Can I interest you in a Lightning Bomb Truck Sir?

[scautomoton]

I originally had the idea of doing a Whatif Lightning FGR.7 with ALL the weapons mounted to it with some trumped up idea of Jaguar and MRCA being delayed or cancelled or whatever other politically expedient excuse would pass muster. Then I decided I had enough on the go without spending ages umming and ahhing over whether something should be an FGx, or an FRSx, or a BRx etc etc. So, because I want to model a Lightning in Beast Mode, I've decided to do an F.53 diorama based on the numerous photos from 1967-1969 of the BAC display at various Airshows (exhibit A & B below courtesy of the internet).

 

 

I'll be starting with the Airfix Lightning F.6 kit (for obvious reasons), and generally 3d printing the various bits that can't be bought or found for love nor money. As I've only recently bought a 3d printer this promises to be a doddle painful learning experience that I'm sure I'll regret ever embarking upon. So, onto the obligatory box shot...

 

 

Fabulous artwork, note the inspired use of colour palette and copious amounts of alcohol leading to forgetting to finish the image.... (or whatever the excuse was)...

 

For the F.53 specific weaponry I managed to obtain the Odds & Ordnance underwing stores kit from rossm on here. The CBLS is available though Air-Graphics, but the rest I can't find anywhere, so the list of bits to 3d print (as seen in photos above) is as follows:

 

- JL100 double stack with overwing pylons

- Matra 155 double mount (OAO kit is single mount only)

- Matra 155 open cones (i.e. without frangible cover. These will be to modify the resin ones I already have which are too fiddly to paint!)

- Ventral rocket pack (how has this never been available?)

- 540lb bombs

- Drop tanks (from a Strikemaster but I'm not buying a whole kit just for 2 of these)

- RAE Universal Twin 7.62mm Gun Pod

- Firestreak ventral pack

- Red Top ventral pack

- Reconnaissance ventral pack

- 1000lb retarded bomb with semi-deployed parachute (still scratching my head over how to do justice with this one)

- Aden cannons in a naked state

- A multitude of 2" and 3" rockets..... painting 188 of these promises to be (insert expletive here) delightful

 

The vast majority of the above don't have easily accessible drawings (and I'm not willing to join a billion sites and get spammed for the rest of my life just for some blueprints), so I'll mostly be working from a handful of reference books, photos and whatever Google shows me. I intend for things to be detailed enough that an armourer would recognise what they are supposed to be, but I'm not going to model every rivet and safety catch, mainly because my printer won't do that level of detail, but also because I want to finish this before the apocalypse.

 

As far as the airframe goes, unless someone can direct me to some 1/72 Queen's Award roundels I'll likely be doing the G-AXEE Kuwaiti scheme from the Paris Airshow rather than the G-AWON scheme seen in most other photos from the period. Either that or I need to get creative with Microsoft Paint and some waterslide paper.

 

I've already made some reasonable headway with design & print loops to refine some of the parts, but its late, I've been gardening ALL weekend and I really need a shower, so a progress-so-far-post will have to wait until tomorrow.

 

Stuart

 

 

 

[perdu]

You can have this if it helps

 

 

Or this

 

It'd be nice if you have a picture of the actual airframe though

 

 

B

[perdu]

Easy enough to size these images if you import them into a Word™ page as image files and then simple to print on decal paper

[neil5208]

Attention grabbed, will follow 

[scautomoton]

2 hours ago, perdu said:

It'd be nice if you have a picture of the actual airframe though

B

This is the best image I could find. Courtesy of Google (image link takes you to some odd clothing store which has the images for sale? but sized against clothing???)

 

[scautomoton]

I decided to make a start with something relatively simple, the Matra 155 cone. The issue I have with the available resin items is they have the frangible cover moulded in place, and I'm not about to start attempting to drill 18x 0.8mm holes on an angled surface in something so small. Plus, at the airshows the rockets were painted bright red and displayed in a partially ejected state, "oh yes Sir, don't they look splendid Sir, we can do them wholesale for you Sir. Ooh, suit you Sir!"

