amount of work required to a certain extent, such as filling, building the undercarriage etc, not to mention two doses of oven cleaner to get the ruddy paint off, which did not make me popular with her indoors due to the smell!

I'm happy to see the B as eligible for inclusion within the gallery once done for those reasons. As you say there's more work involved with it than your fresh build.

[PeterB]

Thanks Col,

 

I will run them side by side but with separate gallery entries.

 

Refurbishing an old kit can take a lot of work, particularly when the original was build with the wheels up, as I now prefer them wheels down. In this case having a new kit to hand means I can copy the landing gear to a point.

My rather crude method of resin moulding works pretty well on wheels but does not work with thin parts like the legs, and I am not sure I would want to use them even if it did as they would be dangerously fragile. The main legs are easy enough to make from bent paperclips, plastic tube and filler, but the nose leg was more complicated. I had to drill into the "knuckle" on the wheel fork and insert a bit of paper clip and then cover it with plastic tube before adding a metal bracing strut. The wheel doors come as both closed and open sets, and the old closed ones were damaged during removal. However with a bit of adjustment and some card I should be able to make some replacement open ones from the "spare" closed ones in the kit.

 

One of the most fiddly bits to replace is the large actuator arms which go on the top and bottom of the horizontal tail surfaces and on either side of the fin. I only managed to save 2 of the 6 and my normal trick of using modified staples was not going to work as they are an unusual design - you can see 5 of the new kit ones on the sprue. The "operating rod" is easy enough but I was wondering how to make the quadrant and then I had an idea - a quadrant is part of a circle! Using my cheap and crude circle cutters I cut part way through some medium plastic card using two slightly different diameters and finished it of with a scalpel. My first attempt is crude ring but perhaps workable. Anyway it is worth a try.

 

So back to the new C - I am still debating whether to put the wings on before of after the u/c legs - the problem will be getting access to fill and clean up the lower joint as the u/c will be in the way! Incidentally, a dry fit on the B shows I have got the weight just about right by the looks of it, so hopefully the C will be the same. The basic builds should be done before long and then i will have to think about the payload, but more on that later. It will certainly need some more research and quite a bit of work I suspect.

 

Pete

Edited November 30, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

The 234 did not have an internal weapons bay so everything had to be carried externally - here is what Frog provide.

Starting from the top is what I suspect is meant to be an SC 1000 Hermann, and it is fairly close given it comes from an almost 50 year old kit. Underneath are a pair of what I can only call "generic" bombs which match noting in my book, though in shape they slightly resemble one version of the AB 500 cluster bomb unit, though the fins stick out too much. Next are what are meant to be a pair of 300 Litre drop tanks, and they look about right though I have no measurements available to confirm the size - the noses may be a little too pointy but that can be fixed with a file. Then at the bottom we come to the RATO units. I have a vague recollection of seeing a comment about these many years ago saying something was wring, but I have no idea what. They don't look too bad to me but of course the mountings Frog provide are a real lash-up. Instead of individual support struts they have moulded the whole thing solid and I really cant be bothered to drill and cut them out. Even if it worked they would probably need shortening as pics show that they seem to have sat closer to the wing. One advantage of modelling prototypes I guess is that I do not have to use any of them, though the tanks may get used on the C and I will have a dig around in my various spares boxes to see if I can find the ones off the B.

 

The 234B had a max payload of around 3300 lb and could carry either 3 x 500 kg bombs or one 1000 kg bomb and 2 x 250 kg bombs or drop tanks or one PC 1400 kg bomb. Although more powerful the C seems to have about the same payload.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

I have made a couple of small changes to the machines. Like me, Frog thought the 234 was fitted with a pair of fixed rearwards firing 20mm cannon for self defence, and certainly that seems to have been intended in the design - the pilot could line up his target using the periscope sight at the top of the canopy. The cutaway drawing of a B in Green clearly shows them in place but the Monogram Close Up book states that they were intended but never actually fitted to the B series. However the C3 apparently was re-purposed to ground attack and had both the rearwards pointing cannon and a pair of forward firing ones as well. I have filled in and removed the ports for the rear guns on the B, but left them on the C and made some new ones under the nose. I have also used some plastic tube to represent the blast tubes on the cockpit floor.

Here are the rear ones, highlighted by a little "filler slurry" which I must clean out.

And here are my new front ones which still need a bit of cleaning up.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

I have made a start on the engines, which in the case of the C version were 4 x BMW 003A-1 rated at 1760 lb static thrust. These were a bit slimmer than the 2 Jumo 004B of the B version which were rated at 1980 lb static thrust. and were the same engines used in the Me 262.

