Nieuport ACA.5Z Double-Petit-Chose (very little twin fighter 1945)

[Madoc]

Tophe,

Nice work with that little kit!

I was rather disappointed with it when I saw how slavishly Igor stuck to the referenced dimensions.  Per those figures, the fuselage on the thing is but two feet (or so) wide!  Far to narrow to fit anything but a subminiature midget inside it for the pilot.

My plans for it are to either acquire a second kit so I could slice / sand off the opposing face of each, slap a shim in between, and then join them up for some realistic width.  Either that or make a resin copy of the resin kit and proceed that way.

In any event, I like what you have wrought with that kit!

Madoc

[Tophe]

Thank you all for your indulgence and friendly opinion...
Answering the last posts:
- Brian, I made airliners a little, but just turning 4-engined into asymmetric 3-engined, far less fine than many ones among genius what-ifers here. I only try to be one among you, humbly. Thank you for accepting me (without talent of construction and realization). Thank you still.
- Rafa, thank you Lord (of scratchbuilding) for each word you find to comfort my mind. You deserve more thanks/payment than my psychiatrist...
- Madoc, I wish you a good courage, but this is a resin kit: not easy to split in two halves the very narrow fuselage without breaking it in tiny pieces... (Oh that reminds me the wonderful song "Broken down in tiny pieces", by Buddy Emmons and Janie Fricke, that I listened again and again in my desperate years...)

[Madoc]

Tophe,

Yup, that's why I was thinking of getting two of them and then either sanding or cutting off the opposite faces.  I already have one of the kits.  I purchased shortly after it came out as I found the design to be so wonderfully funky I simply had to have one.  Unfortunately, once I got it and popped open the box I found the fuselage piece to be absurdly narrow.  Thus has the kit remained unstarted and pushed to the far back of the far back burner. 

It awaits either my purchasing a second one to do that sort of surgery or my getting into resin casting myself where I could make my own moulding of the fuselage halves and create a rendering with an appropriate depth to it.

Madoc

[Tophe]

Sorry Madoc: you mentioned this second kit but I did not understand at first reading your project. I understand it better now, thanks.
With 2 fuselages side by side, the flat top would be odd though:

[Madoc]

Tophe,

Perhaps not quite that wide! 

Just something wide enough for it to actually make sense.  The width of the fuselage as it currently stands is just barely wide enough for a pilot to fit in if he was really, really thin, standing, and turned sideways.  A seated facing forward pilot is out of the question.  Thus I was envisioning finding a good 1/72nd scale pilot figure, measuring its width and then adding a wee bit on either side of that to come up with the minimum width necessary.  I'd go from there once I had casts of the left and the right fuselage sides.  I figure a bit of plastic card of the right thickness would then do as a shim between the two fuselage sides.

This is more what I had in mind:



Madoc

[Tophe]

OK, you are right, I think: 2 fuselages side by side is not the ideal solution (unless partly truncated). Your cast way seems great but SO difficult, if you can do that someday, please receive my congratulations. And you will have to make a topic of that, with your different steps, as a lesson of top modelling, to make us dream and admire...

[Tophe]

Removing dust remove model canopies sometimes, and vacum-cleaning dust, throwing away dust...
The ACA.5Z twin-bird is blind...

[Tophe]

Then SuperModeller comes and saves the poor little bird...
Cutting a tiny piece of tape, puting it on and... the ACA bird is singing again...

[Brian da Basher]

Well done, Tophe! The tape window is a perfect solution!

I'm amazed how tiny your Nieuport ACA 5Z is! It takes a very steady hand and some serious skill to work small!

Brian da Basher

[Tophe]

Thanks, Brian. If I was young again, starting modellism, I would prefer 1/144 rather than my usual 1/72, yes. Maybe I will suggest that for my son...