Maybe it would be nice to show you all the build of a small paper model airplane. This is a what-if in every way, so why not?
This one is, as I call it, an  "inbetweenie", just something to keep me going between bigger builds. I have had an unexpected encounter with an Omicron virus last weekend and I stayed at home to recover. The symptoms were fairly mild but the test I did could not have been any clearer. I am almost better now so I have got that going for me. I entertained myself with an old model I built before but in the way it supposed to look. Now, let's do it different. I apparently have a fetish of putting dishes on aircraft that weren't built for carrying dishes. So here it goes:

This is a nice little model, because all fits on one A4 page. I do have to say it originally is two pages but I shrunk it to fit on just the one. That's large enough for me, especially considering the level of detail. (Oh yeah: I also recoloured it to show the model in an entirely different way.)
Let's start out with the nose section. It's petalled and I am not particularly fond of that technique. However I seem to get better in creating nicely closed bulbous shapes with it.



The edges are coloured with watercolour pencils to prevent white edges seen between the joined segments later on. It is a small detail but it often makes all the difference in the end.
I curve the nose section with a sawn-off knitting needle on the palm of my hand. Then I use an embossing tool to curve the petals more inward.





Glueing is done with white PVA and applicated with a cocktail stick. Yeah, those are the tools of a paper modeller.



The petals are given a big dollop of PVA on the inside and then a reinforcing (and coloured) round bit of paper is added to the back as well. It is set aside to dry.



When the glue is a little more dried, I press the petals closer together again and use embossing tools to retain the desired shape.  It's almost like clay modelling by then. After that, it usually stays in the preferred shape and can be put aside to completely set and dry.

WOW!! This is a very different set of skills to mine. Most impressed! 

That's why I am so scared of paper model...! 

Next up: the fuselage.  Just a couple of cylindrical parts. Nothing special, really. I use clothes pins for keeping the seems together when the glue sets. Thois model, originally being bigger, needed some reinforcing circles inside the hull but in this scale, I prefer to use a rolled-up bit of card for a more general reinforcing and better distribution of material. About 25x5 cm was rolled up and inserted.



Now the interesting part: the wing section. Two wings and the wing root, consisting of a bottom part and two fuselage-to-wing transitions over the top of the wings. I couldn't remember how I did this the first time I built this plane so I just decided to construft the whole wing section as a whole this time. Cut out the base. Shaped it into a more organic shape. The wing's upper and lower section are connected at the leading edge so it is just a question of curving. I use a thinner knitting needle to bend the wing around and glue the trailing edges together. Then I attached one of the wings to the central section.




This is how the 'chine' runs over the top of the wing section before I attached it to the wing: still loose and unattached.



Now, I carefully shaped the wing roots into the shape of the 'chine' with a knitting needle and simultaneously working the chine downward a little.
The glue tabs I made on the inside of the wing now could reach the 'chine' and it became a more blended shape. Same process with the other wing, of course.



And then it kind of becomes a snug place to install the cylindrical hull into:






 

  

Engines. Small parts, twice the fun. Now this specific type of plane had the engine nacelles on top of the wings. That made for nice low landing gear and low noise when in the air. I made some of the inner parts here myself. Punched out little 6mm rounds with hollow punches to reinforce the cylinders.



And that is how they look on the wing:



No surprise left here of how it is going to look because of course I print my models out in full colour, no paint jobs after assembly necessary.

Aaaaaaaaand there it is: my beloved weirdo forward swept tail of an Antonov An-72 model, modified for a radome on top. It's the same I used for the Fokker F27 I posted here a long time ago. (https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?topic=45428.0)  Just reduced in size. (oh yeah: I miscalculated the angle of the registration number but who cares with such a giant tail?)



I thought it would be funny to make the plane a little old and badly maintained, so with an ochre watercolour pencil I started to add some rusty bits on the fuselage.
The radome was two halves and a curved edge, with some glue and fingerwork blended into a shape that roughly vaguely resembled a radome like on the E-3 or that specific An-72. Now all that was left is invent a back story. I will post that in my next comment.

The story!

