Cut, Fold & Paste

Messerschmitt P.1106 R - Part 10

2012-02-11T00:02:00.000-08:00

Landing gears and wheel wells done!

In my previous models, I worked hard to make sure that the landing gears fit well inside the wheel wells when they were in "raised" position. But for this one, I had to make some painful compromises. :(

Front view looks very menacing!
I'm thinking of whether or not I should cut out real gun holes on the wing roots or just making do with painting the gun hole via texturing...

Messerschmitt P.1106 R - Part 9 (REBOOT!)

2012-02-05T01:55:00.000-08:00

I'm back!!!! And I've not yet given up on the P.1106R.
Taking into account the painful lessons learned on the P.1106R's original design, I decided to throw everything away and start from scratch.

One of the most annoying things about the last design was that the cross section of the fuselage, especially at the wing root area had a complex compound curve. This made it really hard to wrap the fuselage skin around the fuselage formers. The reason why I was forced to make that weird cross section was that I had to make space for the wheel wells.

Anyway, in this reboot, I'm totally aiming to keep the fuselage cross sections as simple as possible. As I move along, I'll try to find a different way to solve that issue with the wheel well.

Also, I'm going to experiment with using more b-spline patches shaping the plane.

And here it goes!

It took a bit of experimentation, but I must admit that b-spline (or catmull) patches are the way to go when you want to produce natural curvy surfaces like those on the P.1106R. Once I was happy with the shape, I let Metaseq "freeze" the patch to create a wire frame model that I can simplify and refine further.

Freezing a b-spline patch will produce the complex surfaces shown in the picture above. Although it's nice to look at, it's overkill for Pepakura (unless of course you're going to do a 1:1 scale model). But for a 1:48 scale model, I'll have to get rid of a lot of those segments. For this, I use the Knife->Erase chained lines. I'll also delete half of the model to take advantage of the mirroring function of metaseq.

After deleting excess segments, and performing the necessary boolean operations, I wound up with the picture above. So far so good!

My next task would be to carve out those wheel wells and make the landing gear.

Gamilon Exterminator Class Destroyer - Part 6 (DONE!)

2011-08-29T16:16:00.000-07:00

I've made a PDO file available for download. You'll need to download install the Pepakura Viewer app (http://tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/) to be able to open and print the contents of the PDO file.

What's nice about this is that the Pepakura Viewer will show you which piece goes to what part of the model.

You can download the file over at the Sci-Fi sub-section of the Downloads section at http://www.papermodelers.com. If you haven't done so, you'll need to register and be a member (it's completely free and it won't send you any SPAM and other crap) to be able to have access to the Downloads section.

Gamilon Exterminator Class Destroyer - Part 5

2011-08-29T01:40:00.000-07:00

Done!

I didn't bother coloring the edges of the model nor did I bother making joining strips.

Another thing I didn't remove are the Pepakura folding lines. There are plenty of areas in the model that have no fold reference points that I had to include the folding lines. I sure wish Tamasoft would eventually enhance Pepakura to allow the drawing of just the end points of those folding lines.

I have absolutely no idea what scale this model is. :) And yes, it's not the same scale as the EDF destroyer.

By the way, I completely forgot to mention where I got the schematics for this. Sorry about that.
You'll find the schematics for this ship at http://www.shipschematics.net/. Excellent site! Anyway, if you check out the diagrams of this ship from that site, you'll notice that I also took some shortcuts to simplify the shape of the hull and make assembly easier.

But of course, there are still parts of that are an absolute P.I.T.A. to assemble. The main fuselage mega-cannon pictured on top is one of them. You'll need a lot of patience to assemble this part.

Other than the main cannon, the rest of the model is easy to make.

I'll make the diagrams available soon.

Gamilon Exterminator Class Destroyer - Part 4

2011-08-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

Done with the texturing and Pepakura unwrapping!

Unfortunately, time has run out for me... I'll have to wait till the next weekend to do the test build.

Gamilon Exterminator Class Destroyer - Part 3

2011-08-20T07:05:00.000-07:00

Almost done with the texturing!

Gamilon Exterminator Class Destroyer - Part 2

2011-08-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

Base texture / paint job done!
Now to work on the seam / outlines...

Gamilon Exterminator Class Destroyer - Part 1

2011-08-12T08:32:00.000-07:00

Okay...before I resume work on the P.1106R, I'd like to revisit using patches doing the fuselage.
My choice for this prototype is the Gamilon Exterminator Class Destroyer.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite anime show was StarBlazers (Uchuu Senkan Yamato). Some months ago, I came across this very nice model of an EDF Destroyer.

Here's how my build attempt turned out:

Very nice model.

Why not make a Gamilon counterpart for this one?

I started design by creating the general shape of the hull using patches:

Once satisfied, I let Metaseq generate the wireframe.
After a couple of optimizations, here's what I ended up with:

Neat eh?

I'm pretty much done with the UV mapping as well. All I need to do is to finish making the textures, then Pepakura, then BUILD BUILD BUILD!

After that, I'll go back to the P.1106R!

Messerschmitt P.1106 R - Part 8

2011-08-07T08:11:00.000-07:00

Been very busy lately... I could hardly find the time to get back to work on my test build.
The past two weekends, I was able to find some time to resume work.

Smoke started billowing once more from the smoke stacks of Eric Flugzeugwerk!

Anyway, long story short... I finally concluded that my design for this model is just too "unfun". In the quest to produce a design that captures all the curves of the P.1106R, I got carried away and over engineered the fuselage.

Oh yes, it is buildable, as seen from my previous posts..but it was just not fun to build.

Hence I decided to cut my losses and start over.

But before I do so, I did my best to complete the wing and tail assembly.

So here it is... ver 1.0.

Stay tuned for ver 2.0!

Messerschmitt P.1106 R - Part 7

2011-05-08T03:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is turning out to be a lot harder than I originally thought.
Nevertheless, I must continue this... :)

I got to finish the fuselage today:

Now to work on those wings!

Messerschmitt P.1106 R - Part 6

2011-05-01T06:33:00.000-07:00

A little progress here.... I was able to steal a couple of hours to resume work on the test build.

Last month I stopped at completing the inner formers for the fuselage.

Now, it's time to wrap the outer skin of the fuselage onto the formers. So far, the only "wrapping" I've ever done was for wings, elevators and rudders. This would be the first time for me to build a fuselage by wrapping the skin onto the formers.

Here's how I got started:

So far so good! The outer skin fit perfectly. I then proceeded adding the front segment. The fit is still good!

At this time, I had already consumed 3 whole hours just by cutting the segments and creating the joining strips.... how time flies.. :(

Before I knew it, it was already evening and I had to call it a day. At least I got to cover all the wheel wells.

Even without the last few fuselage segments, it's already looking like a P.1106R. :)

Messerschmitt P.1106 R - Part 5

2011-03-13T05:23:00.000-07:00

It's been a very busy Q1 for 2011. I've been in an out of the country since January, and I hardly have sufficient time to engage in card modeling.

