Chronic's Research and Aeronautics Project (C.R.A.P.)

[TheChronicOne]

Break time worked magnificently. I'm hands down motivated to work on projects today. All three will have something done!

The coolest part is I've already fixed the whole canopy situation to a satisfactory result so I'm back on track now getting the whole thing going.

Time to go ahead and jam the nose with as much weight as I can. Next up is to file and sand away all the seams, glue, and imperfections on the fuselage and the wings. At this point I'd like to investigate running some rods through the fuselage for the wings to go around.

[DogfighterZen]

 

[Rick Lowe]

 

[TheChronicOne]

Well, now, this is a strange new development...   

I am, indeed, working on all three projects and not just piddling, either... I've managed to do critical paint work to the Sea-Fury and major PSR stuff on the Kukulcan (not to mention sorting the canopy travesty). Gloss black has been applied to the Nipples-Go as well (MAN THE SEAMS ON THE WINGS FINALLY LOOK GREAT!!! Astonishing.. they really do look nice now for as far as they have come... from a total disaster).... 

But anyway... I was looking at this Mitsubishi it while it was hanging from the chandelier when I noticed that the engine nacelles are angled outward.... like... maybe 10 degrees??  First inclination is that I did something stupid like glue the wings on upside down or something... but.. that's not it. Anyway... I retreat to my computer here and look up some stuff... trying to find line drawings. Haven't found any yet but I have found pictures of other models that show the same thing. WEIRD. I suppose there is a good reason for it.. it just seems to me that the engines would work better facing directly into the wind stream instead of off to one side.


You can definitely see it in the bottom right hand pic.

Thoughts on this?


EDIT:   The (very nice, full color!!!!!) painting guide insert and the instructions with the kit show this, as well, although not seemingly as pronounced.. I guess it's legit, it just seems odd to me.

[PR19_Kit]

That's quite plausible I reckon, the Sunderland is exactly the same, but all four engine are angled outwards.

IIRC it was because the prototype had some CG problems and the solution was to sweep the entire wing structure a few degrees, but they didn't bother to change the angle of the engine nacelles. Perhaps the Nippon-Go designers had a similar problem?

[TheChronicOne]

That's quite plausible I reckon, the Sunderland is exactly the same, but all four engine are angled outwards.

IIRC it was because the prototype had some CG problems and the solution was to sweep the entire wing structure a few degrees, but they didn't bother to change the angle of the engine nacelles. Perhaps the Nippon-Go designers had a similar problem?

That would make sense to me.... if the leading edges of the wings were straight(er) the CG would be more forward and this thing certainly LOOKS nose heavy as it is(was).   I bet that's it exactly.

Good to know this isn't some type of flaw or mistake..

[zenrat]

Would angling the engines like that reduce yaw in the event of one getting knocked out?

[TheChronicOne]

HMM....  interesting idea. Whether that was the intention or not I'd imagine the set up would help at least a little bit, right?

[TheChronicOne]

Finished my "rounds" going about looking at other threads here. Forgot to make my own update.

I will be back to work today on something... It's time to spray silver on the Mitsu but the weather might not allow for that so I'll likely leave that project alone completely.

The Sea Fury... well... I re-read the can and I can handle it now.. I think the waiting for weeks and weeks had something to do with touching it without gloves or something... but anyway. I can start putting the transfers on but I'm still in the "decoration planning" stage and need to gather up all the transfers I want to use.

Kukulcan.... needs her wings "applied." I'd still like to put a reinforcing spar or something through the fuselage. Two or three, in fact. OH, and I put the nose weight in and the PVA should be dry now. I used quite a bit to keep the BBs in place so it took (takes) forever to dry especially with the really high humidity around here. Speaking of, I think I put TOO MUCH in there and didn't need probably the last 10 BBs but oh well... Ain't no danger of this one tail sitting. 

[TheChronicOne]

Getting some work done!! 

First off... I might be able to spray the silver onto the Mitsubishi today after all!! It rained a bunch earlier but it's not right now. Wind speed is iffy but If I can catch a lull I might be able to start misting. I plan on putting on no less than 4 mist coats before a wet coat then I want to let it dry a couple days at least then repeat a couple times to get a lot of paint on here. I plan to work my way through my fine sanding pads on this to try to do away with orange peel and see what kind of job I can do polishing. I'm finding it difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that sanding on something will make it shiny instead of dull but supposedly, at some point, things will go from shiny to dull and back to shiny again toward the end of the series of sanding pads.

