Antarctic Aerosan racer - progress pics at last!

[Weaver]

Well I got back from Telford full of enthusiasm for getting going on some modelling again, only to find that my auntie had been taken into hospital after having a mild stroke. She's been in and out of hospital for the last fortnight, and I've thus been hospital visiting and worrying rather than modelling, the situation not being helped at all by the fact that my other auntie, who would have done some of this, fell off a kerb on Monday night and smashed herself up to the point of not being able to drive. However the good news is that auntie #1 is back home now and doing okay and auntie #2 is recovering so, back to modelling...

There's a thread hereabouts proposing the idea of a Paris-South Pole Rally as a replacement for the Paris-Dakar, which drifted into Lovecraftian realms (Paris-Mountains-of-Madness Rally  ) and it struck me that I have the perfect 1930s vehicle for this: a Soviet aerosan fan-powered ski-vehicle. Okay so this is a wartime model, but they were building them as far back as 1919, so an older one wouldn't be notably different. So, I'm 1) back-dating the Paris-Dakar to 1930-ish, 2) introducing a parallel Paris-South Pole rally for 1937ish, and 3) entering a Soviet driver who doesn't win for unusual, some might say eldritch, reasons...

The kit is a Trumpeter 1/35th scale GAZ-98/RF-8 two-seater. Yes, the bigger cabin types would probably be more appropriate, but I havn't got one. My original intention was to replace the machine-gun with a scratchbuilt cine camera, however I then realised that one of the two crewmen is in a too-military uniform, and that the vehicle probably doesn't carry enough supplies, even for just racing between waystations, so I'm going to make one figure out of the two, and fill the front cockpit with stores. I might, if I can find a suitable part, fit a bigger fuel tank (under the engine) and move the battery from behind the original tank to a box on the side of the engine pod to keep it warm. If I have time, I also intend to make a diorama base that includes a nod to the Lovecraft angle.

[jcf]

 

The Elder Things approve. 

[Weaver]

Couldn't for the life of me come up with a justification as to why this thing wouldn't have a pair of skis strapped to the outside like many real ones did, so since the model doesn't include any, I've just ordered a set of etched brass ones from Brengun/Hauler. Strongly suspect they cost me more than the kit did...ouch....

On the upside, much rummaging through boxes of spares has produced an oil drum with which to make a bigger fuel tank, a nice big battery, a duffle bag and a rucksack.

However, I've come to the conclusion that you wouldn't want a tarpaulin blowing off the front cockpit/cargo compartment and blocking the driver's view, so, since the whole thing's only made of plywood on a wooden frame anyway, they'd probably just make a front-hinged plywood lid for the front compartment, which means you wouldn't see the contents anyway...

[Weaver]

Y'know, looking at builds of this kit on the internet, it's amazing how much time some of the obsessive weatherers will put into weathering everything with everything without first spending five minutes reading the Wikipedia page on the subject...

They generally make two mistakes:

1) They carefully paint rust along the edge of each 'panel line' and around every 'rivet', not realising that the RF-8's body was made of plywood screwed to a wooden frame. Putting excessive rust on it is about as appropriate as putting it on a DH Mosquito...

2) Ironically, the one bit they often do paint with a nice wood effect is the prop... which was metal. The metal prop was one of the notable advances of the RF-8, allowing it to smash through light undergrowth with less risk of damage.

[rickshaw]

I think it would depend on whether or not they used galvanised fastenings to connect the body panels to the frame and how old the Aerosan was.  Without galvanising metal rusts quite quickly.   However, I suspect it would take at least one winter or more for it to be as visible as you've described it.

[Weaver]

As far as I can tell, there are no colour pics of RF-8s, so we'll never know for sure. What you can, or rather can't, see in the B&W pics are the lines of massively oversize fasteners on the Trumpeter kit. I suspect that the screws on the real thing were countersunk cross-heads and a few coats of white paint made them nearly invisible.

[zenrat]

Perhaps they are all being ironic like I will be when I build a rusted out Corvette.

[Weaver]

Perhaps they are all being ironic like I will be when I build a rusted out Corvette.

LOL - I suspect that they're mostly armour modellers for whom the correct course of action, i.e. cutting the 'rivets' off, would be tantamount to swearing in church.

[PR19_Kit]

Perhaps they are all being ironic like I will be when I build a rusted out Corvette.

I like that idea. 

It'd go well with my rusty and weathered B-2, if I ever summon up the strength to sand off all the putty!

[NARSES2]

Somewhere I have some notes from my "Metallurgy for non Metallurgists" course on how steel rusts in different conditions, but the only thing I can remember is that like most things it behaves slightly differently when exposed to Antarctic conditions.