Last February, I managed to get a rare free weekend to get back into action with my P.1106.

In my last post, I've only finished working on the fuselage formers. I've yet to resume working on the wing and tail formers. Not in the mood for 3d modeling at that time, I decided to start printing out the Pepakura unroll and start assembling just the fuselage...

BIG mistake.

Just look at these hideous pictures:

Notice how those fuselage formers seem to want to pop out the seams? Well, when I was working on BV P.212, I surprisingly didn't experience any problems with the formers. I made the formers of my BV P.212 by downsizing each fuselage segment by around 4%. The fit was pretty good.

SO I tried the same with my P.1106. A lot of good it did me.

Another issue I had was with the wheel wells:

Blech! I kinda experienced the same problem with the Heinkel and BV... I guess I never learned. The bad fit of the wheel well was caused by the fuselage former pushing back the front walls of the wheel well.
At this point, I gave up. I needed to stop what I was doing before wasting more time.

I had to resize those formers and solve the wheel well problem.

Not wanting to resort to trial and error, I decided to see how Metaseq's units relate with the actual scale outputted by Pepakura.

I created a cube primitive and set its size to 100x100x100.

I then imported the file to Pepakura. I then set the Scale Factor of the model to 1.0 (1:1). To my pleasant surprise, Pepakura reported that the length of the model is 100mm. So I guess that means 1 unit in Metaseq is equivalent to 1mm in Pepakura.

So I created a kind of ruler objet in my P.1106 model and unfolded it in Pepakura:

Looks good! Looks right! :)

So now, using my virtual ruler, I shrunk my formers by 1mm around the edges. That should make up for the added bulk caused by the joining strips:

Now, to take care of that wheel well problem. For this I decided to leverage the fuselage formers by getting rid of a wheel well's side/face if that wheel well's face touches a fomer. To simplify the wheel wells even more, I introduced a set of lateral formers that would also double as the top walls of the wheel wells:

Those lateral formers would also serve to align the formers properly.

Assuming the formers are .75mm thick, I set the size of the slots to 1mm using my virtual ruler. Here's how the former assembly turned out. Very promising! The slots on the formers fit so well I didn't even have to use glue to hold them together.

I guess that would also require me to change the assembly strategy to wrapping/skinning the formers instead of individually assembling each section and joining them. Gee I hope this measuring thing works!

That's all for now. :)

Messerschmitt P.1106 R - Part 4

2011-01-08T00:52:00.000-08:00

I've finished making the fuselage formers.
I'm not sure if I overdid it though. If it turns out to be overkill during the test build, I'll remove some of them.

Metasequoia's Boolean plugin

2011-01-06T19:08:00.000-08:00

I'm going talk a bit about Metasequoia's Boolean plugin.

Before you continue reading, please note that the plug-in function is only available to registered copies of Metasequoia. If you have the LE or the unregistered Shareware version, you won't be able to use the Boolean plugin.

Okay, let's start.

First things first, the boolean plugin is not UNICODE compliant. This means that even if you've got East Asian language support installed in your OS, you will still see garbage characters when you run the plugin. The only way to properly 'see' the Kanji characters on this plugin is to configure your OS to treat non-Unicode characters as SJIS. Assuming you do this configuration correctly, here's how the Boolean dialog box should look like:

Lots of options! But for this tutorial, you should only pay attention to the three combo boxes. The left and right most combo boxes are the operands. These combo boxes will be populated by the objects you've defined in Metasequoia. The middle combo box is the operator. This contains the boolean operations that you can perform.

The "OK" button starts the boolean operation. (By the way, the "OK" button should be legible even if you're running an English only OS.)
The button to the right of the "OK" button is the Cancel button. On English OS'es, this appears as "??????".

The bottom left most button ("?") brings up the help dialog box. On English OS'es, you'll get a dialog box with garbage characters. But if you did the configuration I mentioned earlier, here's what you'll get:

Again, lots of options! If I have the time, maybe I'll pull out my Kanji dictionary and try to translate all of them. (Sigh... if only the text on that dialog box were selectable, I could have run them through Google translate...)

Anyway, the options you should pay attention to are the following:

These are the options that will be available in the Operations combo box that I identified earlier. I labeled the options with numbers so you'll know what entry they are in the Operations combo box, since they'll be illegible when running in English mode.

Now, let's run through each operation.

For my example, I'll be using the following objects:

In the screenshot above, I defined two objects, namely "Red" and "Blue".

1. UNION (Red + Blue)
This is the 1st option in the Operations combo box.
The Union operation creates a new object by joining objects Red and Blue. The name of the new object will be "Red+Blue".

Here's how the results look like:

I intentionally hid the surfaces so you can see how the two objects are joined.

2. SUBTRACT (Red - Blue)
This is the 2nd option in the Operations combo box.
The Subtract operation carves out from Red the area occupied by Blue. The name of the new object will be "Red-Blue".

Here's how the result looks like:

3. NOT ( Red ! Blue )
This is the 3rd option in the Operations combo box.
This operation is almost similar to the Subtract operation. Basically, it performs a Union of Red and Blue. Afterwards, it removes the surfaces of Blue. The name of the new object will be "Red!Blue".

Here's the result:

Note that unlike the Subtract operation, this operation does not patch up surfaces removed.

4. AND ( Red & Blue )
This is the 4th option in the Operations combo box.
This operation creates a new object that contains the area where Red intersects with Blue. The name of the new object will be "Red&Blue". However, since the Windows UI treats the "&" character as a menu accelerator, the object name will appear as "RedBlue" in the object list.

Here's the result:

5. INTERSECT ( Red # Blue )
This is the 5th option in the Operations combo box.
This operation marks out in Red where the surfaces of Blue intersects with it. The name of the new object will be "Red#Blue".

To better illustrate, here's the result:

6. ???? (????)
This is the 6th option. This option is bugged. Calling this option produces the same results as INTERSECT, but the name of the object is based on the AND operation... weird...

In other words, if I do a Red % Blue, I'll get a new object that looks like the result of Red # Blue, but is named as "RedBlue".

7. ASTERISK ( A * B )
This is the 7th option in the Operations combo box.
This is an interesting operation which I've yet to find something useful for. :)

What this does is it creates a new object where object A replaces every node that object B has.

To illustrate, I start with the following:

The sphere is Obj1, while the cube is Obj2.

After performing the operation, here's the result:

Interesting eh? But again, for the purpose of Card Model creation, I've yet to find any useful applications for this operation.

8. DOUBLE ASTERISK ( A : B )
Hahahah.. okay... the word, "COLON" just doesn't sound pleasant. So let's just use double asterisk.
This is the last option in the Operations combo box.

This basically does what the Asterisk operation does. However, this does an extra step of "connecting" each node...er... just look at the example below.

Let's say we've got the following objects:

Obj1 is the red sphere, while Obj3 is the green shape.