On the Sea Fury, I've decided to paint the rudder instead of decals. I remember now why I painted the rudder on the Tu-4... trying to figure out how to properly cut the transfers to the right size is making my brain hurt and I'm wasting more time trying to figure out the best way to do it than if I just get in there and paint it. I need to paint the cockpit, too, if I'm not mistaken. Right now it's just as silvery as the exterior and that ain't gonna work. 

Main work is being done on the project that is furthest from completion: The KX-81 Kukulcan of the Royal Mayan Empire.

Found a way to put "spars" through the fuselage. I just chopped up some sprue name plates from my F-84 kit (finally using some of these dumb sprue left-overs I've been hoarding! ) and after a series of dry fitting and cutting glued them in.





This little bit o' work turned out great. The wings slide over like gloves and sit nice and level... good and sturdy!!  Beats a simple butt-join, for sure.

Other work being done: the gun pods were filed, sanded and the tips glued on.

Missiles were sanded smooth and mostly painted. Just need to touch up the fins and put a couple black dots on the end to simulate optics.

Settled on a color for the bottom side....  I wanted to go with something that would make sense against the sky like light blue or the really light grey we're all familiar with, but I wanted to do something different.... sooooo.... I settled on this color called "spun sugar" which is sort of an off-white-ish-tannish-slightly-pinkish color.

For the top side... I want to do something "new" with the camo. Not necessarily the colors (I'm thinking like a black, green, tan, maybe a fourth red-earthy type color) but the PATTERN is what I'd like to experiment on. Some time ago I was thinking about "out of the box" ideas for camo when it struck me.....topograpical maps. Went snooping on the net and found a pattern to base my stuff on.


Image owned by Shutterstock, all rights reserved.

Pretty cool, huh? If I can pull it off, it will be a pretty unique design.

Back to work for now, I guess.


While we're at it, I spied some other interesting potential camo patterns...here's one I found on Google Image search from Pinterest:



Some pretty neat stuff out there using search terms like "topo map art" and the like.

[TheChronicOne]

Said I was going to do a normal set up for ease but uhhh.... I decided to turn this into a T-TAIL because I    T-tails. But... this means I'll need to scratch build some small parts and also scribe elevators into these tail planes. No biggy... It will be a good learning experience.

I've already dry fitted the tail planes to the fin and there's a big gap between them going forward. Went digging in my spare parts... thing... and found a .... thing ... that came with a Trek kit. I did a little eyeballing and cut it and.... magically, it works!! It will fit right in there and with a little glue and putty will look just fine. (I hope... I've never done anything like this before.... this level of kitbashing and scratchbuilding is new territory, especially kit bashing).


Gappy-gap.


Thing to go in the gap.

I'm really starting to get excited about this. This is just unheard of in my modeling world. I never figured on even trying anything like this... I was perfectly happy swapping around paint schemes.

This said... I just decided to call it for the day.. I don't want to push my luck and have anything go wrong. So.. in leaving, I guess I can post one more picture that will give us a closer idea of what this will look like in the end.   (OH, and I found some other little doo-dads and stuff in the spares stash to add.. some little rocket shooty things and a few antennas... don't want to go overboard with extras, but some "flair" will be nice to make this unique).

[Rick Lowe]

That's coming along well, Brad.

What about a 'bullet' or spike to fill in the gap at the front of the tailplanes? Or was that where you were going already?

That Topoflage idea sounds intriguing - I'll be interested to see how it comes out.

Cheers

[NARSES2]

That's coming along well, Brad.

Very much so 

[Old Wombat]

Different!

[TheChronicOne]

Yes, the little silvery looking thingy in the middle picture will slide down in that gap and tie everything together. Should work out well.

"TOPOFLAGE"... I like it a lot.       Yes... still not sure on the exact execution... you know... should I use gradients like on actual maps or just alternated colors in the rings?? Not sure which would look better but I know which one sounds like more work . . . . 


Thanks fellers... this is my "fever dream" build.    Let's all hope the thing doesn't come out looking like a 1971 couch.


--My next "camo experiment" will be something from the animal kingdom. Not sure what... maybe some type of snake skin something (sounds difficult though) or something off a tiger or some such. You know.. them wild animals have the best camo for their surrounds so it just make sense for low flying combat aircraft to do the same, no?