Boeing 777-900

[RussC]

It seems there is no limit or point of diminishing returns to the up-sizing of high bypass turbofans yet to be seen. Maybe someday, the passengers will sit inside the fixed core of the intake bullet and the blades move around them. The cowling will provide the lift and the exhaust vanes and apertures all of the directional control. Welcome back to the Caproni Stipa and Custer Channelwing...   

[PR19_Kit]

Maybe someday, the passengers will sit inside the fixed core of the intake bullet and the blades move around them. The cowling will provide the lift and the exhaust vanes and apertures all of the directional control. Welcome back to the Caproni Stipa and Custer Channelwing...   

BAGS of scope there for Whiffing! 

And I have loads of big fan engines filed away too, I might try something like that, thanks for the pointer Russ. 

[PR19_Kit]

Mrs PR19 just asked me 'How old is that little model?' pointing at the Aloha 737-200 in the previous piccie. I thought a bit and came to the conclusion it's FOURTY years old next year! I built it in 1972 and won the airliner class at the Nationals that year.

Sounds like we shoud throw a birthday party for it. 

[RussC]

I was wondering about how old, the white paint has clearly aged a bit. You have been building for as long as I have. In 1972, I was scratchbuilding a Yak-28 because there was just no kit of it around, even from the very fewer Eastern European makers than there are today, I think VEB was all there was.

[PR19_Kit]

White paint is strange, there's no saying how it will change with time. That 1972 built 737-200 was painted with standard Humbrol Gloss White mainly because I didn't know any better at the time. A much later build of a Brittania 737-200 was painted with Halfords Appliance White and was the first model I ever used Kleer on. By now, some 18 odd years later, the white is VERY yellow.

[The Rat]

White paint is strange, there's no saying how it will change with time.

I think a big factor would be Sun exposure. A lot of my old builds are boxed and in my parent's attic, and a few years ago I hauled out my old Otaki Galaxy to take some digital pictures. That was built in the early 70s, and the white is as beautiful today as it was then. Can't remember what I used, but probably a Testors rattlecan, don't think there was much else available at that time.

[RussC]

Nice C5 build! I made mine in the Lizard scheme and later felt that the two-tone would have been better. Reminds me of the time I was on a flight up the US east coast and we passed over Dover AFB and our captain made note over the speakers that we were over the home of the C-5 galaxy. Sure enough, even at 40K feet, the C-5s were easily seen, even the markings! I get the feel that the captain really wanted to take a turn at the controls of a galaxy instead of puttering back and forth in that 727.

 Big Aircraft....
 
 Has anyone here whiffed a biggest airplane ever? Would have to be very small scale like 1/700 or 1/1000. Could really be a steampunk thing or a super illustration from Popular Mechanics.
 
 

[The Rat]

[quote author=RussC link=topic=22298.msg529794#msg529794 date=1318804985I get the feel that the captain really wanted to take a turn at the controls of a galaxy instead of puttering back and forth in that 727.[/quote]

Reminds me of the old story, probably a tall tale, about the military cargo aircraft and the civilian airliner passing each other on the ramp at an airport. The civvy called his counterpart on the radio and said "Nice, how much are you grossing?" The military guy replied, "Oh, probably about a hundred thousand pounds more than you, what are you grossing?" The airline pilot replied "Oh, about a hundred thousand dollars more than you." Silence... 

[RussC]

Too true!
 
  And maybe he was just thinking about his next ANG weekend or summer deploy at the wheel of the C-5's, when we passed over Maryland. Nowadays, civil pilots are not paid or benefitted well either. You just have to have a love for doing it.
 
 

[PR19_Kit]

Crews on the 777-900 were paid by the yard of course........ 

[The Rat]

Crews on the 777-900 were paid by the yard of course........ 

Obviously millionaires by now!

[PR19_Kit]

Today is final assembly day for 'The Monster', I attached the wing/engine assemblies over the last two evenings and it's the landing gear's turn today.

Being the beast that it is the darn thing is fighting me all the way. Each engine pylon was a different width to its partner so the recesses in the wing undersides are too wide for one them, so that's a post-paint PSR job before Telford in prospect. The port wings fitted a treat but the starboard one was about 0.5 mm too low on the heavy duty wing tongues moulded into the fuselage, so that took some serious Dremel work to move it up the required amount. Even so it will need some light PSR work (post-paint!) on the underside of the joint.

The Minicraft landing gear legs fit the Doyusha wing roots OK, but there's no way the Minicraft bracing struts would fit even their own wing roots without the legs leaning back at an outrageous angle! So yet again I had to use a mix of Minicraft and Doyusha parts to build the assemblies. Having sorted that out it then turns out it's impossible to fit the retraction struts in place, I only have two joints on each finger and my hands are 1:1 scale, not the 1:5 scale that's required for this, so those struts weren't fitted to the -900 variant.....  

And right at the end, when I was fitting the main bogies at the correct pitch angle, the nose leg snapped off!  

So just now it's propped up on some Blu-Tak while the bogies set, and then I'll have to drill and pin the nose leg.

All this because I'm determined to take it to my local model club tonight. It may not be 100% done by then, but it'll be 99% anyway.

[PR19_Kit]

That's it, JOB DONE at last!

I may add some VOR aerials and a tail bumper later but that's small stuff.

I give you the Star Alliance 777-900 in its entirety!

[The Rat]

Stunning! 

[Hobbes]

Well done Kit, this'll turn a few heads at SMW.