Basosz Posted October 4, 2012 Posted October 4, 2012 I have this idea of making these two to be very good friends. Backstory to follow but there will be a very big wingspan, six engines, possibly more than one turret from the PB4 and some other bits and pieces on the Cat that I can explain away and get away with. Also this conversion would have been done by a Dutch aircraft manufacturer. Colours will probably be for the Dutch Naval Aviation Service or something similar. I got the academy kit at a show in the Netherlands last year and there was a bit of a surprise cause there are two Cats in the kit. One is the Academy and the other is an old Airfix one with the retractable landing gear. Don't know yet which one I'm going to use. Saturday is GB start so by then I should have made up my mind.
Col. Posted October 4, 2012 Posted October 4, 2012 This one has a 'just right' sound to it. Looking forward to seeing her take shape.
Daniel Posted October 4, 2012 Posted October 4, 2012 Don't think we had a flying boat last time around, sounds good Dan
Basosz Posted October 9, 2012 Author Posted October 9, 2012 I have decided I am going to use the Academy one because that fits better. Also it has engraved lines whereas the Airfix one has raised panel lines. So, on to some more pics. Sprues, of which there are quite a few: Also I got me some decals for a Dutch bird, and I think I might use some of the decals from the two kits. I like the stripes on the Academy sheet. There was a lot of cutting and some progress ensued: I'm now in a bit of a split because I can extend the wings in two ways, both will turn the wingspan into an absolute monstrosity: I'm transplanting the Privateer pit into the cat because I can and it has a bit more detail. It's also a good exercise in making things fit into places they weren't necessarily meant to fit. Scratching will be minimal/non-existent as I think there will be very little visible from the rather small cockpit windows. I'm putting one of the top (but not the nose) turrets on the nose of the cat so it now has a double machine gun instead of a single. Due to the extra weight of the wings, 4 engines and probably a lot of fuel and other assorted things, this plane will need extra floating power so I'm going to extend the hull sort of like the Dornier Do-24 had with the stubby "wings". I just realised I might have just the perfect extra bits for that. Let me know what you think
Col. Posted October 10, 2012 Posted October 10, 2012 Yikes that's going to be a huge set of wings! Good move adding some extra fuselage floats (sure there's a proper technical term for them) guess you are keeping the wingtip floats as well?
Basosz Posted October 14, 2012 Author Posted October 14, 2012 Col.. Yes... there will be wingtip floats but I think I have to adapt them a little because the end of the Privateer wing is quite narrow and flat so I might make the tip floats look a bit like wing tanks. Either that or I might conjure up some sort of retractable float under the middle of the wing. Sort of like a landing gear but different. The Privateer wings still have their landing gear bays so I might just use those. Don't know yet Lots of sanding, fitting, more sanding, more fitting today while Felix Baumgartner was ascending in his ridiculously large ballon. Not much to show (so no new pics) but the different wing bits are about ready to become one huge wing. The profile of the two wings is different though so I'll need to cheat a bit. The Privateer wings are quite a bit thicker in the middle so I'm going to hot-water-treat them to become a bit flatter at the point where they connect to the Cat's original wings. When it is one big wing I'm going to think about the wing support floaty things. Lots of work to do there. Should be fun
Basosz Posted October 15, 2012 Author Posted October 15, 2012 So I got the basic structure of the wing done today. It's a big mother! 68 cm which translates to just 4 cm shy of 49 meters in "real" life. The original Cat has a span of 31.70 meters so it's gone up a bit. I have to say that I think it looks rather attractive. The Privateer bits of wing needs a bit of a scribe and some riveting but that's a job for later. First I need to blend the wings together a bit better. Fortunate thing is that the landing gear for the Privateer is located almost exactly where the wing floats would be on the original Cat (distance from the hull) so I could rationalize putting retractable floats there. That's the next big hurdle in this build; the floats on the wings and the hull. Rest should be rather straightforward though I'm still not sure what other bits I'm going to stick on the SuperCat
Max Headroom Posted October 21, 2012 Posted October 21, 2012 That is advanced whiffing! Asymmetric power landings on water would have been interesting......... Trevor
Basosz Posted October 23, 2012 Author Posted October 23, 2012 That's quite a wingspan! A real bench filler. You have no idea It's rather cumbersome to work with at this time cause the bench is still filled with lots and lots of sprues from both kits. That is awe inspiring!! Thank you very much Cliff Thanks That is advanced whiffing! Asymmetric power landings on water would have been interesting......... Trevor I don't know what an asymmetric power landing is, but it kind of sounds like something that only an experienced pilot would attempt. Progress over two nights of modelling: The wing is now scribed and there is some (crappy) rivetting done. Crappy because this is the first time I've done rivetting. It might not even show up after paint. I'll just have to wait and see. Cockpit assembled and installed. Of course one of the steering wheels pinged off into never neverland when I wanted to put it in so the left pilot position has no wheel One of the rear gunner/spotter positions. If I can make it, this position might get extended a bit but that depends on time The front turret. There was a small one on the original with only one gun and now there's a bigger one with twin guns. That's a 1:35 Super Sherman next to it to give a sense of scale. The Sherman is only primed so far and needs to be finished at a later time. Made up some floats to offset the extra weight of the engines and the bigger wing. The landing gear bay that needs restructuring for a retractable wing float. This will require a bit more thought than I initially imagined because it is somewhat hindered by the engines. Big sucker !!! 1
