F11F Blue Angels
Bottom showing 3D printed wheel wells.
It took a lot of iterations of putty and sanding to get to this point.
At the beginning. I had just cut out the wheel wells.
Wing glove part - test fit. The wings attach with 2.5 degrees anhedral. I used a brass rod as a spar. The spar only goes about 2 cm into the glove part.
Wheel wells and inlets installed. Bonding tabs added. Ready to close up. The resin parts are heavier than plastic, so you have to consider where the finished center of gravity will be - otherwise you may have a tail-sitter.
3D printed burner ring and tail pipe. This slides into the rear shroud, and can be installed after the rest of the kit is finished.
Rudder and aft end of fuselage (rear shroud) are cut off and will be replaced with printed parts. Cockpit is getting roughed in.
The tip is designed so that that it can be installed in the folded position (90 degrees down), however in this build it will be installed in the flying position.
I used the original vacuform vertical stab. I considered printing a new one, which would look a little better, but I was worried about the added weight. I don't want a tail-sitter.
Getting the rear end just right took a lot of work. Much of the drain work was done with Milliput and Bondo. In the background you can see the wings getting the same treatment. They came out of the printer a bit warped in places due to insufficient support. I've since learned to support the hell out of them, because fixing surface defects is a lot easier than fixing warpage.
Rear shroud as shown in CAD. I'm using AC3D for the CAD work. I'm probably the only one on Earth who does it this way, but I was already familiar with AC3D because of some flight simulator work I've done.
Working on the paint masks in GIMP. I'm using the amarillo usaf font, which usually works well for this, but the font used by the blue angels was a bit more bold. I replaced the square "periods" with round ones, and adjusted the spacing to squish it horizontally. This is pretty close to what they used during the later years of the long-nose F11F period.
Version 2.0 of the left main gear. Since the gear well cutouts are done by hand I have to use an iterative process to get the main gear geometry correct. It may take 3 or 4 tries to get a good fit, then I'll redo the whole thing with more detail. Then I'll do the same process for the right main gear, which is slightly different because the wells were cut out by hand.
Nose gear and left main gear are printed. That's enough to now flip it over and see if the airplane sits at the correct nose up attitude. Looks good. Note that some museum Tigers are displayed with the nose strut lowered which was not the usual stance.
Comments
17 2 September 2022, 03:45
David CulpOne of the things I learned about vacuform kits is that very thin objects, such a fighter jet wings and tails, don't form well. The wing surfaces are too flat and sometimes warped because there isn't enough tension on the material while it's being formed. Also, edges get rounded a bit, which means trailing edges need to be either 1) sanded down to a sharp edge, or 2) 3D printed or carved from wood instead.
In this case I printed wings and horizontal tails. Care must be taken to support the objects well for printing or they'll come out warped. Remember - it's easier to fix surface defects due to heavy supports than it is to fix warped parts. I learned that lesson with this project.
For the vertical tail I used the kit part, but I printed a new rudder. A printed vertical tail would look better, but I was worried about having too much weight at the rear of the airplane - making it a tail-sitter.
4 September 2022, 17:07
Robert PodkońskiHere you can find an interesting and effective way of dealing with thin vacu parts: Breguet Br. Bizerte | Album by potez452 (1:72)
Perhaps you find it useful.
4 September 2022, 19:48
bughunterMichael is right, that is a very interesting build! The combination of kit parts with 3D printing is the same way Eduard is going nowadays.
Regarding the mask work: I suggest to use Inkscape here. It is OpenSource like Gimp, but is a very powerful vector graphics program. I use it to draw and cut masks (with a plugin) on my Silhouette cutter (as there is no Linux software for the cutter by manufacturer).
29 November 2022, 07:56
Ludvík KružíkI agree with bughunter. Inkscape is a great tool. I use it to create my own decals. The program allows you to paint an object large enough and with all the details. Because the program works with vector graphics, if you then scale the object down to the desired scale, you don't lose detail.
29 November 2022, 11:20
David CulpThanks for the Inkscape tip. So far I haven't needed to learn a new way to draw, but I'll keep that in mind if I need to switch. It's interesting that I also do my 3D drawing (CAD) the "old way" working directly with meshes, while most people these days have switched to parametric CAD.
14 December 2022, 00:56
Album info
1/32 scale vacuform F11F