Joaquin Holzklöter was a descendant of a German family that emigrated to South America more than one and a half century ago. For decades, he had a lucrative, but a bit of a shady business selling old and surplus military equipment. Some claim he was the best, maybe even the only person to go to if you wanted to buy aircraft, no matter which type or make, any type of tank, or, say, an ten-wheeled vehicle with an operational missile on top. He could get you one within a month. His business was situated on the border of San Conquistador, with the jungle as its backyard.
San Conquistador, or San Con, as is is lovingly called by its inhabitants, is a dwarf state on the South American continent which came into existence after a year long dispute of borders between three other countries. When the dispute threatened to escalate into a full-blown war, the mostly indigenous people of the area took matters into their own hands and said the land has always been theirs, and declared themselves independent. For reasons best known to themselves, they named it San Conquistador.
The UN ensured their independence and while the other countries retreated and licked their wounds, the new government of 'San Con' went looking for means to defend their border and themselves.

Being a country without much weaponry, San Con badly needed some protection and started a small army with a tiny air force. They bought a few old P-51's and F4U's from Joaquin Holzklöter, but they also saw a weird looking small twin engined jet and asked what he wanted for that one. Holzklöter said the jet wasn't for sale since it wasn't flightworthy so they unfortunately couldn't buy it.

The jet in question was an oddball. How it got there is yet another story, but the origin was Dutch.
As you all know, in the late sixties, the Dutch were working on an airborne warning system on a Fokker F.27 airframe. To test parts of the configuration, a small division of Fokker and the National Aerospace Laboratories modified a VFW 614 that was parked in a lost corner of an airfield. (Fokker was more or less merged with VFW in those days) The VFW was modified with a sub-scale working version of what was to become the radar dish of the F-270 later on. The tests went well and quick. The electronics worked. The system was validated. Great. The VFW was parked back where they found it and, again, more or less forgotten. In time, it lost the dish, but it kept the weird tail. Maybe it was sold, maybe it was stolen. Who can say? All we know is that one day it appeared on Joaquin Holzklöter's premises in the jungle, between the old propeller planes from several war era's, cannons, and rolling equipment, hidden under tarpaulins covered in parrot droppings. Holzklöter worked hard to get the jet engines going again, because he'd like to sell it to the government of  his new country. Oddly enough, some time later, a local drug baron bought the plane as his private jet. And it disappeared again.

Flash forward five years. The San Con government charged the drug baron living in their country with.. well, possession of drugs. They sentenced him to 25 years in prison and confiscated all his assets. To their surprise, they found the plane back in good condition. He actually never flew it, because without the radar dish, the centre of weight wasn't correct and the tail itself was not good for use on its own.
Holzklöter, who eventually had given up his business and started working for the San Con government, used his shady connections abroad to bring the aircraft back into the strange contraption it was, with a grotesque rotating radar dish on its tail.

One of the designated pilots of the plane which is nicknamed El Panqueque Volador, is called colonel Consuela Fernandez, née Holzklöter. Yes, it is Joaquin's own daughter, who he had learn to fly in his old propeller planes. She learnt to fly the jet and apparently had a lot of talent for it.  And because the Fuerza Aerea of San Con needed a pilot for the VFW, she asked to be the pilot. Even more reason for Joaquin to make sure the plane was safe and flyable.
San Conquistador celebrated their 25th anniversary last year and the Pqanqueque led the parade in the sky. However, I must say that if they want to keep this baby in the air, they need to give the VFW some rust treatment soon.

The kit is a German paper model (Schreiber Bogen) which I recoloured and modified with the tail and the dish of an Antonov 72 prototype. Because I just love that dish-on-tail configuration.

And the VFW looks like it would be just right for a little banana republic to serve as a kind of AWACS-y plane. So there you have it. A little story and a little plane.

 

Very nice.

Well done 

DEFINITELY worth a Whiffie nomination! 

Paper models are an art form all of their own and are absolutely fascinating 

Always thought of them as being very much a German branch of the overall modelmaking hobby.

Quote from: PR19_Kit on March 23, 2023, 05:19:20 AMDEFINITELY worth a Whiffie nomination! 

Coolest eco-freindly build    or best biodegradable build 

Lovely. 

 

Joaquin Holzklöter  , WHAT a name ... the german name is  JOACHIM, but it could be a south american version of that. In german Language ,, klöten ,, is a slang for ,,balls" , so  holz = wood means wooden balls in the end .