red Dog

And resupply U-boats, providing fuel, munitions and food supply to the other attack boats. The story is quite interesting. I stalled a bit on the forward torpedo room because of the empty foreground. Trumpeter wants you to simply place two air tanks there but that leaves a lot of empty spaces and play against the cramped area I want to try to depict with this build. These tanks are not correctly located and are partly under the bunks. But if I build bunks on top of them they will be too high so I decided to cut the floor, create a 3D piece to mirror the opposite side and display the lower bunks. The tanks are relocated and attached from above. If I add a floor for them I'll hide too much of the torpedo storage room under the floor of the room. That's not perfect but the best compromise I could come up with. I intend to show a lot of supplies throughout the boat and try to render the mess it must have been in there with 40-50 stinking males confined in there. I went to cult-3D and downloaded as much stuff as possible and scaled them to 48th scale. Plates, coffeepots, cooking pots, rice bags, potatoes bags, tin cans, fruit cases, salads, carrots, 88mm shells & cardboard casings, etc . All these will compliment nicely what I could gather from black dog supplies. I just haven't found ham and sausages yet but I want them to hang from the floor and I am thinking about hanging hammocks full of supplies from the roof of the torpedo room. Here's very early impression of what I am leaning to: I am also debating to put 2 more torpedoes on the floor as it was often done, must made the crew life really difficult

makes perfect sense, thank you very much. Learning bit by bits thanks

Ok, Well I guess my questions might have been a little too generic The first experiment I did was to create some bed bunks and closets for the U-552 project. That's pretty basic and worked well. Then I printed some STL grabbed on cult3D (thanks Fancherello who creates outstanding free models for us) That's a good exercice for example to work the slicer and play with supports. Now here's a real question. For the U-552 project, I need to make 88mm gun rounds tube. Easy enough to design in 3D But what about printing them? These can be printed vertically and more often than not do not require much support from the slider software That said, I often see these 3D parts being protected by side poles or side walls like pictured below What is the purpose of these side poles and are they created in the 3D models or the slicer software? My guess is they are part of the 3D model. But since I don't see much support from these poles to the 3D parts, what purpose do they serve?

Funny you mention this... the thought of converting to a late double windergarden platform crossed my mind. Downside to that is that most of these late war U-boat lost the 88mm forward gun from 1943 onward, at least those operating in the Atlantic. And imho the 88mm (105mm on Type IX) are quite a U-boat feature. Maybe that's why most of the models are for early war U-boat. But I agree with you, they look much more interesting.

No idea short of guessing someone made a terrible mistake confusing left and right That said, that acrylic side is not great for a look through. It's quite thick and you get a lot of diffraction. I plan on solving the issue by cutting it. So I'll cut the acrylic side on the hull and cut the plain side on the conning tower. and paint the rest. Initially I wanted to have this beast surfaced but in a transparent resin box to simulate the ocean. This seems to be overkill and present too many challenges (experience with large volume of deep ocean water resin, costs and a high risk of not seeing anything inside after all. I would love to have a resin box that I could add or remove the sub from. But that's something I can hopefully give some thoughts at the last stage of this project.

Good tip, many thanks. Didn't know anything about that

Wood grain is something new for me. So new that I actually forgot how I painted the first pieces and I had to search again when I wanted to paint the next run of walls Yet it is quite simple... So I'm documenting this in case my old brain has a blank again First a base coat of XF-57 then brush paint oil Burnt sienna and leave for 10-15 minutes then remove paint with a flat brush following the wood vein direction. remove paint from the brush, do it again Play with the effect until desired result but always dry clean the brush before the next pass. Then leave to cure for a week. When impatient, wait a day or two, then airbrush a thin coat of varnish so at least you can take them with your fingers. But it will remain delicate until fully cured and that may take a week.

Yep U-552 is the logical choice for now, but I usually hate doing whatever everybody else is doing, so that might change when I work on the exterior at late stage of the build

