Bell AV-22A Mamba

[kitnut617]

Another reason I went with the A-10 fuselage/sponson route and the way I've orientated it, was I wanted clearance under the fuselage. There will be a center pylon under there, which will carry various stores. Primarily will be a large fuel tank, F-15 style one. It could also carry a MER, TER, large bomb or even a JP233

[NARSES2]

This is coming along very nicely 

[kitnut617]

Thanks Chris  ---

[Old Wombat]

Gotta admit I'm hanging out to see this one finished because she's looking to be one very cool build!

[b29r]

Very entertaining, this, and some fabulous scratchbuilding work.  Will be following right along on the edge of my seat 

Best, Kem

[kitnut617]

Thanks Guy, b29r

[KiwiZac]

This thread upsets me because I'm never going to have a model of this concept. I'm speechless.

[kitnut617]

Thanks Zak --- now I've seen your work and I know you could come up with something --- maybe even better   

[smeds]

I'm loving this. Great concept and execution. Can't wait to see the finished kit. 

[kitnut617]

Thanks smeds.  I'm going to try and do some more this weekend, but as I've got a couple of days off, I really need to get on with my deck repairs, I'm re-building it because the people who built it just used regular untreated wood, and it's all rotted out, and that's even after they had stained it too.

[KiwiZac]

Thanks Zak --- now I've seen your work and I know you could come up with something --- maybe even better   

That's the sort of harebrained nonsense talk that keeps drawing me back to this place 

[kitnut617]

Bit of an update, worked on it off and on lately and it's progressing. I splashed some paint on it in the colour scheme I'm thinking of doing, what you see here is the main colour.

I did this for a few reasons, first one is because the light grey will show up any defects that need to be tidied up, second one is I needed to make sure that the old grey/green acrylic I used on the A-10 wouldn't react with the Humbrol enamel I'm going to use, and then this scheme colour covers the patchwork of different paint and parts, which gives a better idea of what this project will get to look like.












I have given Alastair's comments regarding the refueling probe some more thought, I trialed a new location for it and I think this is where it will stay now. It covers all my concerns too.







I revised the probe so it becomes a 2-stage, double acting cylinder.



And more work on the starboard blades, just three to go --

[PR19_Kit]

Those BERP blades look SERIOUSLY good Robert, have you chopped them from a few Merlin kits or filed them from the solid styrene?

[kitnut617]

Scratch built Kit  (see reply #22), painting the blades black just changed the whole look of them ---

[kitnut617]

Another thing I've done is extend the wings to bring it back to V-22 span, had to add 8mm to each wing.

To do this I made a master,



Which was dropped in rubber to make a couple of castings. Although I've done a few casting, this was the first time I cast in some metal. In this case some brass round tubing to stiffen up the joint.



Then it was on to cutting the wings in half,



I'm still working on how I'm going to make the flaps droop like the real thing, I need to work this out fairly soon because now it's holding up the rest of the build.