WHATIF..............I actually finish these wee beastie after starting them nearly 7 years ago! BIG update!

[trickyrich]

Ok after someone wanted to know if there was an update on these.........well I had to hope in my time machine and journey was back to 2015 to find them.....gosh even the Dust Bunnies had abandoned them!!!  

 

 

....and first off to answer the first question....no I probably won't get to finish all these as well, but I will make an effort.........small hint I started to do some stuff on the 1/32nd Kitty Hawk Kingfisher (for the Salty Sea Dogs GB), glued a few bits realised it's a total piece of steaming !!!!  Figured building stuff from scratch is way easier to do....so will stay in this thread until it finishes in March and try to see how many models I can finish in that time, won't start anything new.

 

So the first of this lot is the Focke-Wulf Ta-154D-2N, this was basically the leftovers of the Arado build above. I never throw anything away so I decided to "hack" something together.The idea for this one was it would have been an "All-weather Fighter" based on the Focke-Wulf Ta-145 with the prop engines replaced with 4 BMW 003C jets and the advanced FuG-240 radar.

 

So everything started fine until I got to the main gear (which was from an Ar-234) , in the new fuselage the track was just too narrow. A WhatIf maybe a WhatIf but I like to make them as possible as I can, so the gear had to work. I eventually gave up because I couldn't find a solution that was practical and probable.

 

After the pride by someone yesterday I dragged it out and tried the now old gear from the Hammerhead build, that didn't work, so back to looking at the original Ar-234 gear. So after some fiddling I came up with this. The original gear pivot stays the same but I angled them out further and then changed the axel position and it worked!

 

 

That's the original Ta-154 main gear.

 

 

 

A wee bit of detailing and it looks good...plus thinking about it, it would actually work in real life.....though the main actuator may need to be longer.....but hey!!

 

 

While that was going on I started to work on the new FuG-240 "dustbin" for the nose while things dried.

 

 

That stumbling block over brisk work followed and the fuselage was closed up.

 

Finally a quick test fit of everything.......

 

 

 

......the stance is good, I could have gone lower in hight, but I still wanted to keep the original look of the Ta-154, plus now there is plenty of room for drop tanks under the engine pods.

 

 

...and with her sister.

 

 

Next challenge in the build s to get the wings to sit correctly then have all the wing/fuselage profiles looking correct, that'll be fun..........way more fun than that Kitty Hawk piece of , that's for sure! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[trickyrich]

Right this baby...well the Ta-154 that is, she has taken up quite a lot of time, but where I'm at now it has been worth it.

 

The Arado, all the major construction work is done, basically now it's just putting it all together, not a big task just time consuming.

 

The Ta-154, well that's was a different thing, the main issue was to get the wing fitted and sitting correctly. I had the basic position sorted....well I thought until I had a closer look.

 

Unfortunately these photos don't work out, but the issue was, using current fuselage locations meant the whole wind tilted up, ok for a slow moving aircraft, but this thing is fast!. So I wanted to keep as much of the fuselage wing join as possible....so out with the razor saw!!! 

 

 

......some nice careful cuts later...

 

 

....now a quick lift and tuck!

 

 

The wing angle is now quite flat, which is was when it was on the Arado.

 

Next issue was that the Arado wing was full metal, while the Ta-154's wing was wooden which resulted in it being double the thickness of the new wing.Plus I needed to fill in the new holes I created in the fuselage!!

 

So more cutting around the fuselage wing joins, then out with plastic strips and super glue and all my files.........

 

 

 

...... and it looks a bit rough but the shape is right which is the important thing........

 

.......a bit more filling/gluing and filing and the new wing profiling is really starting to come along. I love this sort of work, so much fun!

 

 

 

Plus I had to change the shape of the rear area of the clear canopy section as it had the wing leading edge too far forward, so I had to new fuselage sections to fill these gaps once it was removed. So I need to do this on the fuselage wing trailing edges and the wing.

 

 

 

 

While I was at it I started to straighten and fill in the gaps on the wings and sort out some wing mounts.

 

 

Time to see how all this work turned out!

 

The underside joins are really nice! Next to no gaps at all, I just need to finish off the wing join profile and that's it.

 

 

 

The upper wing front join is also near perfect (sitting just a fraction to one side in the photo, will glue straight.

 

 

The rear top is is good to, though I still need to figure out how to fair this all in. Once the wing is glued in place I can sort this out, not a biggie!

 

In between this work I started on the nose "dustbin", it's fitted but I need to spent some more time profiling it in.

 

All together she looks quite bizarre, very Luft46! I'm not 100% sure about the nose wheel, i may shorten it a wee bit yet. The rear gear, besides not breaking it during all this work (a first for me) I really could have moved it froward and had it retracting rearwards........but am happy where it is.

 

 

 

...and with that the major construction work is done on her, all the rest is just simple assembly and cleaning up work. Really happy with how the wing join turned out, I was a little bit stumped at the start as to how I could do it....but with a razor saw and CA glue anything is possible!!! 

 

Once the F-22 and Rafale are done I'll get back to her, things should move forward with her and the Arado quite quickly now.