Four For Telford?

[Father Ennis]

Thanks for the information, I'm not much on post WWII aircraft and even then I'm not much of an aircraft modeler.  I have to admit I thought it might be something like that but it's a government built aircraft so all kinds of weirdness can showup.

[Gondor]

Slight zombification of this thread seeing the last post was in October           2013 

Been fetteling around with the BAe146AEW only to realise, after getting the fuselage and the fuselage to wing joint as smooth as a baby's proverbial, that there was to be saddle tanks added at the front of the fuselage to wing joint 
Decided to take the bull by the horns and out came the pen's to draw a rough interpretation of the tanks position, from a drawings that has the fuselage only 4cm long so working out exactly the shape and position of the tank is a little problematic. However I came up with a rough idea and out came the drill 

The result is



The "trench's" are there for the plastic card to fit into which will be roughly shaped before hand. Got to do something duering the lockdown and this aircraft has been sitting on my bench staring at me for the last seven years 

Gondor

[Gondor]

No direct work carried out over the weekend, I have however contacted Chris Gibson via the Secret Projects forum who happily provided me with a copy of the drawing from 34 of The Admiralty and AEW from where I got the idea and inspiration to build this model. He also said, quote "For future reference, and feel free to tell others, any of my drawings are available at large size as I do the masters at A3, so can send those. Original company drawings are usually A4 and some I can share, some I can't."
So I have spend some time wondering why when I re-scaled relevant parts of the drawing the printed sheet would still come out the same size 
Found out that the printer was printing to scale and I needed to adjust the value of that scale regardless of the size of the drawing I was using  :banghead:I now have several copies of the saddle tank so I can start to work out ways of replicating it.
Rereading the section in the book, it appears that the aircraft was to be proposed for the US Navy so will be in Grey and White although I am tempted to do it in all over Dark Sea Grey for CVA.01 but we shall see.

Gondor

[Gondor]

Finally after three or four attempts at curring some plastic to roughly the right shape I have a spine fitted for the saddle tank



I have some small right angled section rod placed in a couple of places to help keep the spine upright

Cross section next followed by working out the best way to fill the gaps

Gondor

[Gondor]

["b]Whe Have a Problem Hueston![/b]"

So I managed to get half of the head on view of the saddle tank cut out. then when I offered the plastic card up to the spine I noticed a slight problem. please allow for the fact that the new part is too far forward to where the highest point of the spine is





The top of the left half of the saddle tank would be roughly where the leading edge of the wing is as that is the highest point of the srawing for the spine as shown by the black line above the fuselage. As you can see, the line and the card this side of the spine are different heights    no idea which is correct as both are from the drawing in the previously mentiond book 

Gondor

[Hobbes]

I've had that happen once or twice when working from General Arrangement drawings. Especially back then (before CAD), a GA drawing was an interpretation, drawn by hand, of the engineering drawings. Sometimes it even predates the engineering drawings.

I'd pick one view as the authoritative one and shape the part to fit that.

Comparing to the drawing, the 'front view' part looks higher than I'd expect. And where it touches the spine, it has a downward curve where I'd expect that section to be horizontal.

[Gondor]

Right, I think I have sorted this out, well to an extent that I am happy with

I decided to cut out another test half of the saddle tank cross section, when I couldn't find the other half of what I had cut out originally 



As you can see there is a difference to the lower edge which allows for the front edge of the wing carry through box. The result looks much better



I think a compromise is called for, something between the line and the cross section I think. The distance towards the rear of the aircraft the tank will go back is handily obscured by a folded wing tip in the drawing which Hobbes points out is a GA drawing and I should have remembered to take anything it shows with a large pinch of salt, about the size of Lot's wife!
So my aim will be to get the rear of the tank to be roughly where the rear of the wing is, the middle of the three lines across the fuselage that I have drawn for reference.

Gondor

[Gondor]

After trying, unsuccessfully, to replicate the part for the right side of the tank I have ended up gluing that piece of card to another in the hope it will stay in place long enough for me to remove the excess plastic and produce two identical items.
I have also started to form the saddle tank by layering the section that goes over the wing box. Trying to carefully measure with a set of digital calipers I transferred the dimensions to some plastic card and cut out. At the moment one side has been glued in place after have the rear edge chamfered to reduce the amount of PSR, some hope, later but as the surface I am gluing to is curved I am having to use both of the only clamps I have which can handle the fuselage diameter. We shall see how this goes.

Gondor

[Gondor]

This morning I removed the clamps only to find that the plastic had moved 
it was forward and the front end had moved outwards 
Lots of Liquid Poly and gentle persuasion with a knife freed all but one corner. I have put a camber into the plastic and stuck it down again, hopefully it will be a little more cooperative this time and I know what to do for the other side as well as the next pieces of card.

Gondor

[Gondor]

My cunning plan with the transverse plastic card sections worked 



It's better now that it's been tidied up and stuck on but it is certainly far better than my previous attempt





Certainly close enough for what I am doing with them.

The third picture also shoes that I have the first layer of the rear half of the saddle tank fitted and this time there was no trouble like the first piece had, curling the plastic card worked a treat so I only required the one clamp to ensure nothing went where it shouldn't.

Not much done other than look at decals for the windows. I can get them for $5 or $6 from Draw decals but at the moment its the postage of something like $14.50 that;s the kicker as I am on furlough for most of this month so pay day will be interesting which is why I haven't bothered forking out the pennies right away. I have separated the engine cowlings and the molded on pylons into individual sealable bags along with a slip of paper saying what each bag is for and the part numbers so they don't get mixed up while I work on the intakes which all have ejector pin marks inside which will be visible    More later....

Gondor

[Hobbes]

You could get rid of most of the windows - the Nimrod AEW barely has any.

[Gondor]

You could get rid of most of the windows - the Nimrod AEW barely has any.

I was talking about a generic set of decals from Draw decals which include the cockpit windows and the doors which will be usefull as the kit has very nice TNT markings but the aircraft will be in US Navy markings.

Gondor