I have the plane - where's King Kong?

[frank2056]

Just for fun, I tried putting together a Trumpeter 1/350 scale BFC biplane (AKA F-11C Goshawk) with some PE struts from Gold Medal Models.

This is after about 15 minutes of work. The hardest part is dealing with the clear Trumpeter plastic, which is brittle. I still have to do something about the engine, add the prop and clean up some of the glue marks before I paint. Oh, and I opened up the cockpit - I may add a pilot.

Look! It has spats!




No, I'm not crazy - I will not add rigging:


Overall, it was pretty easy and even relaxing - after putting together that Iskra. I don't know if I'll go with the yellow upper wings or not.

[sequoiaranger]

You might try punching out a circle from a sheet of thin, clear plastic for a spinning propeller disc. I did that for some carrier-deck aircraft warming up, and that was for 1/720 scale. I have a punch set, and some "pliers"-like hole punches of various sizes. If you want, send me the actual diameter in mm and maybe I can make you a couple and mail them to you.

Didn't Aurora, way back when, make a King Kong figure model??

[frank2056]

You might try punching out a circle from a sheet of thin, clear plastic for a spinning propeller disc. ..

Didn't Aurora, way back when, make a King Kong figure model??

Thanks Craig, I have some circle punches, as well as the PE prop that I haven't attached yet. The Aurora Kong (recently re-released, IIRC) was poorly proportioned.

I have 6 of these, so I think I'll try to thin the wings and landing legs a bit, as well as fill in the trenches in the wings and fuselage.

[B777LR]

You are mad...

But it looks nice

[philp]

Looks good so far.  Plenty of other King Kongs out there so sure you can find one to scale.  But think the planes used in the movie where actually a Hollywood type with a rear gunner.  Also, you can get other parts for the Aurora Kong to make it look better.  Culttvman carries them.

As for 350th scale dioramas, Jeff Herne, the Webmaster for IPMS/USA, did an experiment a few years ago which got me interested.


Been thinking of doing an Airshow or Air Museum.

[philp]

Here is his "how I did it" info borrowed from the Finescale Forum as it is no longer on the IPMS forum:

"I used leftover Trumpeter planes, scratchbuilt the Catalina (including the removed engine cowls and photoetched motor mounts. I used a mix of Tom's Modelworks trucks and a few scratchbuilts (the tanker and the crane), and the quonset hut is styrene.

The styrene is basically Evergreen sheet. For the wings, I just cut the shape of the wing an sanded it to shape For the wing joints, I glued stretched sprue over the wing and then sanded it. I scribed the control surfaces with a No. 11 blade.

The fuselage was a bit more problematic – I have a set of line drawings for the Catalina with cross sections, so cut layers of plastic sheet then laminated them together to gt the rough shape, then sanded and filed until I was reasonably close. I took the canopy from a 1/350 Trumpeter B-25 (from their USS Hornet kit), and the ball turret in the nose is a clear plastic bead from a McDonald's Beanie Baby knock-off (my dog got to it and chewed it up, thousands of little clear plastic spheres everywhere).

The Quonset hut was quite simple to make...I cut two circles from Evergreen corrugated plastic, and cut them in half. I took thin plastic sheet and glue it to the semi-circular disks, then trimmed the bottom half and flat sanded. I sprayed it gray, drew the panel lines with a #2 pencil, then used dark gray pastels over the pencil lines to simulate the edges of the sheet metal.

Any good hobby shop, especially those that are heavy into model railroading, will have all sorts of materials you can use. The boxes, crates and pallets are all N-gauge accessories. Basically, a box is universal scale...a small box in N-gauge (1/160) is a big box in 1/350. Since most aircraft components come in large crates, it's easy to scale things out."

Jeff

***added quote brackets for the text***

[PR19_Kit]

Just for fun, I tried putting together a Trumpeter 1/350 scale BFC biplane (AKA F-11C Goshawk) with some PE struts from Gold Medal Models.

You've got the altimeter calibrated in metres AGAIN! I've told you about that before............... 

Seriously excellent stuff really.

[Captain Canada]

Nice job, Frank ! Those little kits are beauty.....like you said, tho, the clear plastic is a bit frail. I was going to mention trying to thin the gear a bit, but I see you're already on it !

Nice little read about the wee dio as well...I just love small scale stuff !

Cheers guys

[frank2056]

Nice little read about the wee dio as well...I just love small scale stuff !

I love that dio - that's the kind of stuff I want to do at some point.
Building aircraft in 1/350 (or 1/400) isn't particularly hard - it's relaxing, actually.

I also have a two seat biplane, which may be more "King Kong accurate" and a Walrus, which may be fun to build - flying over some dinosaurs in a lost valley in Antartica...

[philp]

Love the Walrus idea.

Here are some plane pics.
First, one of the non flyers used in the Peter Jackson remake.


and one of the type used in the original.

[philp]

Oh, and lots of Kong kits:
http://resinkit.club.fr/version%20anglaise/galleries/kong/gallery_kong.htm

[frank2056]

Philip - the plane pictures are helpful - I may try to cobble something for the engine on my 1/350 planes.

I also calculated the size of a 1/350 scale Kong - if I go with the Jackson 2005 movie height, he (Kong!) would only be 0.86"/21.8mm tall. I think I can find a poorly sculpted 1/72 figure, shorten its legs and "apeify" him.

[NARSES2]

No 28mm King Kongs but some other ideas here -

http://www.copplestonecastings.co.uk/range.php?range=HA

[philp]

Some nice stuff there.  Too bad they are a little expensive and 28mm is really too large for my 72nd stuff but some neat ideas.
Will have to check for a US distributor.

[Joe C-P]

I like the SnowCat. It's small, but with interesting whiff potential.

JoeP