After performing the operation, here's the result:

Ewww... what a mess! Like its sibling, the Asterisk operation, this is really useless for Card Modeling.
It might be useful if you want to make jackstones or a model of a Spathi Eluder ship from the StarCon2 game. :)

Finally, if you're a bit adventurous, you can check out the button at the upper left corner of the Boolean dialog box. This allows you to manually enter a boolean like "C=Red+Blue".

Anyway, I hope you've found this short tutorial helpful.

Messerschmitt P.1106 R - Part 3

2011-01-05T19:14:00.000-08:00

I'm done carving out the wheelwells. Surprisingly, Metaseq's BOOLEAN plugin has been very cooperative. It didn't produce a lot of unwanted artifacts like before. Or maybe it's because I used more edges...

Here's how it looks like:

Like the BF109, the P.1106 has a narrow tracked set of landing gears. It would have probably been hard to land safely with this configuration.

Anyway, we'll never know since this plane never got built.

Here's how it looks like from the side:

Next task would be to work on those fuselage and wing formers!

Magnet Tool Revisited

2011-01-04T18:52:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you've already figured this out...but I thought it might be worth documenting nonetheless...

Previously, I wrote a short tutorial on how to use Metaseq's magnet tool to create smooth wing (or fuselage) cross sections.

At that time, I was not aware of a particular parameter/field in the Magnet tool's dialog window which could have made the job a lot easier. This field is called the Range field. This field apparently controls the area of effect of the magnet tool.

To demonstrate, I start with the following cross section:

By default, the Range field of the magnet tool is set to 100. If I use the default value on the cross section I created, this is what I get:

If I adjust the Field value to "75", the effect of the magnet tool is lessened. Notice how the magnet tool affects even the bottom nodes:

Now, if I adjust the Magnet tool's Range value to, say... "50", the effect now looks a lot like what is sone on the magnet icon. :) Also, the bottom nodes are no longer affected:

Bumping it down to "25" produces the following:

Here's how it looks like when you use the circular icon (2nd icon):

Here's what the 3rd icon's effect looks like:

Finally, here's what the last icon's effect looks like:

Now, let's revisit the wing cross section (chord) creation.

Start with an oval shape like the following:

Reduce the magnet tool's Range field to around "90". (Or less, depending on how you created your oval shape.) Select the 2nd icon (the round shape). Now, slighty flatten the bottom part of the oval so that it looks like the following picture:

Now, use the 3rd icon and pull out the right end of the oval to produce the tail end of the cross section.

With a bit of experimentation, you can tweak the Range field of the magnet tool to produce irregular shaped fuselage cross like the one I used for the Messerschmitt P.1106 R:

Cheers!

Messerschmitt P.1106 R - Part 2

2011-01-04T05:27:00.000-08:00

I didn't like the way the wing fairings turned out. I eventually decided to discard the old fairings and start anew. I also re-shaped the fuselage a bit to make it more streamlined.

Here's how it turned out:

I also managed to finish the landing gears:

My next job would be to carve out the wheel wells and covers!

Messerschmitt P.1106 R - Part 1

2011-01-01T07:34:00.000-08:00

I greet 2011 with a new project, the Messerschmitt P.1106 R!

The P.1106 R was part of Messerschmitt's research on creating a fighter that is capable of breaching the supersonic barrier. This fighter was to be powered by a Walter S2 rocket (similar to the Messerschmitt Me-163 "Komet"). It was estimated that this fighter would be able to reach a speed of 993 km/h. It would have been armed with a pair of 30mm MK108 cannons.

Here's the initial wireframe:

As you can see from the screenshot above, this is a really, REALLY weird looking aircraft! By its looks alone, it looks way ahead of its time. :)

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 14

2010-12-28T08:54:00.000-08:00

All done!

I managed to get this thing done before the year ended! :)

Anyway, here are some posterity shots:

If you'd like to try building my model, you can download the diagrams here.

Now to start thinking of my new design.....

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 13

2010-12-23T23:24:00.000-08:00

And after a long, long pause, I'm proud to say that the Eric Flugzeugwerk's machines have started churning again.

I've finally got to start that final build.

I'm not done yet, but here are some preview shots:

All that's left are the landing gears and the bay covers. :)

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 12

2010-10-24T02:26:00.000-07:00

And I'm happy to say the camo job is officially over! :)

Here are some posterity shots:

I recycled the landing gear textures from my Heinkel P.1078 model. No point in reinventing the wheel...heheheh.

The wheel wells on this plane are quite spacious. I had to take extra effort to add additional details.

Finally, the exhausts...nothing much here.

Here's a small preview of the unfolded parts, ready for assembly.

Now all that's left to do is to make that final build. After that, I'll have to make some basic instructions before releasing this model.

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 11

2010-10-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Almost there!

Just need to finish the landing gears. After that, I'll be ready for the final build.

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 10

2010-10-17T08:01:00.000-07:00

Very little progress today. :(

Here's what I've got:

Making those rivet marks on the wing at up a lot of time. (Of course...washing and waxing the car too... :) )

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 09

2010-10-16T06:08:00.000-07:00

A little progress on the paint job. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but I'm going to pattern the paint job after Erich Hartmann's plane. Hartmann's plane is famous for its black tulip nose pattern.

Being a big fan of Erich Hartmann, I've always wanted to create a Luft46 airplane that bears his paint job.

So far, I've finished doing the fuselage:

More tomorrow. :)

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 08

2010-10-10T03:12:00.000-07:00

Some finishing touches.... the landing gears and the wheel well covers.

Nothing mucht to show here. Just your garden variety generic landing gears.

And...after a long delay, the first prototype rolls out of the factory doors. I proudly present my design of the Blohm und Voss P.121.02 fighter:

I'm now working on skinning the model. More updates next week!

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 07

2010-10-03T01:48:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I forgot to assemble the front wheel well! Grrrr!

Oh well...

Next to wing and body formers, wheel wells are the most difficult part of the fuselage to assemble due to the tight/snug fit. I usually assemble the wheel wells first and wrap the fuselage around them. In this model, I completely forgot to do this for the front wheel well.

SO, in assembling this, I ditched the idea of using glue tabs and tried to attach the edges of the well well walls by butt-joining them. (See picture above.)

The absence of the glue tab bulges should make the task of squeezing in the wheel well a lot easier.

Messy! :(

I'll end my weekend build by attaching the canopy.

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 06

2010-10-02T16:19:00.000-07:00

Finally, some real progress! :)

I started off with making the engine intakes.

The engine intakes comprises 5 parts. Those "wavy patterns" you see are the valley/mountain fold markes added by Pepakura. They'll disappear once I add the textures later on.

Here's how it looks like when completed. Notice that the printed side is rolled inwards.

Next up is the parts for the engine exhaust.

Good fit so far.

The rest of the fuselage parts are pretty much standard fare. The picture above shows the finished components that comprise the fuselage.

Assembly starts with the front most parts. I attached the first 4 components (seen from the left of the fifth picture above). Before attaching the next component, I affixed the engine intakes.

Here's another shot of how the engine intakes look after attached to the fuselage.

