Spruce Goose

sandiego89 · September 12, 2015, 06:52:47 PM

Quote from: Captain Canada on September 12, 2015, 05:54:42 PM
Thanks ! It's a hinge...I was trying to add bits to make it look more 'hingey' lol. Getting there !

Wow- scratching a working hinge is tough- I have done a few hinges (C-5 nose, Sea Dart canopy, etc) and it killed me to get them to align. If you can get it to align and function i would declare victory- looking "hingey" is a mere bonus. Good stuff.

Dave.

Captain Canada · September 12, 2015, 08:23:13 PM

Sorry to report I have abandoned the hinge.....going to stay up. I cut the nose pieces off before I glued the fuse together, and then built the nose piece separately....looks great open but too much work to get it even close when closed. Oh well, it's a static model anyway.....

zenrat · September 13, 2015, 03:39:50 AM

Cool.

When I build hinged flip fronts on cars I deliberately build in enough slop that they move around to where they look best closed. As long as they look good open, and look good closed then what happens in between doesn't really matter and indeed doesn't actually happen if you never photograph it...

KiwiZac · September 13, 2015, 02:12:56 PM

That nose looks superb! My jaw dropped when I saw it. Great stuff!!

Quote from: sandiego89 on September 12, 2015, 02:23:22 PMI vote no jets, but maybe some RATO bottles- eight 4360's is a lot of horsepower, and agree on keeping the lines as much as possible.

Perhaps we don't know how it would've performed had Howard had proper permission to fly it, but it barely flew in ground effect on 02/11/47! And that was without cargo, after burning off a lot of fuel from repeated taxi runs through the day, and only a dozen or so passengers/crew. I think it would need assistance! (forgive me, I'm a Hughes nerd!)

Hughes himself called it the Hercules - perhaps it would've kept that name in service and the C-130 could've been Hercules II? As far as a possible designation goes, I can't find a Hughes company designator - maybe in the new timeline Kaiser stuck with it as K - and the Hercules would come under R (Transport). So the first variant could conceivably be the RK, then R2K etc.

Here's a comprehensive mission and company designator list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1922_United_States_Navy_aircraft_designation_system

kitnut617 · September 13, 2015, 05:26:46 PM

Actually KZ, the thing nearly broke up while flying that time. I was talking with one of the curators at the Evergreen Museum and he said that there was an engineer sitting in the rear end and he told Hughes to get it back on the water -- like right now -- apparently the tail was trying to twist itself off and huge gaps were appearing at the rear fuselage joint. What we see these days are the remedies that were applied to it to rectify the problems it had, but in the end it needed a total re-design and Hughes just said -- ""screw it"" and parked it -----

This pic shows some of the more visible re-enforcements made to the rear fuselage joint -- the curator thought that the main problem was down to engine vibration, something a turbo-prop might have helped with.

It was designated the Hughes HK-1 (that's in HughesKaiser-1) or H-4.

Personally I think that even though it had eight of the most powerful engines that Hughes could get at the time, it was grossly under-powered. I've got a project where I'm going to use eight Northrop XT-37's, which were projected to put out around 10,000 shp. Even then I think it's marginal on power

KiwiZac · September 13, 2015, 09:05:02 PM

Thanks Kitnut! I was unaware of the tail issue, thanks for the photo.

I know the company designation, but in service it would have something different. I just saw the Martin Mars was the JRM (JR = Utility Transport), so perhaps the Hercules would be JRH (which was McDonnell's designator...but would Howard demand his own?) or JRK (Kaiser).

Captain Canada · September 14, 2015, 08:05:49 AM

OK I'll just call this thing the Metal Moose and say the service version was an all new metal aeroplane

Thanks for the info guys. Interesting stuff !

PR19_Kit · September 14, 2015, 08:28:41 AM

Quote from: Captain Canada on September 14, 2015, 08:05:49 AM
OK I'll just call this thing the Metal Moose and say the service version was an all new metal aeroplane

Thanks for the info guys. Interesting stuff !

Now you'll HAVE to scribe panel lines on it.

Captain Canada · September 14, 2015, 12:30:50 PM

Maybe a few

Captain Canada · September 15, 2015, 10:40:35 AM

Small Update : working on the deck that will house the RATO. This will fill the hole where I've cut out the flaps and I wall also be cutting out a wee bit over the fuselage to make a door that will open when the flaps are down, to deploy the RATO system. Really need to get my wee dudes in. That Hobbylinc has loads of stuff and good pricing, but a week long lag to process your order ?

DogfighterZen · September 18, 2015, 02:06:49 PM

Not really my kind of plane but that's very interesting work you're doing, Captain!

Captain Canada · September 19, 2015, 06:19:00 AM

Thanks you sir ! It's dfinitely been alot of fun to build and fiddle with.

Which makes me wonder, does NA slang fiddle come from fettle ?

Hmmm.....

Army of One · September 19, 2015, 02:25:10 PM

Loving your work Cap'n C........decided on a paint scheme yet......?

Captain Canada · September 20, 2015, 07:33:56 AM

Thank you ! I'm thinking plain old overall gloss blue. I've always like dit and it's easy

KiwiZac · September 20, 2015, 04:07:45 PM

Not sure if you've seen these photos, this model is what I imagine yours will look like:

Robert Hill was a modelmaker at Hughes and he and the team built a bunch of different HK-1 models. He said they were quite popular! He posted these at the Facebook group "The Greatest Planes That Never Were" and they were also uploaded to SecretProjects.

Also from SP:

User circle-5 said "Note 3-bladed props and clamshell loading doors, both of which were built and survived in a long term parts storage warehouse for several decades." (my emphasis). Cool!