 

So I whipped out the trusty metal rule (I have a vernier but I'm not that anal about them being decimal point perfect), and drew this:

 

Then I went through a number of print iterations and slicing configurations in Anycubic Photon until I'd gotten to grips with Supports. Below on the left is the first attempt just as a learning exercise, in the middle is the final article and then the Eduard? SNEB with my unparalleled paintwork of the fibreglass frangible cover (trust me it looks worse in person) and a slightly prepped item below it to replace the cone (eventually). I'm still debating whether to attempt all of the red rocket tips poking from the (many) rocket pods.....

 

After this I decided to carry on with the SNEB theme and tackled the JL100. Luckily, I had bought a Mirage Weapons set which contained some decent injection moulded items, and also found some good drawings on another forum (I want to say WhatifModellers, but may be wrong). Then after beating Fusion 360 into submission, I had this:

 

The sharp eyed amongst you will notice the slightly wider gap between the rocket exhaust outlets where the twin boom will attach. While I may not go to town on the finest of fine details, I at least want some of the obvious things to be right! Again, numerous prints, design iterations (12?) led to this:

 

At the top is the very first print, however I didn't appreciate the flexing of the FEP, what the influence of supports was, which way around to be wearing your underpants and so forth. So much scratching of head, and various orientations and exposures later led me to a design that slots together with minimal surface prep after removing the supports. Bottom left is how it prints now, then on the right with supports removed and ready to paint then glue together. The only thing needed now is to increase the mounting hole size so it doesn't need a cleanup with a drill bit to fit the overwing pylon (more below).

 

Next up was the RAE Twin Machine Gun Pod (greeny-blue thing in the first image of my original post). Now, I had to guestimate size, shape and dimensions since there is sweet FA online about this thing. I looked at a few of the airshow photos scattered across the Web and in most of them it compares broadly to the Matra 155 pod, albeit a tad shorter. Its got some louvres on the sides, and a couple mounting points on top, plus the muzzle holes on the upper leading edge surface. Oh, and it's sort of aerodynamic, a bit like a sofa with a roadcone attached to it. So, after continued blasphemy and general big-stick caressing of Fusion 360, nine variants later I ended up with this:

 

...Which does bear a passing resemblance to the one in this 1972 Airshow photo by Brian Jones (sorry for the resolution, I blame Bill Gates):

 

This time I needed quite a few prints to get something acceptable, ending up with these. I've since played with the anti-alias settings to reduce the print layer grain, so will probably give them another hit.

 

Last one for this post; I obviously needed the overwing pylon for the JL100s. Again, with the lack of anything resembling a drawing or blueprint online, nor in any of my reference material, I had to wing it (see what I did there? I'll get my coat...). Various online images (notice the trend here?) showed that the vertical and the horizontal components were the same length, which made things easier. Plus the horizontal spar looks to have a simple semicircular radius on the leading & trailing edges, with a constant thickness along it's length. I gave the vertical pylon a taper from leading and trailing edges to a thicker middle. And I think that will do, no one looking at it will be berating the lack of period-correct aerofoil section when they're bamboozled by a ludicrous array of rockets. I guesstimated the level of curvature of the wing, refined it over a couple of prints and ended up with this design in what was now a very obedient and well-behaved Fusion 360:

 

 

This time around I needed far fewer print iterations. The difference between the final version and V3 was simple refinement of the wing curvature mating surface.

 

I've used 1.0mm mounting pegs spaced 8.5mm apart which fit perfectly into the wing when you drill the exact centre of the mounting points.

 

Now, none of the period images show whether the pylons are perpendicular to the wing surface, or ground. So there is just enough play available to cover both. Anyone know which should be correct? Some of the literature shows them upright relative to the ground, but I've been caught out by artists interpretations before.

 

And finally, an early pylon with a mix of JL100 print pedigrees:

 

I've also done the 540lb bombs and got a first attempt at the drop tanks. I'm currently battling the ventral rocket pack, which is proving slightly tricky due to the topology of the Airfix model. After that (unless the rocket pack annoys me so much I have to do something else for a while) is to tackle the underwing pylon dual SNEB mounting rack. What's really next up is for me to pull my finger out and start putting some paint on the Vickers 559 and draw up a dual launcher rail for Red Tops and Genies, but that's another topic.