Now comes the hard part. The rear wheel wells were a bit hard to fit.

Fuselage done!

Before calling it a night, I tried to dry-fit the wings.

Yeah! Hehehehe.... Fits perfectly!
The horizontal bars you saw on some of the formers worked in ensuring that the dihedrals of the wings are angled correctly.

Man those wings are big....

Here's a shot of the wheel wells.

That's all for now...

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 06

2010-09-27T06:06:00.000-07:00

And so the test build has begun....

I started by cutting out and assembling the wing formers. Save for a minor problem cutting out the slots, everything went along smoothly. I must confess though. I used more than the usual amount of CA glue to stiffen the wing spars.

Here's how the wing is 'wrapped' around the wing formers. Pretty good fit! :)

Here's how the wing tip is wrapped around its formers.

Wing, nacelle and wingtip ready to be put together!

The nacelle is first attached to the wing. The nacelle fits rather well. Unfortunately, the nacelle was a bit hard to assemble...

Finally, here's what the completed wing looks like.

That's all for now I guess....

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 05

2010-09-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

Done with unfolding via Pepakura! I was expecting another unfolding nightmare like that of my last model (Heinkel P.1078b). Surprisingly, this one unfolded pretty well. I guess the simple fuselage shape and the constant chord wings made unfolding easy.

Here's a preview of how the parts will look like:

Yarrrr!!!! Thar bee cone petals on the engine spinner and the wing nacelles! A necessary evil, I say. Yarrr!

Unfortunately, the weekend is over. I'll have to wait till next weekend to do that test build.

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 04

2010-09-12T05:34:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how slow my progress is! I must pick up the pace one way or another...

Anyway, here's what I have so far.

First, the nacelle at the wing tips.

If you recall from my previous post, the nacelle was a bit 'fat'. In fact, it looked more like a fuel tank! According to the 3-view diagrams over at the Luft'46 site, the nacelle should have been 'flush' with the wing tip.

And so I labored for many hours trying to find the best way to make the nacelle fit the open edge of the wing tip.

And here's what I got:

So far so good! Much better than the previous design. Most of the time spent for this was to align the segments of the nacelle with a corresponding segment on the wing. Doing this will help Metaseq produce a cleaner result by the time I do a boolean operation (Wing minus Nacelle).

Now my problem is that the nacelles are a bit on the narrow side. Almost like landing gear struts. If this ends up being hard to assemble, I may bump up the scale to 1:32. For now, I'm sticking with 1:48.

Next, I spent the rest of the weekend making the formers:

The fuselage formers (yellow) were relatively straightforward to make. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the wing formers. The wing formers required a lot of work. Due to the dihedral of the wing, I couldn't just slice away with the knife tool to make the spars. I had to do some basic trigonometric calculations to derive the wing angle. Once I got the angle, I created a couple of plane primitives, which I then tilted to intersect the wings at 90 degrees. After that, I did a boolean operation to intersect the tilted plane with the wing to produce the cross cut which would later be used to make the spars.

Boy... I guess my high school trigonometry class had some use after all! Hehehehe.

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 03

2010-09-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

A little fine tuning on the wheel wells just to make sure they're big enough to accomodate the landing gears.

Note that the front landing gear has to twist 90 degrees before folding in. This due to the space occupied by the engine intake tunnel. On later jet designs, the intake will bifurcate to accomodate the pilot space and the landing gear. (e.g. Mig 15)

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 02

2010-08-30T06:16:00.000-07:00

Done with the wheel wells and landing gears.
Here are some pictures:

Notice how the engine intake tunnel is visible from the rear wheel wells. Man..that was tough to make in Metaseq!

Next step, boolean operations for the Wings!

Designing Wings Using Metaseq's Magnet Tool

2010-08-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

Though they look relatively easy and straightfoward, I find the wings to be the trickiest part of the plane to design. What makes wing design hard for me is coming up with a good and smooth teardrop shape of the wing's chord.

In the past, I used to make wings using this method:

I start by creating a cylinder primitive with enough lateral segments to provide a smooth shape.

Then, using the scaling tool, squash the cylinder. This will produce what appears to be a wing. Close enough.
The next steps would be to reshape the cross section of the cylinder to produce the much sought after tear drop shape.

I start by getting rid of some segments at the rear of the wing. This is done by "joining" their vertices to the right most vertex. Arghh..hard to describe. Just look at the picture above. :)

Continue shaping the cross section (or chord) by moving the last segment pictured above a bit to the right. Then, using the scaling tool, scale down along the Y-AXIS to make the chord taper down smoothly.

Finally, move down the segments pictured above to refine the chord into the desired shape.

Simple eh?

Unfortunately, this technique relies a lot on a good eye to ensure that the chord tapers "naturally". Often times, you'll end up with something like this:

If you don't do a good job at aligning the segments of the cross section, you'll end up with a wing chord that looks like the picture above. Not really nice.... However, I'm not saying that the technique described above is flawed. I'm just saying that it's easy to make mistakes.

In my Heinkel P.1078B, I explored using Catmull-Clark patches for creating a smooth chord. It did its job well, but unfortunately, I had limited control on the number of wing segments. As a result, the leading edge of my Heinkel's wing is not very smooth.

Enter the Magnet tool!

Start with a cylinder primitive. This time, use more segments. This will help produce a smoother chord.

Now, delete the rear end of the cylinder as pictured above. Actually, what I want to do is to create a disc. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do this in Metasequoia. So the technique above is what I know...

Scale down the disc along the Y-AXIS a little bit. Don't over flatten. You just want to produce a mild oval shape.

Now, click on the "Magnet" button to bring up Magnet Toolbox. You'll want to set the magnet mode to the button pointed out by arrow #1 in the image above. Next, click on the right most point depicted by arrow #2.

Pull to the right! Notice how the segments are evenly distributed. What's more important is, the taper is smooth and consistent!

Almost there! Now use the scaling tool to flatten the shape along the Y-AXIS.

Now use the BEND tool to pull down the right most edge. Don't over do this.

Finally, use the EXTRUDE tool to create your wing!

Notice how much better this wing looks like compared to the one made using the cylinder+scale method?

Blohm und Voss P.212.02 - part 01

2010-08-29T06:17:00.000-07:00

For my next design, I decided to take it easy and tackle something a little bit simpler. Or so I thought...

I chose to create the Blohm und Voss P.212.02 fighter jet. The P.212.02 is the second of three proposals that the engineers at Blohm und Voss submitted to the RLM as a candidate for the emergency fighter program.

This aircraft was to have been powered by the Heinkel HeS-011 jet engine, which would have propelled it to an estimated speed of 1,030 km/h (NOTE: I have no idea how they calculated this....). It would have been armed with three Mk108 30mm canons.

For those of you who played IL2-1946, you probably know how much carnage a well placed 30mm round can do to a B17.... imagine a trio of these.

