McDonnell-Douglas KMD-11

[martinbayer]

It's the same with many of my builds Tophe, I don't think me and gravity get on very well......

Hmmm - makes me wonder whether a Low Earth Orbit space station dedicated to scale model building might be a commercially viable proposition, since I believe there may be a sizable market demand for escaping terrestrial carpet monsters. Added bonus: In space, no one can hear you swear...

[PR19_Kit]

 

[Captain Canada]

Great work on this one ! Love those big three engined birds.

[zenrat]

It's the same with many of my builds Tophe, I don't think me and gravity get on very well......

Hmmm - makes me wonder whether a Low Earth Orbit space station dedicated to scale model building might be a commercially viable proposition, since I believe there may be a sizable market demand for escaping terrestrial carpet monsters. Added bonus: In space, no one can hear you swear...

Given the state of my bench i'm not sure that's a good idea - imagine all that detritus floating around...

[Wardukw]

Definitely not a good idea..with the amount of knives and discarded blades i have on my bench right now would be dangerous to no end let alone the tweezers.

[PR19_Kit]

I managed to repair the KMD-11 last night, so now I'm back to where I was about 3-4 days ago.

Re-painting of wheels should re-commence later today, with luck.

[Tophe]

 

[Wardukw]

Should never have happened in the first place but who on earth would have put money down on the unpredictable flight of a onion. 

[Gondor]

Should never have happened in the first place but who on earth would have put money down on the unpredictable flight of a onion. 

"The Flight Of The Onion" sounds like the title for someone to build a whiff.... or maybe hold on for next years suggestions?

Gondor

[Scotaidh]

Should never have happened in the first place but who on earth would have put money down on the unpredictable flight of a onion. 

"The Flight Of The Onion" sounds like the title for someone to build a whiff.... or maybe hold on for next years suggestions?

Gondor

Or a new Monty Python movie ... 

[kerick]

Too bad there isn't any video!

[PR19_Kit]

I'm NOT going to do it again just so you can see it on YouTube!

[kitbasher]

[PR19_Kit]

I dislike models which look as if the aircraft is standing on tip-toe, so I always file flats on the bottom of the landing gear on my models, and sometimes this is essential to prevent the more obtuse models being tailsitters!

With most military aircraft I only have to file three tyres, sometimes five, but with an airliner based model there's LOADS of them! 

In the case of the KMD-11 it has four gear legs, two four wheel main legs, a twin wheel nose wheel leg and a two wheel centre main gear leg right under the centre of the fuselage, so that's twelve wheels to file.

It needs some thinking to ensure that when assembled they're all flat on the ground at the same time, as nothing looks sillier than an airliner with one pair of its main gear wheels clear of the ground because they're filed wrongly, or the assembly sequence has been screwed up, so I had to think hard for this one.

The plan is to assemble the two four wheel bogies, as shown below, with intervals to paint the tyres and re-paint the hubs, and then RE-paint the tyres, etc. etc. 



.... and when they're all assembled, to file a flat on all four wheels at once with a large, flat file.

Then to glue the nose wheel leg in position without its wheels, but these will already have had their flats filed. The main wheel legs will then be glued into the wheels wells at the same time as the nose wheels are glued onto the nose leg, with the flats on the bottom of course.

And lastly the centre leg, complete with its two flatted wheels will be glued in place, having previously assured that it can be assembled at a variable height to ensure it's grounded at the same height as the main legs.

And if that all works as planned it'll be a miracle!

I've never managed to build a 747 with ALL of its zillions of wheels sitting on the ground at the same time, and I've never even THOUGHT of doing an Airbus A380!

[Gondor]

I can think of a solution to this problem, however it does invilve a bit of when when building the model.

Make the location points not just a recess but a tube and extend the top of the undercarriage leg then slide that into the tube and glue at the desired length. Obviously you need to make sure everything is sitting streight and level befor the glue is applied, but it is an answer, just not necessarily the easiest or right answer.   

Gondor