[Robin-42]

You are clearly beating Fusion into submission faster than I have! Having said that, truly 3D printing is the future for “bits”. Odd pylons? Unavailable external stores? Correct wheels? No more waiting and hoping the aftermarket will rescue us. The only drawback is time spent designing is not time spent worrying plastic. Well done. 

[Gondor44]

The reconnaissance pack can be got through Models for Sale who stock the Ally Cat range who used to own Odds & Ordenance which has recently come under new management.

 

Gondor

[HPoirot]

This will make for a very busy display, excellent idea !

About the overwing rocket pod pylons, and assuming that they would have had similar inclinations as the overwing fuel tank pylons, there are some relatively head on views of the latter here in case you hadn’t stumbled upon these pages yet : http://plane-crazy.k-hosting.co.uk/Aircraft/Jets/Lightning/lightning.htm

https://www.key.aero/article/why-flight-testing-english-electric-lightning-was-such-challenge (here in the «  weapons » paragraph - presumably requiring a half-roll for delivery ?).

Edited May 11, 2024 by HPoirot

[scautomoton]

3 hours ago, Gondor44 said:

The reconnaissance pack can be got through Models for Sale who stock the Ally Cat range who used to own Odds & Ordenance which has recently come under new management.

 

Gondor

In typical fashion I've been chasing them for months about these items, and they come into stock when I've already made my own. Nevermind, I can just print them off whenever now.

[scautomoton]

So, what's been going on lately? Well, I'm glad you asked; more CAD and 3d printing of parts (many parts....rinse and repeat, literally) until they're as close as I can get them is what's been going on recently.

 

I'm mostly happy with the outer wing pylons and Twin Carrier Shoes. I was on version 5 of the pylon when I stumbled across more images on here of actual pylon placement. Up to that point I was effectively copying the Odds and Ordnance instructions, but they place the pylon too far rearwards on the wing. They are supposed to be almost level with the leading edge. This necessitated another change to the upper mounting surface of the pylon to match the wing curvature (mostly).

 

The carrier was, I thought, pretty good, but then once again I found another image of an F.53 head on which gave the best detail of the carrier so far (here). Now, I've basically modelled it as a sort of 1000lb bomb shaped thing, with recesses for the Matra 155s to be glued into, because most of the images from airshows etc make it look like that. But the recent image clearly shows that the inner face is actually flat with some interesting curvature around to the outer face. To be honest, I think I'm going to run with what I have, which is the right-most pair in the image above. They'll be painted matt black, so won't stand out.

 

 

Now, the real PITA was the ventral rocket pack. As you can see, I went through many iterations to try to match the fuselage curvature and profile. This was doubly difficult because I had to experiment with printing orientation which could skew the shape of the part, but I've gotten to something which I think will do. I haven't printed the final version yet, but that just adds some inner detail and recesses for the hydraulic actuators. In addition to cutting out the ventral pack location on the fuselage, some trimming of the inlet duct is required. The lower locating pin needs removing, and it needs notching for the pack to sit flush.

 

The rocket pods have presented me with a bit of a conundrum. I've played with a couple of different layer sizes and exposures (0.03mm & 1.5s, and 0.05mm & 2.5s) to try to print the rocket tube detail (0.7mm) all the way through. However, some tubes come out perfectly, while other are full of resin or partly open and so on. I printed a bunch together to see if it was related to placement relative to the LED matrix, but it didn't really make any difference. Put them in the wash for 5 mins in case they just weren't being flushed properly, but no difference. Can anyone provide any pointers? I'm using an Anycubic Mono X2 with Standard grey (not gray!) resin.

 

In terms of being able to assemble a reasonable approximation of an F.53, I'm basically there. The rest of the printing work will be the array of Stores arranged in front of the aircraft. I've got a working design for the 540lb bombs and the drop tanks which I've printed, but they're not very interesting. They've also fiddly as hell and annoying to print, requiring gobs of filler. The next proper challenge will be the Firestreak and Red Top ventral packs with as much interior detail as I can muster. Which should be fun (or not). I'll just order the Mk.50 Reconnaissance Pack from Modelsforsale I think.