Wayne Posted October 24, 2012 Posted October 24, 2012 That is looking very interesting indeed. Great idea for a whif! Well done so far. An asymetrical power landing would be when one or more engines on one wing are not running for some reason, and the aircraft will want to slew away from the side with all running engines because of more thrust being generated on that side of the wing. Under normal conditions the pilot would trim the aircraft accordingly but with such a big wing it would cause some problems landing because the aircraft would be crabbing. Depending on how many engines are out though it would be an option to simply feather the same number of engines on the other side to bring the power back to symetrical. Wayne 1
stevehed Posted October 24, 2012 Posted October 24, 2012 Very nice. The winglet/floats are a nice touch. To me, at least, they're the sort of thing that makes the project convincingly believable. Regards, Steve
Basosz Posted October 24, 2012 Author Posted October 24, 2012 Wayne, the SuperCat will have 6 engines. Somehow I don't think that missing one or two for a landing would be a big problem
Wayne Posted October 24, 2012 Posted October 24, 2012 Wayne, the SuperCat will have 6 engines. Somehow I don't think that missing one or two for a landing would be a big problem No criticism intended Basosz, just explaining what Max Headroom meant by an asymetrical power landing. Wayne
Basosz Posted October 24, 2012 Author Posted October 24, 2012 No criticism intended Basosz, just explaining what Max Headroom meant by an asymetrical power landing. Wayne I know and it's cool I learned something that I didn't know before so that's good. I really do think though that having more engines would be advantageous during a situation that would force an asymmetrical power landing. If you have 6 engines and you loose 1 on both wings then you only have lost 33% of your power. If you only have two engines up there and you loose one... well then you are forced into this asymmetrical thingy pretty much by default. Maybe I'm missing something here (I am by no means a pilot so being wrong is pretty much guaranteed) but more engines just seems like a good thing.
Wayne Posted October 25, 2012 Posted October 25, 2012 Having 6 engines would definately be an advantage in an asymetrical power landing with your WIF because the aircraft would be overpowered to start with so as you say, losing a couple wouldn't be an issue. The additional power in this example I would imagine would be to provide more power at high altitude and better efficiency on long-distance reconnaisance flights. I think you are covered here. Wayne
Basosz Posted October 29, 2012 Author Posted October 29, 2012 Having 6 engines would definately be an advantage in an asymetrical power landing with your WIF because the aircraft would be overpowered to start with so as you say, losing a couple wouldn't be an issue. The additional power in this example I would imagine would be to provide more power at high altitude and better efficiency on long-distance reconnaisance flights. I think you are covered here. Wayne The extra wing + engines is indeed for some serious extended range and altitude. Work I got done today: I cut the wing-end "boxes" from the original Cat where they store the wing floats and I transplanted them to the extended wing. This was the Privateer part of the wing and the only thing I had to do was to hollow out the old wing. The "box" would just fit in with very little trouble size-wise. I removed the little bulbous part on the underside of the wing where the big wheel would be in front of when the gear is retracted, filled up the actual round wheel bay itself and I smoothed everything out with the help of some Evergreen .015 sheet. Took a while but I'm quite happy with the result. Just some rescribing needed. Pictures of both boxes where you can see that the one in the second pic needed quite a bit of fixing up. Whoops! Then I adapted the original wing float so that it could be under the wing instead of at the end of the original wing. I now only need to figure out where the "X" support for the dropping of the float can attach on the float itself. Should be a fairly basic solution, perhaps I'll make some simple hinges with some scrap PE. When I test-fitted the floats, it looked as though they might not entirely touch the water. They look quite short in comparison to the hull but according to my measurement on the original, the new float is actually a tiny bit lower. I can explain this all away because of the extra hull floats which also add extra stability to the whole plane when it's on water. Pics of the float in the up and down position. End result of today then... boxes, floats and I also added the engine housing for the Privateer parts of the wings. I also worked out the following: The extra floats on the hull are pieces of the original Cat wing that I cut out to make the new Privateer wing bits fit. As they are fitted now, they generate floating power to the SuperCat when it's on the water, but they also generate some lift when the plane is trying to get out of the water by generating a sort of cushion effect. I forgot what those planes are called but it's like that giant Russian Black Sea Monster almost-aircraft thing that just skims the water. Are they called like Ekranoplanes or something similar?? Then when the Supercat is airborne, the little stub-floats just generate some extra lift.
ChancerUK Posted October 29, 2012 Posted October 29, 2012 That is emerging a very gracefull bird, lovely build. I like the detail on the retractable floats.
Wayne Posted October 29, 2012 Posted October 29, 2012 Looking really good, and those floats added to the new outer wing panels are coming along very nicely. I like what you are doing with this build. Great work. Wayne
Max Headroom Posted October 30, 2012 Posted October 30, 2012 Looking awesome. It reminds me of one of those long wing modified RB-57's. Keep up the good work. Trevor
Daniel Posted October 30, 2012 Posted October 30, 2012 Hope you've got somewhere to keep it when you're done! Dan
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