Here are some screen shots of the initial wireframes:

As with my previous models, I will stick to my scale of 1:48. I also plan to do the wheel wells as well as the landing gears. Unfortunatley, I'll still be staying away from doing the cockpit for now. :)

I'm also going to stick with Metasequoia as my modeling tool. Textures will be done using Inkscape. Unrolling will be via Pepakura.

As always, my main reference will be the Luft46 site. I also purchased an e-copy of Reichdreams Dossier #15 which also has a lot of data on the BV P.212.02.

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 15 : All done!

2010-08-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

All done! :)

For my final build, I decided to use joining strips. The joining strips ensured better fit, especially in the areas that had internal formers.

I'll be making the diagrams for this freely available. Unfortunately, I still need to make the instructions. Once I finish those, I'll put them up for download.

Here are the pictures of the completed model:

I'll prolly take a short break before I start my next design.

Nah..... :P

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 14 : Wheel Wells

2010-07-21T07:08:00.000-07:00

I forgot to post a picture of the image of the model's wheel wells.

I really like the way this model turned out. I'll probably start building the prototype this weekend.

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 13 : Camo

2010-07-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

I'm almost there!

I finally got to squeeze in some extra time to work on the camo/paint job.

For this model, I chose the RLM 65/75/76 color scheme, with the liveries from JG3.

Here are a couple of posterity screen shots:

Next up is the final beta build before I declare this model complete!

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 12 : Prototype!

2010-07-02T09:38:00.000-07:00

Some more progress....

Landing gears done! Though they may look very small, they were surprisingly easy to assemble. :)

AND..... the first prototype rolls out of the Eric Flugzeug-Werke's factory doors! Yeah!

Here's a frontal shot. Notice that the front landing gear is intentionally off center.

Bottom shot. :)

Now to think of the camo scheme. I wonder what RLM combo to use for this one.

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 11

2010-06-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

Finally! Some progress!

I was able to complete the pilot pod. Save for the canopy and the missing front wheel well, the pilot pod is the same as the weapons pod. Hence, I won't show the picture anymore.

The picture above shows how it looks like, if it were already flying. :)

Here's a frontal shot.

Side shot. Notice that the front wheel well is missing.

Finally, here's how the wheel wells look like.

I tried to see how air worthy the whole design by gently tossing to my bed. It was a bit nose heavy so it didn't fly far... but it did fly straight! And there appeared to be a semblance of lift after the initial toss. But I didn't have the guts to throw it hard though so I can't confirm if the wings do generate lift. :)

Next up... the landing gears, then

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 10

2010-06-27T00:21:00.000-07:00

I got a response from Tamasoft (Pepakura). It turned out that there's an option that automatically joins 'nearly' adjacent edges. Sometimes that function causes those edges to shorten a bit. I was told that I had to disable that option and repeat the unfold process. I'm really amazed that they replied to my email on a SUNDAY! Anyway, I'm really grateful for the support. Thanks Tamasoft! :)

Now back to business.

I got to complete the left pod (weapons pod). I chose to build that first because I know I'll have a helluva hard time given the fact that it has to accomodate two wheel wells.

I assembled this tail first, working my way up to the nose.

Installing the rear wheel well was pretty straightforward.

Installing the front wheel well... well...heheheh. I must have cussed and cursed so much it started to rain.

In the previous blog entries, you'll notice that there are two holes under the wings. Those holes are meant to accomodate the bulge on the wheel well as shown in the picture above.

Dry fitting. I gently ease in the pod to the wing...

Voila! Fits perfectly! :)

Here's how it looks like with the center fuselage dry fitted as well. Everything snaps into place. And I've yet to apply glue! Hehehe. I'll finish the other pod first to make sure everything fits well before I glue them into place.

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 9 : Pepakura Bug?

2010-06-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

Awww cripes!

In my previous blog entry, I mentioned that the exhaust tube was a bit small and I had to pad it with a roll of paper to make it fit properly.

I re-opened my Pepakura file and saw this:

Just by looking at the image above, it doesn't take much effort to see the circumference of the rolled tube above will not match that of the rolled cone below.

This is a real bummer! I already emailed Pepakura support about this. They've already replied but their suggestions did not work. I sent them my PDO file for them to check out. I hope this gets ironed out soon.

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 8

2010-06-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

After making the wings, the next step would be to work on the center fuselage.

No nasty surprises here. However, since I used a whole lot more of segments (faces) for this model compared to my last ones, the glue tabs that Pepakura generated were almost as small as the tines of a comb. :D

This made cutting out the parts a real chore.

But surprisingly, those small glue tabs had a very nice side effect. They soak up glue like crazy. It made it really easy to join the pieces together.

Here's how the center fuselage looks like:

Actually, I had a slight problem assembling the exhaust. The opening of the fuselage was too big. I had to pad the exhaust cylinder with two rolls of paper to make it fit properly. I'll have to look into this further. In my Metaseq wireframe, the exhaust and fuselage are joined together in one object. SO, in theory, pepakura should produce a good fit. I'm hoping I made an error in assembling this. I'd hate it if it was a bug in either metaseq or pepakura.

I'm now dry fitting the wings to the fuselage.

Fits perfectly! :D

The gaping holes on the side of the fuselage will be covered once I assemble and fit in the left and right pods.

So far so good!

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 7

2010-06-26T03:55:00.000-07:00

And the Eric Flugzeug-Werke's machines have begun to roll.

And already, I've experienced a lousy start. :(

I though I could get away with designing the wings without using formers. Yeah right.

After hours of wrestling with the paper, trying to get that stupid anhedral wingtip to assemble correctly, I got this sloppy excuse for a wing:

Man... that ain't gonna hold up. It looks like it was made out of tissue paper.

I had to go back to the drawing board and whip up a set of wing formers..pronto!

And here's what I got:

I'd say they look darned good!

I then reprinted the diagrams for the wings. After cutting and wrapping them around these formers, here's what I got:

Pretty darned good improvement over the first wing prototype. And sturdier too!

A little rest before I start with the fuselage.

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 6

2010-06-21T08:49:00.000-07:00

Done with unfolding! Dang, there are just about a bajillion pieces to assemble. I really hope Pepakura did a good job at making these pieces fit together...

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 5

2010-06-20T02:30:00.000-07:00

Landing gears and wheel wells done!

It took a lot of effort to adjust the scales of the landing gears to get a good fit without compromising the overall visual proportions of the model.

The picture above shows how the landing gears would fit inside the weapons and cockpit pods. Very tight fit indeed. Note that the weapons pod should also contain three 30mm guns! I don't know how I'll fit that one in. But there IS still space left between the front wheel wells. :)

Here's how it looks like from the side with the wheel covers.

Ready for take off! Man... had this aircraft been produced, it would have looked really badass.

I'm thinking of whether or not to put the gun pod holes, or just paint it as a texture.

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 4

2010-06-19T15:36:00.000-07:00

Done with the boolean operations. Here's how I cut apart the components that would comprise the plane:

The wing would be the main piece. I'm thinking that if I can make the internals of the wings strong enough, I might not need to put formers on the fuselage parts....hmmm...