 

I'm trying to be good and not start gluing or painting anything yet. I am adamant that I'm going to finish the other WIP before I really start to attack this one. I'm pretty close on the 559, and I've started the TSR2, so I'll damn well finish it. Then it'll be time for a string of Lightnings.....or maybe an SR.53 and 2x SR.177s

[TeeELL]

Stuart,

  being another modeller who fettles Fusion360 to create parts there are a couple of things I’ve learnt directly or indirectly.  When I designed the underwing fuel tanks (for my 1:72 Airfix Javelin FAW9R) I made them solid - however, if the resin in the middle of the item doesn’t set (ie the U/V doesn’t reach and activate it) it is possible for that liquid to gradually affect the whole and eat through?  Now, I do not know how true that is (new ‘old wives tale’ perhaps?) but I made my fuel tanks hollow and in 2 parts to ensure drainage.  The problem with the rocket packs’ tubes not printing correctly is an issue I’ve encountered myself, I don’t know what the cause is, I can only assume an error in the slicing software?  If you use the slider after slicing  you may well find all the ‘solid’ parts.  I am having exactly that issue with the nose wheel leg of my 1:72 Airfix Phantom which I want hollow so I can fit a reinforcing rod.

My setup is: Elegoo Mars 2 Pro.  Slicing with Chitubox.  Perhaps using an alternative slicing software might work?

[TeeELL]

As an aside - many years ago I read an account of a particular test flight to ‘prove’ the carriage of 1000lb bombs (iirc) on the wings of an export Lightning.  On this particular test flight one bomb ‘hung up’ - the pilot didn’t realise because there was no asymmetry- the weight of the bomb twisted the wing (ie increased the angle of attack) just enough to compensate.

[scautomoton]

4 hours ago, TeeELL said:

Stuart,

  being another modeller who fettles Fusion360 to create parts there are a couple of things I’ve learnt directly or indirectly.  When I designed the underwing fuel tanks (for my 1:72 Airfix Javelin FAW9R) I made them solid - however, if the resin in the middle of the item doesn’t set (ie the U/V doesn’t reach and activate it) it is possible for that liquid to gradually affect the whole and eat through?  Now, I do not know how true that is (new ‘old wives tale’ perhaps?) but I made my fuel tanks hollow and in 2 parts to ensure drainage.  The problem with the rocket packs’ tubes not printing correctly is an issue I’ve encountered myself, I don’t know what the cause is, I can only assume an error in the slicing software?  If you use the slider after slicing  you may well find all the ‘solid’ parts.  I am having exactly that issue with the nose wheel leg of my 1:72 Airfix Phantom which I want hollow so I can fit a reinforcing rod.

My setup is: Elegoo Mars 2 Pro.  Slicing with Chitubox.  Perhaps using an alternative slicing software might work?

Yes I have been printing with all items hollow where possible, although it was mostly to save on resin and weight, as well as reducing the tension on the FEP.

 

Regarding the tube resolution, I may try some different orientations, plus I am going to give Lychee a go. First impressions are positive, it seems a lot more user focused than Photon, ie designed by people who actually use it. I did find that reducing the layer height and exposure time improved the resolution of the tubes to that shown in the images above, but at the expense of some of the fine edge detail. If none of the above resolve it I may just accept fewer, larger tubes. But we'll see.

[hendie]

On 5/17/2024 at 11:33 AM, scautomoton said:

 

 

Caveat - this is me speaking typing so take everything with a pinch of NaCl.   For geometry like this I would print in the orientation shown on the V2 on the left. That's the best way to ensure that all the holes you get are actually circular.

One thing you might want to play with is the delay (can't remember what Chitubox term for it is at the mo') from when the build plate reaches the print position before the UV light comes on. You want to delay that light long enough for all the resin caught between the FEP and the build surface to escape before the light illuminates. If the resin doesn't have time to escape it can start curing as it's still oozing out of the gap.

