A different Barracuda

[PR19_Kit]

It's sillier than that as the main struts are a 90 degree right angled fabrication which hinges about its bottom edge, and the wheels rotate through the same 90 degrees to sit in the wheel wells in the folding bit of the wing.

The main gear struts are so thick that they carried the aircraft's squadron code painted on its front edge!

I've often wondered how they did a wheel retraction test in the below deck hangars as the wheel wells would have been some 6-8 ft BEHIND their normal position, so the wheels would be suspended in mid-air  when retracted!

[PR19_Kit]

A couple of scraps of styrene, some deft work with a scalpel, a few strokes of a file and a dab or two of putty and that problem's sorted. 



The only problem is I'll have to do it all again on the other side.

[Tophe]

Good!

[zenrat]

Catalina UC always makes sense to me.  It's basically an enlarged double wishbone (A-Arm) car suspension set up.
I have a large twin engined flying boat in the stash which I will be whiffing into the amphibian it should always have been* and I shall be using white metal Catalina parts.

*IMO all flying boats and seaplanes should be amphibians.  It just seems sensible.

Kit, maybe you should make this part of a maintenance diorama and build it with one leg lifted?   

[PR19_Kit]

Kit, maybe you should make this part of a maintenance diorama and build it with one leg lifted?   

Now there's an idea. 

And with the other wing spread too? 

[PR19_Kit]

Having hacked off the nose off the starboard fuselage side to take the Hercules engine, you may wonder why I've carried out more surgery at the rear end too............



That's because the Barracuda IVs were fitted with the 4-gun turrets from Blackburn Rocs that the FAA had long abandoned as fighter protection for the fleets. (Well, actually it's from a Defiant, but who's quibbling?)



The turret's a little wider than the Barra's fuselage, but with a few scraps of styrene it'll be faired in to suit. (I hope.......)

[Old Wombat]

Sorry, I can't help it, everyone is going to have to suffer the same soundtrack that keeps going through my mind whenever I look at this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeMvMNpvB5M

[PR19_Kit]

Sorry, I can't help it, everyone is going to have to suffer the same soundtrack that keeps going through my mind whenever I look at this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeMvMNpvB5M

So long as it brings Ann Wilson to mind, that's fine with me! 

She always sings it as 'Barracooda', doesn't she?

[Gondor]

Haveing difficulties looking at the pictures you posted yesterday Kit, a real pity as I am enjoying this build

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

I'm using exactly the same method as I've always done, direct links from Imageshack, so I'm afraid it must be at your end Alastair.

[Weaver]

Sorry, I can't help it, everyone is going to have to suffer the same soundtrack that keeps going through my mind whenever I look at this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeMvMNpvB5M

So long as it brings Ann Wilson to mind, that's fine with me! 

She always sings it as 'Barracooda', doesn't she?

Heh - I did something like this the other day too. There's a splendid young lady on Twitter called Victoria Taylor (@SpitfireFilly), who's an air-warfare historian. For a laugh, she occasionally posts things like a picture of Handley Page's most famous piston-engined bomber with the comment "Last Tango In..." or of Hawker's Merlin-engined fighter with the comment "Here I am, rock you like a..." So, of course, I sent her pics of P-47s and a P-38 with the comment "- very, very frightning me!" and a Barracuda with the comment "Now wouldn't you..." 

[PR19_Kit]

As a result of Womby's comment I spent MOST of last night listening to Heart's entire back catalogue. And watching LOTS of vids of the delectable Ann too. 

There wasn't any progress reports or pics last night as my broadband failed utterly, and even an hours phone call with my ISP's 'Technical Dept.' failed to improve matters so I'm waiting for a BT engineer to assess the problem, which will be a couple of days no doubt. In the meanwhile I'm relying on friends to provide a wifi link for me, for which I'm very grateful. 

I've cut off the rear deck of the left hand fuselage half to take the turret now, and found I had to cut off the rear end of the resin wing root that I've only just glued on! I cut the rear end of the other side's root moulding off before I glued it in place of course. I also glued all the complex interior stuff in place, or at least the 2/3 of it that I'm going to use. The turret protrudes way down into the fuselage so there's no room for the 3rd crew member's seat etc. In any case he's up there firing the four Brownings. 

While I'm in awe of the level of detail that SH supply in their kits, I do wish they wouldn't try to maximise the part count so much. It makes for lots of very small parts that need to be glued together before assembling to the major parts and they could well be moulded all together in the first place. In addition the location of the some of the major assemblies is anything but clear from the wildly complex assembly drawings. It took me 2-3 attempts before I found the correct place to install the pilot's seat assembly! 

Here's the interior of the fuselage, or as much of it as I'm going to install anyway.



To get an idea of how it would look in the plastic (comparing it with what it looks like in my head) I taped up all the bits that I had handy. This entailed sawing off the rear of the extra long canopy to make space for the turret of course. As so often happens it cracked......

TWICE! 

It didn't split into a few parts but the cracks reach a long way forward, and I've glued it together with some clear adhesive in the hope that it won't show too much. I still have the canopy from the FROG kit that's providing the spread wings and that's a much tougher moulding if all else fails. Amazingly it's an exact fit where the SH one goes. I've mentioned before how close the two kits are to each other dimensionally and this just goes to prove it.

Here's the tape-up assembly with one spread wing, the dorsal turret installed and the Hercules radial grafted onto the front. It does look pretty much like I originally thought of it, thank goodness. 

[NARSES2]

That bottom photo has me wondering if it would take the front end of a Skyraider ? It's a big old aeroplane.

[AndrewF]

I like how this is proceeding.

[AndrewF]

I was going to say - if you have an unlimited data contract on your smartphone you can use it as a hotspot for internet access for your computer, in case you can't access the loaned wi-fi connection. I did that a few years ago when my router packed up.