The gun and pilot pod will be "wrapped" around the wing.

And the same goes with the main fuselage.

With that done, it's time to work on the landing gears:

It may appear symmetrical in the image above...but the front landing gear ain't. The wheel is a bit off center, and the strut leans heavily to the left.

Now here is where I hit my first major snag.... damn!

To carve out the wheel wells, I 'simulated' raising the landing gears. That way, I'll have an idea how big a cavity I'll have to create on the fuselage of the plane. As far as the width of the fuselage is concerned, the gears fit well. But when the length comes into play, the rear and front gears don't fit! I'll need to scale down the gears a bit before I can continue. :(

Anyway, here's how the plane looks so far, sans the wheel wells.

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 3

2010-06-18T19:21:00.000-07:00

Let's rewind a bit.... I'll show how I made the fuselage.

I wanted to experiment with the Spline / Catmull patch function of Metaseq, and got mixed results.

I starte by 'trying' to make the fuselage this way:

After many attempts, I couldn't get anything close to what was illustrated in the 3-view design over at Luft'46.

I finally gave up on the Spline/Catmull idea and used a traditional approach:

As seen on the image above, I started by making the engine housing, which will also comprise the centerline of the fuselage.

Not wanting to give up on the Spline/Catmull concept, I tried it again, this time on the wings. And surprisingly, it turned out pretty well! Once satisfied with the general shape of the wings, I converted the Spline/Catmull patch into a wireframe. I then did some minor adjustments, aligned some vertices, and folded down the wingtips.

Voila! Instant wings!

Pilot / Gun pod creation was also standard fare:

Note that I only had to create the left pod. I then told Metaseq to mirror the object along the Z axis.

Putting it all together brings us to the image I had in my first blog entry:

Heinkel HE P.1078B - part 2

2010-06-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

A little progress....

I made the air intake by extruding the front of the fuselage forward. I then pushed the extruded surface inwards into the fuselage to make the intake. So far so good.

I also threw in the wheels.

Before I proeed to do the object boolean operations, I also made some minor adjustments by aligning key vertices. This should make the boolean operations a bit "cleaner" later on.

Heinkel HE P.1078B - My first foray into asymmetry (part 1)

2010-06-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

For my next model, I'm going to take a shot at an asymmetrical design, albeit a mild one. The name of the aircraft is the Heinkel HE P.1078B. You'll find more details about this nice aircraft at the Luft'46 site.

After so many failed attempts at estimating the shape of the main fuselage, I finally came up with something visually satisfying.

I'll stop here for now....

Lippisch P.13a

2010-06-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

The Lippisch P.13a is a very interesting Luft'46 design. Had this thing been built, it would have been made mostly out of wood. It would have been powered by a ramjet engine that uses powdered coal as its main fuel! To get this thing up to speed to make the ramjet work, it would have used a small version of the rocket engine used by the ME163 Komet.

It had no landing gears. Instead, it uses three landing skids. I therefore assume this aircraft required a grassy surface to land on. Asphalt or concrete would have ruined the skids.

Wind tunnel tests shows that the frame of the P.13a could reach Mach2.

It would have been armed by a pair of 30mm cannons.

I designed the wireframes using Metaseq. The unrolling/unfolding, I used Pepakura. Finally, the skins were made using Inkscape.

I. Building the main fuselage

I originally designed the main fuselage using the traditional lateral and horizontal spars. Unfortunately, although they did the job, it was terribly difficult to assemble the left and right outer skins. I experimented a bit by using the accordion like spars seen in the picture above.

As you can see, the accordion like spars provide enough volume and as a side effect, it prevents the glue tabs from folding inwards. This 'should' make attaching the other half of the fuselage a lot easier.

And hey, it works!

II. Building the wings

Now, on to the wings.

Unlike the fuselage, the traditional spars worked quite well.

Wings done!

III. The rudder / cockpit

Like the wings, the rudder is comprised of three spars. That small tube shown in the picture above is the booster rocket exhaust.

Make sure to insert the spars into the rudder/cockpit first before you attach the rocket booster!

IV. Intake and Landing Skid

Some knick knacks.

V. Putting it all together

First, attach the wings to the fuselage.

Second, attach the rudder/cockpit.

Third, the intake.

Lastly, the landing skid. Note that it is important to attach the intake first before attaching the landing skid!

VI. The Trolley

Trolley assembly is pretty straightforward....

VII. All done!

For the camo, I used the RLM74/76/81 color scheme. Squadron markings are of the JG52, with matching defense of the reich band.

There's something terribly wrong with the printout. The colors are not supposed to be muted like this. I think the blame lies on the card stock I used. The card stock seems to react with the HP92/93 ink.

I thoroughly enjoyed designing and building this. If you would like to try out my design, you can download the model from the following link:

Lippisch p.13a Entwurf III (from googledocs)

Junkers Ju EF128

2010-05-26T08:10:00.000-07:00

Taking a break from the ME1110 design... I decided to try something else.
This time, I did the Junkers JU EF128. I got so interested that I managed to complete the whole thing from the initial wireframe, to skinning and finally the beta build.

Should you wish to build the model yourself, you can download the diagrams via this link:

Junkers EF 128

This blog entry shows the build process.

The first part involves assembling the front fuselage.

Then go for the wing former.

Once the glue dries... you can start sliding the tip of the wing formers to the slot in the fuselage.

Keep sliding until the middle part of the wing former locks into place.

Now proceed to build the rear part of the fuselage.

Test fit before gluing into place.

Build the rear fin former and the rear fin.

Here's how it should look like when complete.

If done correctly, it should fit snugly into the alloted slot.

Assemble and attach the canopy.

Here's how the exhaust should look like.

Assemble the wing and rudder parts.

Be careful cutting the slots on the wing and the rudder....

Glue the wings to the fuselage using the wing formers as a guide. The wing formers should ensure that you've got a consistent wing angle (dihedral?).

Don't forget to attach the nacelles.

DONE!

Please forgive the filthy/untidy build. :) I was in a hurry to complete this. Hehehe...

ME P.1110 Part 4 :Canard wings continued...

2010-05-18T04:13:00.000-07:00

Before proceeding further with the wing shaping, you'll want to make some small adjustments to the way the wing is structured. These adjustments are aimed to make for a less messy boolean operation later on.

To start things off, look at the image above. The yellow cube with the red arrow pointing to it is a point or vertex on the fuselage. It would be a good idea to align one segment of the wing to that point. In this case, the wing segment is circled in red. I start by getting the Y and Z coordinates of the point I mentioned, then writing it down on a piece of paper (or on a text editor).

Then, I temporarily hide the fuselage to be able to select the points that make up the segment that I encircled in the previous image.

With all three points selected, I bring up the "Align Selected Vertices" dialog box of Metaseq. I then select the Y and Z checkboxes. If the Y and Z coordinates are already available in the MIN/MAX button selections, click those. If not, then manually re-type them on their respective position text boxes.

If done correctly, it should look like the image above.

