FAIL!

Well, the Seimens-Schuckert is a major fail. I did a big post at theHyperscale forums on their, oddly timely, "modeling disasters" section.

Everything you'll need to know about why I'm not posting a finished pic of the Seimens-Schuckert isright here.

I'm doing another T-6 Texan to make myself feel better...

too busy building to post

About Xmas time, The Mount Mansfield Modelers had their annual swap meet/sale. I saw what I thought was a little gem and asked the guy what he wanted for it. "Nothing", he replied. I asked him a couple of times to be sure and he was. He had too many to build and just wanted to get rid of it. Coolness!

Then I checked on eBay and found out that the kit, in shrinkwrap as this one was, went for $60 - $80! Now, I couldn't take that from him, so at the next meeting, I told him about eBay and what the kit was worth. He still told me to keep it. I told him I planned on putting this at the top of my list of builds. And I did.


Here she is, the Eduard Siemens-Schuckert D.III (kit circa 1993). This aircraft ("LO!") was flown by Germany's greatest ace after Richtofen: Ernst Udet.



Now, Eduard is now known as a company that creates some of the best cast, most detailed, best engineered model kits out there. It was not always the case. This was a short run kit and I'm not sure what they used as molds, but I think they may have been jello. Check out the flash on these pieces:



Here's a closeup of the prop blades:


and one of the guns:


Eduard is now also known for exceptionally detailed and meticulously researched photo-etched detail sets. To make up for the crappy molding and soft detail of the plastic, they included a massive photoetch set. The entire cockpit is photoetch and there are even gun cooling shrouds. However, cool this seemed at the start, the pe cockpit was to become the first bear of the project.



I spent a good three or four hours just sanding the pieces. Gods, there was a lot of flash. I also took the time to separate the control surfaces. It always makes a plane more natural-looking to have its control surfaces not in the neutral position.

Then to the cockpit. Bending and painting and assembling the cockpit was really hard. The pieces were filddly and fragile, but I managed to get it together. For scale, those lines to the left are 1" (2.5cm) apart.




I then moved on to assembling the fuselage (which, by the way, has no alignment pins). Then, due to handling, I broke the damned cockpit. Snapped those side arms clean of. Since the pieces were too small for CA glue and epoxy would be a pain, I decided to scratchbuild a copy out of sheet styrene. It was pretty easy as I had a three-dimensional blueprint handy:







Not bad. I have some shots of the fully completed cockpit, but I haven't dumped them from the camera yet.

And by the way, do you see those tiny buckles on those seatbelts? Those had to be slipped on the seatbelts individually. Jeezum!

Next up: Fuselage Follies!

The Eggs and Us

As promised, here are some shots of the other entries to the Mount Mansfield Modelers Egg-stravaganza.

They are presented in the order that they appeared on the table, from left to right (minus mine, btw). Keep in mind that base of these models were eggs that were identical except for color.

First was the pun (and I did groan out loud, but the creator expected it), I give you The Nest Egg:



This requires a bit of explanation. It represents the first solar-powered anti-gravity fighter-bomber in the post-war British inventory (the upper hull has to be transparent for the solar panels to work, see?)




Next came the WW1 entry. The rudder is movable, the wings are doped fabric, the canopy opens and closes and the prop is battery-powered. UPDATE: This beauty took second place




This yellow beauty was created by the guy who's idea this whole thing was (he also generously supplied the eggs. Check out those fabulous eyelashes around those cool windows and the tongue dashboard!




Finally was the Spruce Goose-Egg. Everything was scratchbuilt except or the engines and props. Look how smooth and perfect the boat hull is; it was made with from scratch with plastic cardstock. The outboard pontoons were carved from wood then molded on a vacuum-form machine.




listening to while posting: Sweet Enemy chilling out on the floor of my studio with the cat. She just got back from a long drive to Portsmouth and is telling me about all the art framing stuff she learned how to do.

The Egg and I, Epilogue

Well, I just got back from the Mount Mansfield Modelers meeting and the egg contest was tonight. Man was I nervous! I hadn't felt that nervous since my last Aikido test. Sheesh. First I was worried that it would break in transit, or that I wouldn't be able to assemble it, or it would break on the display table.

Why was I worried about breaking? Earlier in the week, the nose gear fell off three times, each time I was certain it was on for good. However, it made it to the meeting and it stayed whole.

There were seven entries and competition was fierce! Fantastic, fantastic works. Of course I forgot to bring my camera, but I'll try to snag some from another member. The two standouts were a Spruce Goose Egg with the wings, tail and boat-hull nose all scratchbuilt and perfectly shaped and a "Jokker" (A WW1 nut, he couldn't decide whether to build a Junkers or a Fokker) It was a monoplane with movable rudder, full cockpit, doped-fabric-over-wood-frame wings and a battery powered propeller. On the line were two trophies built by the MMM's chairman (a gold and silver egg trophy for first and second place).

There were two rounds of judging; one for first place and one after for second place. I voted for the Jokker both times, but it was tough to decide!

As I said, I didn't get any shots at the show, so here are some shots I just took of the completed Snowflea on the dining room table.









So, how did the Snowflea fare against the other outstanding entries?

The Egg and I, part three

Nearly done! Here's the test-assembled fuselage. Despite my best efforts, the clear canopy has become dirty. I have to figure out how to clean it without messing with the paint. Grr.

I applied decals. Even though you can't see them, the "28" is not the only decal. I've got a bunch of random things like grounding points, RESCUE arrows and other little things on the lower half. Sorry no pic, couldn't get one to work.




