Early Warning is a dish best served Dutch: the Fokker F-270 Skyguard

[McColm]

I'm chuffed to bits that you have taken my advice, great build so far

[Paper Kosmonaut]

Well, just in time before the festive days ahead of us, here's the final chapter in the build of the F-270. The rotodome went all right. (McColm, although yoy were chuffed and all, I already had made the full struture of the 9 cm long brass tube and inserting rod for the dome before I posted here...) I still question the material the dome is made of; whether it's glass or perspex of some sort, I don't know. It isn't heavy anyway so, that is nice. The 270 is no tailsitter.
After some experiments on test models, I decided to do the belly in flat Tamiya sky grey, but that meant I had to do it with a hairy stick. Oh well. A teeny tiny little bit thinned with water and it got on all right. The top was Tamiya AS-8 (US) Navy Blue from a rattle can. The wing's leading edges were given a black layer of paint.







Up next, the decals. I used all sorts of bits and pieces left over from previous builds in several different scales. I used a couple of black square patches to serve as dielectric panels (?). I also found a couple of red lines to become the warning lines for the propellers. The plane might be a bit menacingly dark but I decided to give it the full colour decals and signage, no toned-down greyish ones. Oh, and I used krystal klear to replace the destroyed plastic windows in the fuselage. I was a little sceptic at first but when it dried, I was very happy with the result. They really are nice little transparent windows now.








The Skyguard's belly in sky grey. The long pod under the belly also has a nice white line running over it. To do whatever such a white line is capable of in such a position on a plane like that. It's very handy. No, really, it is. Ask the pilots. They know. I think.


Grr. An angry looking military City Hopper with a dish on its overgrown tail.


There's this little story next to the cabin window. It seems to be a very funny one but it it too small for me to read. There is also one on the other side. That too is illegible. I guess it's the scale.


Some more detail shots.


There's a couple of doodads and whatchamecallits underneath the wing. Measuring or detecting stuff, I suppose. Air, Smells, Ingenuity, Humor, Measles, Dog hair, Ambiance, Pockmarkedness, maybe some of it, maybe all of them, who knows what these spying planes actually measure? Quality?




Luckily, I also found a decal of a door in my stash. Convenient, to say the least. The thorough sanding kind of erased the outlines of the originally present door and I am not that good a scriber guy. This decal will do fine. Yes, it tore in two when I applied it. I tried to 'repair' it as good as possible and it is just on these larger than life pics that you can see it. This is the only decal that had a little silvering but not that obviously present. I used micro set and - sol for the allpying of the decals.


So there you have it. I might re-visit this thread in the not-so-distant future to add a planned big decal on the dome. I first have to print them, and I am not that good in getting these self-made decals off of the carrying paper. It takes loads of patience and careful fiddling. We'll see. This is the result for now.

Like I said, normally, just building a plastic model kit doesn't do much to me creativity-wise, but reshaping it like this is actually a lot of fun. Just a tad expensive if you don't do it regularly and you have to buy new paint.
I hope you like the end result. I do, actually.

Cheers and have a nice time the coming couple of days!

[PR19_Kit]

That's absolutely bonkers, and magnificent as well. 

The Tornado has some serious competition for the 'Mighty Fin' title there. 

[McColm]

Great build

[zenrat]

Fantastic.



Just a thought, maybe for the next one, but with a tail mounted radar like this would it not be possible to use the radome housing at the horizontal stabiliser?
Make it more of a broad oval with elevators at the back and fins on the end?

[rickshaw]

Turned out very nice indeed.  Another great F27.  I might copy your idea in 1/72 as I have a spare Friendship waiting at the moment.   

[NARSES2]

Oh that has come out well 

[Paper Kosmonaut]

Thanks for all the nice comments, folks!

Fantastic.



Just a thought, maybe for the next one, but with a tail mounted radar like this would it not be possible to use the radome housing at the horizontal stabiliser?
Make it more of a broad oval with elevators at the back and fins on the end?

Hi Zenrat, your suggestion actually is a nice what-if idea. But I based my configuration on the An-71 Madcap, which actually has this exact tail and its horizontal stabs just where they ought to be. If you look at all the other pancake carriers like the E-1 Tracer, E-2 Hawkeye and E-3 Sentry, they all have kept their stabilos. I presume that the rotation of the dish is one factor, the E1 had an internal rotating radar and it still had quite a large horizontal tail, supporting part of the dish. It also might be just a little too much extra stress on the dome, to double up as an effective tail. I assume it had to be kept ultra light and therefore quite thin. It also would be housing the mechs for the tail movement, which might interfere with the radar reception. Fact is , the lift factor kind of cancels out its own weight in flight.

[63cpe]

Oh, yeah! like it very much i've got to admit..

Very madcap like yet very original with those gasturbines! Glorous!

David

[chrisonord]

 I really like this, military turbo props are a favourite of mine and this is brilliant.
If. I had the space to put it I would make something similar with a Dash-8 I have a couple of.
Chris

[DogfighterZen]

Very nice work.