Do the same for segment indicated above. Align it with the vertex indicated by the red arrow.

And again, for the segments indicated by the arrows in the image above...

All done.

After doing those adjustments, the chord (or is it foil?) of the wing will now be a bit deformed. You will need to reshape it a bit as indicated above.

Now, go to the front view display, then thin out the right edge of the wing as indicated in the picture. Try to match the way the wing tapers down in the picture.

Done!

Now select the points indicated in the picture above. Then, by using a combination of resize + move along the Z axis adjust the size and position of the wingtip to match the drawing.

Next, we'll need to round out the wing tip. Start by slicing a vertical strip using the knife tool at the points indicated by the arrows indicated above. Then select and join the vertices encircled above.

If done correctly, it should look like the image above.

Here's how it looks so far.

Notice that the segments we tried to align early on are now again misaligned. That's okay... It will be easy to re-align once more after we do the boolean operation later on to remove the part of the canard hidden inside the fuselage.

ME P.1110 Part 3 :Making the canard wings

2010-05-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

Before starting to work on new objects, I always "lock" the current object to prevent any accidental modifications.

In addition to locking the fuselage object, I'll assign a meaningful name to it. In this case, "fuselage". Also, while I'm at it, I might as well change its color to make it easier to identify.

To start with the Canard wing creation, I create a new object called, "elevator".

I then add a new Cube object. Unlike the cylinder object, I choose to use the default settings.

Next, from the top-view panel, move the cube so that it covers just the right canard wing. Make sure the left edge of the cube lies inside the fuselage.

Now, in your mind, draw an imaginary line along the front edge of the canard wing going towards the fuselage until it intersects the left edge of the cube. Then, move the bottom edge of the cube so that it meets the point where the imaginary line intersects with the left edge of the cube.

Do the same for the rear edge of the canard. Move the top edge of the cube so that it meets the point where the imaginary line of the rear edge meets the left edge of the cube.

Lastly, move the right edge of the cube to the left so that it touches the right edge of the canard.

That was really hard to describe.... Anyway, if done correctly, you should have something similar to the image above.

Now, switch to the front view panel. Move the top edge of the cube so that it touches the highest point of the top of the canard. Do the same for the bottom edge of the cube with the lowest point of the canard.

If done correctly, you should have something that looks like the image above.

The next step would be to reshape the cube to form a foil (or whatever you call it). Start by switching to the side view panel. Then to make it easier to see what you're doing, 'hide' the Fuselage object as well as the background diagram.

Using the knife tool, make two vertical slices - one near the left edge of the canard, and one between the center and the right edge of the canard.

Now switch to the perspective view. Notice that I've encircled the four corners of the cube. The two vertices in each of the four encircled corners should be joined together.

If done correctly, it should look like the image above.

Now, go back to the side view. Then, move the left and right edges of the wing downwards by a small amount.

If done correctly, it should look like the image above.

Now, using the knife tool, cut a vertical slice just between the left edge of the canard and the left slice you did a while ago.

Now, resize the slice so to 'round up' the left edge of the canard.

Here's how it should look like.

Now, take a break and go back to the perspective view panel. Then unhide the 'Fuselage' object to look at the progress so far.

That's all for now...

ME P.1110 Part 2 :Creating the fuselage

2010-05-10T04:51:00.001-07:00

Continuing where I left off, I start with creating a basic cylinder shape. At this point, I will put great emphasis in ensuring that the cylinder shape has as many lengthwise 'slices' as possible. Later on, each slice will comprise one connector tab on the model once it's unfolded.

For this, I chose 32 slices. I don't know if that's enough....but I guess I'll find out later on.

Next, I aligned the cylinder to the fuselage of the background (3-view) images. In this case, it was a simple matter of rotating the cylinder 90 degrees along its x-axis.

Once aligned, I proceeded to re-shape the cylinder to closely match the fuselage of the Ente. If you look that the front view, you'll notice that the cross section of the cylinder is not a perfect circle. It is slightly oval shaped.

Now it's time to work shaping the front part of the fuselage. Starting from just behind the canopy, the fuselage gradually starts tapering down. To do this with the cylinder, I use a knife tool to add a new cross section at the point where the fuselage starts to taper down. In this case, as I mentioned, it's just behind the canopy.

Using the scaling tool, I scaled down the front end of the cylinder by a bit --- just enough to match the gradual taper of the cylinder.

Now, notice that the front end of the cylinder is somehow no longer aligned with the front end of the fuselage's side-view drawing.

To fix this, I moved the front end of the cylinder down by just a bit so that the center point aligns with that of the fuselage's.

Repeat the knife+scale+move process until satisfied....
Now, notice that the front end of the cylinder has significantly shrunk in size. But it's still flat.

To fix this, I used the "join vertices" function.

I then applied the same steps for the rear end of the cylinder.

Fuselage done!

My next step would be to work on the canard wings of the Ente.

ME P.1110 Part 1 : Back in business

2010-05-10T02:49:00.000-07:00

After a long hiatus from card modeling, I'm back! :)

This time, instead of building other people's models, I have decided to start with my own stuff. This isn't the first time I've made attempts at designing my own models. Unfortunately, the past attempts all had a lot of flaws. Flaws which I hope I will get to correct, or even avoid this time around.

Tools of the trade
Now, to get started, my tools.

For designing card models, you need 3 tools:

Modeling software - There are plenty to choose from. But for most of my entries, I will be using Metasequoia. Why Metasequoia? Well, because I already chucked in $45 for a license two years ago, when I first started to design my own stuff. It would be a pity to let $45 go to waste. Anyway, there are two free and in my opinion equally powerful (or even more powerful) alternatives -- Google Sketchup and Blender3d. If I encounter a major obstacle in Metasequoia later on, maybe I'll consider jumping to one of those two. But for now, it's Meta for me.
Unfolding software - You'll need this to convert your 3d model into a 2d diagram that is ready to cut out, fold and glue together. Again, there are plenty to choose from. However, I'm using Pepakura, simply because this was the only available unfolder 2 years ago, and I already popped $38 for a license...hehehe....miser. Unfortunately, unlike modeling software, where there are free alternatives, I only know of one free alternative unfolder. I forgot its name though. Other options for unfolders are Ultimate Papercraft 3d and the Waybe plugin for Google Sketchup.
Some painting software - Your 3d model will not elicit oohs and ahhs from your friends if they're just plain uncolored cardboard. (Well, if your friends are also card modelers, then yeah, you will be getting oohs and ahhhs even if your model is done in plain uncolored cardboard....) Anyway, you'll need some painting software to design your textures so that your models will look like the actual object they represent. I use both GIMP and Inkscape.

Additionally, you'll need some 3-view drawings to base your designs from. I get mine mostly from the Luft'46 website. I've a couple of books about Luftwaffe WW2 aircraft which also contain really nice 3-view drawings. But since my interest lies mostly on the what-if's aircraft of the Luftwaffe, I'll be sticking with the 3-views from Luft'46.

