USN P-4 Pluto **DONE, PICS PG. 10***

Rheged · September 01, 2019, 07:12:57 AM

We've said it here many times before. There is no such thing as a silly question! No matter how recondite (good word!) the subject, or how apparently simple, someone here will have the answer ; and in a non-threatening form!

TheChronicOne · September 01, 2019, 09:30:04 AM

Roger that, man! Every time I delve into a new realm of this stuff I always run over here to ax my questions.

I'm a builder, not an engineer, but in order to do things like this properly I'm going to at least need to supply myself with a basic crash course in rudimentary aviation physics and design. I'll likely have some more questions before the end of this one but the good thing is, once I get through it, I'll be much better prepared for the next one. If I miss anything, though, someone do speak up about it. I could have easily missed the issue with the wings because I was thinking about the plane sitting on the ground.... where those wings DO weigh something...... but in flight, all that changes around and I was still thinking about the wings as dead weight which was backwards. (it's so blatantly obvious in hindsight)

Got me a new vocab word!

No real plans on this today. I'll try to find something to do but I need to get back to work on my quad engine Caravelle first so no telling what and how much of it will be worked on.

TheChronicOne · January 31, 2020, 08:35:41 PM

I've shelved this in the interim to let my skills increase as I learn and experience new things and also in order to devote time to GB builds, etc. I'm back this evening, however, because the upcoming GB is "In The Navy" and per the rules I have a chance of moving this over there and actually getting started.

Per GB rules all prep work short of paint or glue is allowed with the caveat of the mods considering part started builds to be allowed anyway. Turns out I've only glued one thing, the cockpit tub into the fuselage, and haven't painted anything at all. I'm hoping this will be adequate to allow me to enter this..... "contraption."

This is a picture of the one thing I've glued in. One other oddball exception to the no glue rule is when I had to glue back together shattered pieces of the fuselage simply to return it to it's former state. There is a picture and description of this earlier in the thread.

SO... what I'm going to do is dump this entire thread in the mods' laps and see what they think.

I was happy to let this thing sit for god knows how long as I brushed up on my skills but a GB is just the motivation to make me build it now instead of coming up with excuses not to.

Tophe · February 01, 2020, 03:18:27 AM

I hope it will be continued

(because interesting in itself, I am not referring to GB).

Captain Canada · February 01, 2020, 05:53:03 AM

ice one ! The box and the artist's impression are pretty cool !

TheChronicOne · February 01, 2020, 09:27:52 AM

Thanks, y'all!!! The mindset on this one was to try my hand at the truest form of scratch building that *I* can achieve. It's not like I can mould my own parts or anything but what I can and did do is drag together spare parts from all corners of the boneyard. Decided to have fun and just make an entire kit out of it all. Honestly that was more fun than anything and when it came time to work on it I .... just... didn't.

So anyway... I'm going to try my best. I'll get started on it again sometime in March but until then I'm closing it all up and throwing it back in the stash.

NARSES2 · February 10, 2020, 06:41:44 AM

Moved as per request

TheChronicOne · February 10, 2020, 11:58:02 AM

Cheers, Chris.

TheChronicOne · March 02, 2020, 11:12:00 AM

Holy crap.... haven't even looked at this thing in 6 months other than to take a picture of the cockpit floor. A bit of cold start here... I'm going to have to re-acclimate myself to the build and re-figure out what all the parts are supposed to be for. I still need to find transfers, too. I suppose I'll try to start like I would with a normal kit and get the cockpit and interior finished.

After that I think I'll get into solving the landing gear issue. I've concluded that I need to put in a couple nacelles to hold them because I can't fold them into the fuselage or the wings either. This is sort of neat, though, too, because I can stick some other stuff in there. Chaff and flair dispensers or something perhaps. Landing lights. I think I recall that I was going to put very bright patrol lights out on the wing tips in some pylons or something like that for the ASW and search aspects. I'll have to check my notes and what parts I have.

TheChronicOne · March 02, 2020, 02:19:36 PM

This thing is anxiety inducing. I barely know what the hell I'm doing. I'm just going to keep knocking out smaller things to get the clutter from my mind then head into a couple of the more difficult things like making a box type thing to go in front of the canopy to shore it in. Not sure how to go about it but I think I'll trace the front edges of it onto some plastic card then cut them out and then do some dry fitting to get the shape dialing in. I already have a "top" piece that fits great, I just need the sides. They'll be sort of triangle shaped. The next troublesome part is the landing gear nacelles.... I think I need to cut out a chunk of the tops then I guess use putty to smooth it into the wings.

This is a good start for now I guess. Things are moving finally so that should help get some momentum built up.

TheChronicOne · March 03, 2020, 10:30:10 PM

I actually got some good work done on this today. In the grand scheme it doesn't amount to a lot but it was confusing new things for me so it was nice to make some headway. I have managed to cut out a couple of good side pieces to go on the "half square tapered thing" that makes up the space between the front of the windscreen that blends into the fuselage. Tomorrow, or whenever, I'll temporarily tape the canopy onto the fuselage and dry fit the three pieces I now have for that front piece and get them refined and try to glue them together.

Seriously considering using my new UV glue stuff. It would be VERY handy to get this stuff positioned and lock it in in 5 seconds.....

I've also ransacked my transfers spares and pulled out all possible prospects for making the markings. Won't be spending a dime on this thing. If I don't have it already, it won't be on here. Good thing is, I think I have enough to make it work and I even have a big sheet of Navy letters and #'s.

TheChronicOne · March 04, 2020, 01:14:55 PM

Trying to get the nose piece... thingy... built. Using my UV glue this time. Seem good so far! I'm not going to take the canopy piece off until I have to. I'd like to get the two side pieces on first but the UV should be enough to hold this at the proper angle.

OK, so, something like this was the plan:

But it's not working very well. I think I'll just fill in the area with Milliput.

For now I'm going to leave it alone for a bit and work on the gear bays and figure out how to get those going.

TheChronicOne · March 04, 2020, 07:15:32 PM

I love Milliput!! It's my friend.

This stuff doesn't smell like a chemical spill. Doesn't burn my hands or anything weird like that. And WATER makes it do things you want it to. It's like the acrylic water hobby paints of epoxy.

That said, *I* am not the best model builder around when it comes to things like this. I've only gotten my feet wet with minor mods and additions so far so the kitbashing aspect of this one is really going to teach me some new stuff and try my existing skill set. Good and bad! Eager to learn, but not wanting to mess things up makes it hard to take leaps of faith.

Disclaimers out of the way, I'm now at this point with building the whatever in the hell it's called in front of the canopy. I've decided to stop at this point for now and allow all this solidify. I'll add another layer and smooth it it afterward then eventually I'll switch over to my glazing putty before I do the final refinements regarding shapes, contours, and smoothness of it all.

I also used my Milliput to fill in the superfluous gear bays on the former Caravelle wings. I worked it down to even with or slightly below grade because I know sanding this stuff is a huge pain sometimes. I'll go in with the aforementioned glazing putty to get it fully blended.

Old Wombat · March 04, 2020, 08:46:58 PM

My go-to for that kind of work is Aves ApoxySculpt. Awesome stuff!

TheChronicOne · March 04, 2020, 09:10:12 PM

I'll get me some to try. Like with most of last year, this year I'm going to focus purchasing efforts on new tools and supplies. Some things are hit and miss but at least half of the things I've bought with this train of thought in mind have turned out to be valuable and I've been learning a lot as a result. "Supplies University!"