There's another delay going in the opposite direction, I.e. when the lights goes off and before the build plate starts to rise.  Chitubox's control naming is confusing and they appear to have named them in reverse, at least to my way of thinking.  For general printing I have a delay of 0.75 seconds on the way down, though I sometimes increase that to 1.5 seconds depending upon the print, and a 0.25 delay after the light goes off before the build plate starts to rise.

 

Another option - I'm not sure of the internal geometry of your rocket pods - is to hollow out the case about 5mm back from the face with all the holes, and leave a large slot along the short wall for the resin to escape.  That way the thin tubes are only being created at the start, and towards the end of the print and there's less time for the resin to clog up the holes. It'd be easy enough to cap the slot with some styrene or a resin plug, and you'd never be able to see further  than a couple of millimeters down the tubes.

 

 

[scautomoton]

1 hour ago, hendie said:

 

One thing you might want to play with is the delay......

 

Another option - I'm not sure of the internal geometry of your rocket pods - is to hollow out the case about 5mm back from the face with all the holes, and leave a large slot along the short wall for the resin to escape.  That way the thin tubes are only being created at the start, and towards the end of the print and there's less time for the resin to clog up the holes. It'd be easy enough to cap the slot with some styrene or a resin plug, and you'd never be able to see further  than a couple of millimeters down the tubes.

 

 

Both great suggestions, I'll have a play with Photon and see if it offers enough dexterity regarding the delay. The idea of just having a couple mm of the holes is so obvious, but I was wrapped up in trying to do it my way. 

[scautomoton]

Wakey wakey! Some actual progress on this now I've cleared the rest of the backlog. Which now means this one is now the backlog.... or at least the oldest in line, ho hum.

 

So what have I done since May? Erm, not much really. I've purchased some 3d printed crowd safety barriers from Coastal Kits, so once the diorama is complete there'll be a handy fence to stop the oiks from getting too close. I've also given some thought to how I model the red rocket tips poking out of the various launchers. This presents the problem of whether to paint something like 150 individual rockets and try to glue them in, or, find some sort of red filament/wire in both 1mm and 0.7mm diameters. Can anyone think of anything? I was looking at stuff like stiff brush bristles or similar. Then I could just cut them to size, round the tips and get gluing. Which is marginally less onerous.

 

I have also actually made some progress with the kit itself! Yes I know, shocking, but there you have it. I splurged some cash on the Barracuda cockpit and landing gear sets. First impressions are good; great detail and tolerances are tight, nice.

 

 

The instructions call for a slight thinning of the wall and some chamfering of the trailing edge of the cockpit side window landing. In reality, there was also copious thinning of the fuselage halves, and a bit of sanding of the new cockpit and instrument panel to get it all to close up snug without having to squeeze it together. In the end it looks like this:

 

 

So now the fuselage is glued together, the belly pack forward halves are fitted, and the arrestor hook and it's fairing also. I also had to get the boiling water out to straighten the tail fin, which was doing a fair impression of a banana, but all is now good.

 

Next will be getting the wings together and covering it all with some Eduard Exterior etch (supposedly for Trumpeter kits but sssshhhh). Then it'll be a case of polishing the living daylights out of all bits since G-AXEE was shinier than a magpie's favourite shiny thing. So the NMF promises to be challenging.

[MOK61]

Wow, I've only just found this and I am really impressed! What a fantastic idea for a diorama display. I have been tempted by some of those WW2 propaganda shots of bomber crews posed on a dispersal apron in front of their aircraft along with all the supporting ground crew, equipment and vehicles.

 

I would love to be able to create my own accessory pieces through CAD and 3D printing, but I started  programming in school back in 1977 in the days of code stored on reels of punched paper tape in Basic, then Basic+, Fortran66, Fortran77 then back to VBA for Windows ending up down a career dead end with database management using SQL and now I've reached a stage where I can't remember what I had for breakfast and the thought of learning another set of software skills makes me feel physically sick!

 

Hat off to you, sir!

 

Murray