Getting started
Damn... after being away from Metaseq for 2 years, I've almost completely forgotten how to use this program. After staring blankly at the screen, I managed to re-learn the basic commands and steps.

For this exercise, I chose to model the Messerschmitt ME P.1110 'Ente'. It has a relatively simple, clean shape with no complex surfaces save for those nacelles on the side of the fuselage.

The first step involves saving a copy of the 3-view, then cutting it up into three separate bitmaps that represent the front, top and side of the model.

Firing up Metasequoia

I then fire up Metasequoia. Under Metaseq's default view, it will be very difficult to create an accurate model, even if you've got a 3-view design to choose from.

Remember the 3 images that I cut up from the original 3-view image? Metaseq's display can be divided into 4 subpanels. Each subpanel can be configured to display a particular angle of your model. In my case, I chose to display the top, side, front and perspective views respectively.

I guess that's it for now. More later.

The Dornier DO-335 "Pfeil" (Done!)

2008-06-14T04:18:00.000-07:00

Crap! I couldn't find the pictures I took when I was assembling the wings and the landing gears. Oh well...

It took me two months to complete this beast. It had a lot of bad fitting parts. But despite that, it was a really good design. Now my bigger problem is to find a spot in my home to place this without it being destroyed by the cleaning lady.

Here are some shots of the Pfeil alongside Emil Zarkov's Bf109G, also 1:32.

The Dornier DO-335 "Pfeil" (Part V)

2008-06-14T04:08:00.001-07:00

This model has been completed ages ago. Unfortunately, I've been very busy lately and had not the opportunity to update this build log.

Anyway, more pictures.

Here's the completed tail section with the pusher engine attached.
Heheh... the engine works! (Well at least it works in front of the electric fan).

I temporarily removed the pusher engine. This is to make the task of attaching the tail assembly to the main fuselage.

Cockpit. Notice the warped cardboard near the pilot's headrest. This was caused by a misaligned former (bad design...hehehe).

Canopy attached.

The Dornier DO-335 "Pfeil" (Part IV)

2008-05-10T04:50:00.000-07:00

The rear half of the fuselage
As you may have known by now, the Pfeil is a pusher-puller propelled aircraft. The picture above shows the assembly of what would be the portion of the fuselage that houses the rear engine. Though it might not be apparent from the picture, the fit of the parts is lousy! Very lousy! Notice the radiator intake is a bit deformed.

Anyway, I've put too much time into this model that quitting would really be out of the question. With a little muscle power, I was able to make those parts fit.

Here's a shot of the fuselage so far. Damn, that's huge! I'm already starting to worry where I'll be storing this model once I'm finished with it.

Here's the final segment of the fuselage.

Fitting the elevators...

Finally, fitting the top and bottom rudders.

The Dornier DO-335 "Pfeil" (Part III)

2008-05-01T02:59:00.000-07:00

The engine intakes.

The intakes took a fair amount of work to assemble. Again, the parts didn't really fit well.

Here's the result of the "tweezer massage" that I applied on the intakes. Looks pretty good. But it took me an hour or so to massage that intake to shape.

Attached! Notice that the part doesn't line up very well. I had to remove and trim off some of the extra cardboard from the intake.

Done!

The Dornier DO-335 "Pfeil" (Part II)

2008-04-29T06:04:00.001-07:00

The front fuselage.

So far so good. Assembling the forward segment of the fuselage went smoothly. Cutting and pasting those engine exhaust vents was very tedious though.

Here's a picture of the fuselage segment with the engine+cowling. I haven't glued it on yet... I'm just dry fitting it to test the build accuracy.

The cockpit interior is quite sparse for a 1:32 model. I was expecting more parts.

It came out okay though.

Cockpit segment of the fuselage and front segment.

The Dornier DO-335 "Pfeil" (Arrow)

2008-04-26T20:15:00.001-07:00

The Dornier DO-335 "Pfeil" (arrow), also known as the Ameisebaer (anteater) was the fastest piston (prop) driven fighter plane of WW2. Unfortunately, it never saw action.

You'll find more information on this fascinating aircraft at the Dornier Do 335 page.

The DO-335 kit was designed by Marek. It's a 1:32 scale model, a bit complex and has a lot of bad fitting parts. But despite that, I persevered and finally completed the model.

Here's a summary of the entire build.

Front Engine

Unlike most prop-driven card models I've encountered, this one does not have any provisions for a rotating shaft. Damn! I don't want to end up with non-rotating props!

I must come up with something.

Before proceeding with my mini-solution, I do a dry fit to ensure that everything is lined up properly.

I create my make-shift spinner shaft by rilling paper on a bamboo toothpick. As you see in the picture above, the outer 'roll' of paper is fixed to the toothpick. The inner roll, is not.

The propeller cone will be attached to the 'fixed' roll. The non-fixed roll on the other hand will be attached to the main engine part. Once done, I'll plug the shaft with another 'fixed' roll of paper.

All done!

And it spins!

-- end of part 1 --

The Horton HO-229 Flying Wing

2008-04-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

The Horton HO-229 was another one of Germany's last ditch efforts to snatch defeat from the Allies. Unfortunately for Germany (or fortunately for the Allies), they lost before this HO-229 became operational.

The HO-229 (sometimes referred to as the Gotha GO-229) is a twin engined flying wing. Due to the apparent shortage of critical resources towards the end of the war, the bulk of this aircraft was made of wood. I think only the supporting structures were from metal. This had the side-effect of being slightly radar-proof for the radars of that era. Hence, had this flown and seen action, WW2 would have had the first stealthy flying wing!

Anyway, on to the model.

The card model is designed by Marek. Scale is 1:48.

The model is designed in three main portions:

The center fuselage
Left and right wings

Center Fuselage

I start with making the center fuselage's formers.

As you can see in the first photo, the fuselage is 'strengthened' by a 6 formers. Three along the fuselage, and another three across it. As with most tricycle landing gear type models, I add a little 'insurance' by gluing a couple of coins to the nose to ensure the model does not topple backwards.

Once I completed making the formers, I proceed to 'wrap' the skin around them to form what would eventually become the center fuselage.

The Wings
Assembling the wings was straightforward enough. Notice that unlike most 1:48 big winged card models, this one employs very little formers/spars. However, this did not affect the assembly of the wings.

Almost done! I did a sloppy job at wrapping the fuselage skin over the formers. Because of that, some of the formers stuck out and became obvious when the wings were fitted. Hence, I had to 'smooth' out those areas by sanding it with 800grit sand paper.

Completion
Though the model came with landing gears, it did not have provisions for wheel wells. This made assembly a lot easier at the expense of some missing details.

A brief introduction

2008-03-14T06:00:00.001-07:00

What is card modeling?
Simply put, card modeling is similar to sculpting but using paper or card (and ONLY paper and card) as your medium.
If done properly, card models can look like plastic models.

Here's a sample of the stuff I've done so far:

Heinkel He-162, Designed by Marek

Currently, my skills limit me to building models designed by other people. But I plan to change that soon enough. :)