[Weaver]

Well rust isn't going to be an issue for my build, since the Aerosan Racer will be just four days old when modelled.

The one-and-only (as far as I know) reference book on aerosans, published by Tankograd in 2010, arrived this morning. It's a pretty thin book (80 pages), and the text is repeated in English and German, so there isn't that much content. However, it seems that this is all there is: photos and documentation for the whole field of Soviet aerosans are remarkably thin on the ground, and there are no surviving examples. That shouldn't be too surprising really: the wooden bodies wouldn't last long on a scrap heap or in open storage, and the truck engines, aero engines and props would probably be salvaged and re-purposed.

Annoyingly, the book doesn't have a picture or drawing of the right hand side of the engine where the Trupy kit's controversial exhaust pipe lives. However, a rear view definitiely confirms that it exited the cowling via hole on the RH side, which the Trumpy one doesn't (it doesn't have the hole either). Perth Military Modelling did a critical review of the Trumpy RF-8 compared to one by Vision Models here: https://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/trumpeter/tr02322d02.html The book confirms PMMs judgement that the Vision Models version is the more accurate of the two, so I'm going to assume that it's depiction of the exhaust & intake arrangement is correct too.

There is a long list of things wrong with the Trumpeter RF-8 kit, however I can ignore or whifjitsu most of them away since my build is of an earlier racer version that might reasonably be expected to have different features anyway. I can't ignore an exhaust pipe feeding into an intake manifold though: that would be as suspension-of-disbelief-breaking as fitting it with a GPS system!

Current mod list:

Remove most of the rivets.

Solid front-hinged lid over front cockpit to make it a storage/battery/radio bay.

Skis and poles on side (on order from Brengun).

Rucksack on side (spares box, based on photos). This will need tie-down loops to be added.

New larger fuel tank that displaces the curved 'boot/trunk' area of the original (oil drum from spares box).

Ice brakes & cables added to rear skis.

Bigger bulges in engine side panels for 'tuned' engine. The real reason for this is to give a suitable canvas for race numbers.

Proper latches and hinges for engine side panels.

Masking tape fan belt to be added to engine.

Exhaust/intake situation to be sorted out.

Modify engine rocker cover if it doesn't fit under the cowling as PMM suggest.

Add weld seams to ski brackets.



Not going to fix:

Incorrect flywheel housing behind prop ("earler model")
Undersized fan ("adaption for extreme cold to prevent over-cooling")
Incorrect radiatior details ("earler model")
Suspension hull brackets  ("earler model")


Look at how different the two models' engines are!

Trumpeter:


Vision Models:

[zenrat]

Looks like Perth Military Modelling don't like you linking to their site.

You could always buy a Minicraft Gaz AAA just to get an accurate engine...

[Weaver]

Looks like Perth Military Modelling don't like you linking to their site.

You could always buy a Minicraft Gaz AAA just to get an accurate engine...

Nah, I just want to fix what I've got. If I'd known about the Vision Models one i'd have bought it (if I could have found it), since it actually has two complete models in the box.

The PMM pics in my post are still showing up for me... However, here's a screen shot just in case:

[zenrat]

Thanks H.
The Vision one certainly looks more like the 1/25 Ford "banger" engines i've built than the Trump one does.
At the risk of setting you off down a detailing path you don't want to go on here is a pic of the manifold side of a stock(ish) 1928 Ford Model A four banger engine.  You will note that you are missing the distributor which you will need to add so you can attach the spark plug wires...


Trumpeter have modelled the people's perpetual motion re-cycle engine where exhaust gases passing through a catalyst condense into fuel-air mixture and are sucked back into the combustion chambers for another  go-around.  A technology unknown in the west.

[Weaver]

Cheers Fred.

The Vision one certainly does look 'righter' but I'm wary of the fact that there are far fewer pics of all the Russian variants of the engine, and NO photographs of it as actually installed in an aerosan, just a couple of small drawings that only show the other side. Most of the differences I can either a) ignore since they won't be visible (note that the back and bottom of the cowling are open though, so you can see something..), b) modify away, c) claim to be differences for a 'special' racing engine, or d) combinations of the above.

I'm honestly wondering if the lack of references caused Trumpy to get completely the wrong engine...

Trumpeter have modelled the people's perpetual motion re-cycle engine where exhaust gases passing through a catalyst condense into fuel-air mixture and are sucked back into the combustion chambers for another  go-around.  A technology unknown in the west.

Given the character I intend to have driving this, that's more appropriate than you can possibly imagine - cheers!