Here you can almost see the expansive cockpit. It is, as you may guess, hard to take a shot of a clear dome without the light reflecting in the middle of it.



Here's the aft section. The ringed hole is the mount for the engine nacelle shaft.



I can't remember if the contest is THIS Thursday or NEXT Thursday. I'm building as though it were this Thursday, so I'll post some completed pics before then.

Listening to while posting: "Gebrauchmusik II" by Adrian Legg

The Egg and I, part two

Still working on the egg. I got the first coat of paint on, but found that I REALLY need a moisture trap for my airbrush. I never noticed it because I'd been doing most of my modeling in the winter with a wood stove roaring in the next room.

Here's the fuselage. I faked some panel lines (with pencil and pre-shading) because I found the egg plastic did not like being scribed. Or, also possible, I'm a horrible scriber. The color is actually red, but I couldn't for the life of me get rid of the PINK color of the photo. The black thing on top is a radome.

Side view:



Front view (the thing on the front is the door. I'd planned on actually building a door and full interior but the crappiness of the plastic stopped that idea):



Here's the engine nacelle. Again, it isn't that pink.

This is the rear. The black bits are cut-outs where the propeller blades will go:



This is the intake. It features the only cannibalized part on the entire model so far (a spare bogie from some tank or another):



The propeller blades were going to be problematic from the start. I thought I'd try simple and made some out of wood strips. The result was... not good:




So, I tried again in plastic. Stuck, I hit the web and found a picture of a new Hamilton-Sundstrand prop and tried to copy that. Here's an in-progress pic. The tough thing is getting the four blades to be even closely related to each other. Next time, I'm doing one and then casting the rest out of resin:



The cockpit is turning out well, I added the instrument panel:




Here's a shot of the instruments. I designed up a set of instruments in Adobe Illustrator and, since I didn't have any decal paper yet, so I used sticker paper. The effect is not bad. The only problem is you can't move the stickers around like you can with decals.



Another view:




A close up, looking forward through the cabin door, showing the raised bits (fire suppression t-handle, throttles and some buttons). After I looked at this shot, I realized I had to re-position some of the instrument clusters as they are a bit askew:




That's all for now. I'm coating it in future and plan on assembling the engine soon. The contest is two weeks from today. I hope I at least get a nod or two from the old hands.

Sweet Enemy bought me a wicked cool Japanese model for my birthday. Oh, it is sweet. I can hardly wait to build it. But, since it is from SE, and it's hard to find, I'm putting it at the bottom of my stash so that my skills will be up to it when I get to it. Hopefully.

Listening to while posting: Scherzo: Allegro & Finale by Beethoven (played by the London Symphony Orchestra)

It's been a while part one: The Egg and I

I may not have been posting, but I've been doing stuff. My local modeling club (the No Website Club, it seems) is having a contest. Back in May, one of the guys bought a bunch of ostrich-sized plastic eggs. Split longitudinally, half the egg is clear and half is opaque. Anyone who wanted to enter took an egg. There are only two rules:

1) if you take an egg, you have to make something.
2) a significant portion of the clear part must be left clear.

I took the challenge, but when I got home I realized that, since I have only been modeling again for less than a year, I have no stash of leftover parts. This meant that I would be having to scratchbuild the entire thing. Talk about biting off more than you could chew.

I dug and dug into my brain and came up with the idea of this thing. I've been into Forties and Fifties radio Sci-Fi for a while and thought about making some sort of exploration vehicle that an Golden Age-style exploration ship would drop onto a planet. Not having any wheels, I decided on an exploration vehicle for arctic-climate worlds and that meant skis:



the Heiden-Brinker SS-3b "Snowflea" is based on the Lotus Ice Vehicle a real vehicle made by the luxury car company.

A bit ambitious, but I pressed on. I drew some nearly-scale (1/48) plans (floor plan, furnishings and structure) and started in. My first test was to make a leg out of sheet styrene. It worked so well, I made all three.



Then I actually began working on the interior of the hull and the cockpit floor, but I have no images of that in progress. It was really hard for two reasons. First, constructing vertical bulkheads to fit the curve of the egg was nearly impossible (as I can't really get a good cross-section of it without cutting it apart). Secondly, the plastic of the egg is awful. It is very soft and no adhesive I have works, not model glue, not CA glue, not white glue; I don't want to try anything harder as it might melt the whole thing into a pile of slag. So, I'm doing a lot of wedging. to keep it structurally sound.

I then made four seats. This was extra-tough. Making one of something is easy, making four is hard. If I do something like this again, I'm going to make one and cast the rest in resin. As it is, each chair is more similar than identical. Ah, well. This wasn't going to win any contests anyway. Here's the cockpit:



And the cockpit next to the hull with the hull interior. You can see the beam that crosses the entire hull. This is the main support for the left and right main skis. Since I couldn't glue hinges to the side, I had to make it structurally sound by putting the solid beam through:



And the cockpit installed on the hull:



The engine is proving difficult. I tried cutting a smaller plastic egg, but cutting a perfectly circular hole for the inlet was impossible (and with the crappy egg plastic, I couldn't keep anything glued in anyway). I happened to find some cheapo wooden eggs with a flat bottom at a craft store. Sweet enemy's father drilled a hole in the bottom for me and I was on my way:



One part I'm proud of is the 'ice brake'. The Lotus has this and I replicated it as simply as I could:




I've begun painting it, but ran into a snag that is a lack of water trap for my compressor. Nothing like having your airbrush spitting water all over your work to slow down the process.

Well, the sun just came out, so I'm going outside, darn it!

listening to while posting: "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" by The Postal Service