German jet engines had a bit of a reputation for unreliability and/or short life - in his book on flying German WWII planes Brown says that the Jumos had to be serviced after 10 hours and only had a total life of no more than 25 hours, so it did not help that most of the engine records had been either lost or destroyed for the captured ones he intended to fly! In fact, one of the first Ar 234 he was going to fly suffered a compressor blade failure just as he was running up the engines prior to take off, but that was believed to be due to sabotage by a  hostile member of the German ground crew responsible for servicing it. By comparison the 1600 lb.s.t. Welland of the Meteor I and the 2000 lb.s.t. of the Meteor III were both bench tested for 500 hours and supposedly good for 150 hours in service.

 

Brown says that the pilot's notes for the 262 placed some emphasis on checking that the exhaust cone or Zweibel (Onion) as it was known was visible from the cockpit when running up to 8500 rpm before take-off as apparently they had a habit of breaking loose and blocking the exhaust causing a flame-out which usually proved fatal. Given the nature of his job and his fondness for sports cars (he had apparently just bought a new one a couple of years before he died aged 97) I sometimes think it was a miracle he lived as long as he did!

 

Once I have cleaned up the nacelles I will get them mounted.

 

Pete

 

 

[pheonix]

One of the reasons for the short life of German jet engines of this period was that they were desperately short of aluminium which was used in in the combustion chambers. Apparently they "sprayed" a layer of aluminium on to the chamber surfaces and this was destroyed after a few hours of use, so that the engine had to be removed and replaced. In the account which I read, (sorry I do not have the reference), the engine life was 12 hours, but I accept what Brown wrote as he was there at the time!

 

P

[PeterB]

My replacement rudder/elevator actuators have come out quite well.

So I slapped on a coat of primer and then followed with a first thin coat of top colour.

 

The official scheme was 81/82 over 76 but manufacturers were allowed to use up existing stocks of 70 and 71 and 65 so some of the early prototypes were probably in that. Another suggestion seems to have been that one of the old colours should be paired up with one of the new so 70 with 82 and 71 with 81, and I have seen a photo of the 2324B's of KG 76 when the Brits arrived at Gove airfield with at least one in the latter scheme. I have gone for the late scheme of 81/82 over 76 for the C and for a variation I will do the B in 71/81 - probably! Depends on whether or not I like it!

Getting there slowly.

 

Pete

Edited December 5, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

Over the last couple of weeks I have been mainly concentrating on my Ta 154 build, but I have made some progress with my pair of Arados.

Still a fair bit of touching up to do but the upper surfaces are nearly done.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

A bit more progress.

I seem to have made one slight error when building the DIY nose gear on the B - I drilled the hole for the front strut at the wrong angle in the wheel fork so it is more "compressed" than the kit one resulting in a slight nose down angle - perhaps it had a heavier load.😄

 

Just the nose glazing, decs and a few odds and ends to go on now.

 

Pete

Edited December 24, 2022 by PeterB

[pheonix]

Both are looking good - and the lower nosewheel is hardly noticeable.

 

P.

[PeterB]

27 minutes ago, pheonix said:

Both are looking good - and the lower nosewheel is hardly noticeable.

 

P.

Thanks P.

 

Like a lot of modern jets the nose leg is what I call the "lever" type and I have ended up with the fork perhaps 8^o-10^o more deflected or compressed - the actual length of the leg itself is pretty close to the kit one, but the overall result is a couple of degrees nose down. Also, the main legs on both should angle outwards slightly but it is close enough for me - to quote the old modelling saying - "perfect is the enemy of good" or words to that effect. I am a great believer in the "80-20" rule - if you can get 80% of the points from 20% of the work, is it really worth busting a gut to try and scrape up a few more, but then again maybe that is why I ended up with a 2:2 instead of a 2:1 at Uni, though I suspect it was mostly to do with my social life!😆

 

Pete

[PeterB]

There are a number of differences between the glazing on the C and that on the B.

That on the C dispenses with the stepped lower edge, has a bulged top and is shorter, but due to the longer front fuselage the C looks a little longer overall than the B. However Green says they are the same length and he is probably correct - certainly there is very little in it.

 

I will leave them to dry overnight then get a gloss coat on prior to putting on the decs.

 

Pete

[Col.]

It's interesting to see both together and get a better appreciation of their differences Pete. You're not far from finished now.