Thanks guys. Definitely watched das boot, but nowadays I am a big fan of Greyhound Work started a few weeks ago on the forward torpedo compartment. Here are blueprints in side and top view: It is made of different section: - the bulkhead - the floor - the 4 fishes stored under the floor (I should remove the det) - the 4 launcher tubes - the side wall with the 6 bunks. Interesting things might happen in this compartment. - It can be packed with sleeping crew, in the bunks and on the floor. - The crew can be set loading one of the torpedo tube (which is the option I probably will chose as it goes better with the rest of the scenario I'll show) - Torpedoes can be loaded from above deck, and slide into the compartment through the pressure hull. One might think that the boat needs to be docked for that but there is one fish stowed in its own pressure tube, just under the deck floor that the crew could get while at sea. It's a complicated manoeuvre they did on the surface being very vulnerable in calm seas, using the cradle and a winch on top of a pole, placed between the loading hatch and the tower. The same winch was used to pull the fish out of it's rotated stowage tube and to let it slide into the forward (or aft -as the same mechanism was available aft) torpedo room. I'm not ruling out the option, but at this time I am considering 88mm gun in action so that rules out torpedo loading above deck. Current compartment painting is made with acrylics: XF-66 for dark grey, H338 for light grey. The fishes are aluminium XF-16 and their head bronze X-33; props and fuses are painted gold X-31. The floor is X-32 Wood is made with oils which I'll detail in the next post. Weathering the floor has started but it's far from being finished The launching tubes parts are not quite detailed. RC Subs provide the tube doors and I will detail these later on. The forward pressure hull part is provided in resin by RC Subs as well. If you don't have it the pressure hull is flat and that's highly visible. So this part is quite necessary IMHO. I will probably detail the visible side of the tubes a bit more later on. Then comes the back wall with the frames for the bunks. Trumpeter obviously couldn't detail the right side of the room since doing so would prevent us to look inside, but they could have done a bit better nevertheless. I intent to add at least a few lower bunks which should not impact the view inside and leave enough space to look at the rest of the room. Then I stalled on how to implement the bunks. Trumpeter only offer a plastic part for the mattresses which really aren't up to par. I initially cut some thin slice of foam which I intended to paint white but I wasn't satisfied with the result. It took me a while to figure it out. I designed mattresses and pillows and 3D printed them (a bunch of them) then designed a decal for the linen (white was too immaculate and I wanted something more military issued) and laser printed them on a blank white decal sheet And finally I created the blankets with toilet paper soaked with a mixture of PVA glue and water. Result after the basic layer of paint:: Much better although the linen need another coat of decal solution. Normally the bunks are folded up when loading torpedoes, a process I intend to show. But I'll load one of the right side tube to keep clear from the beds and populate the open side of the room. Lots of details will also required on the back walls The roof has been painted in light grey with the wood framing. The loaded torpedo will hang from there and I intend to add a lot of supplies in the room as well. 4-5 leds will be wired on the roof for compartment lighting as this turns pretty dark once the roof is closed. i'll try to manage the electrical side of things at later stage of the built. But I need to plan a bit ahead to make sure I still can add lights where I need them without destroying too much of the prior work.

Buy 3D printer: check Buy resin: check Buy IPA: check Buy cleaning and curing station: check Learn Fusion 360: In progress Calibrate your exposure time depending on your resin type: check Learn a slicer software (chitubox for now): check Design and Print your first part: check To learn 3D design in fusion 360, I decided to model a 1:1 Flight data recorder for the Aces 2 ejection seat. Incidentally that part is missing from my 1:1 aces 2 seat replica and is a perfect candidate to learn the basics of 3D modelling and printing. The box is super simple, but the connector presented quite a few challenges and I learned a great deal trying to replicate them. This was a fun project that taught me basic fusion 360 use and the 3D print flow. I can say now that I can use probably 5% of the Fusion 360 feature. And I'm not intimated anymore by the 3D printer. Lots of stuff remains to be learned but I'm on the road pointing forward. But then now what? Obviously I want to use this for aircraft models. I found some stl files (mostly made by Fancherello) on Cults 3D and printed a few of them with success (Corsair windshield frame, SH-60 wheels, hornet stuff etc etc) I'd like to design my own parts and have a few projects in mind: - adding missing part for my U552 project, that's quite easy to design as the shapes are rather easy to design. - converting a Tamiya F-16C into a MLU. Parts for this are hard to come by and I really have a lot of MLUs waiting to be built - ultimately doing pilot figures to add in my cockpit - I'm a bit tired of the usual pose the commercial companies seems to always offer. That is a crazy goal, I don't think I will ever succeed with that considering I cannot even draw a face But then comes the challenges: It seems designing aircraft parts is quite more advanced. How to do panel lines: How to do complicated shapes like airfoil, curves, .... How to ensure the precision in the process to ensure a good fit with the kit's parts? How to manage supports: it seems scale model parts have no support or at least as few as possible (the reason is obvious) but that implies another design philosophy, especially in the slicer Where to get correct dimensions to replicate the parts So the first part I want to try is the tail of the F-16 MLU - more specifically the parabrake container. It's a rather small part, with a complicated profile and it needs to match the Tamiya forward tail section. It has panel lines and rivets. But I'll take any advice you guys might have, links to tutorial for this specific process, tips, hints, anything Many thanks

That's crazy I know. My kids gave me that look when they saw that huge box. My wife didn't even bother to raise her beautiful eyes. Implicitly that meant keep that beast in your man's room and don't you dare store it outside - I am sure she is enjoying the struggle I will go through to enforce her rules Luckily she does not come in the garage. That's a commission build. and I welcome a break from things with wings - although I miss them already... The kit is huge: 140cm and feature internal details in 6 compartments: front torpedo room + crew quarters officer quarters conn rear crew quarters + kitchen diesel engine room electric room + rear torpedo compartment And about 40 figures to go along... Lighting is mandatory for viewing inside so A magic scale factory led kit will be added to the project. One hull side is transparent to see the details inside but I intend to paint it and cut it open rather than suffering the plexiglass effect. The tower surprisingly also feature a transparent side, but opposite to the hull ... The kit is rather simplistic and much detail will be necessary to bring this where I would like. I sourced all RCsubs PE but I will be short of many details for the inside to overcome the shortcut Trumpeter took by roughly making only half a boat internal. Luckily the new 3D printer will come to the rescue. Another aspect dearly missing is supplies. So lots of crates, hamacs, bottles, cans, vegetables will be added a little bit of everywhere. I guess this will be a long journey and I found myself intrigued by the infamous U-boot threat in the battle of the Atlantic. And there is much to read about it. I'll build this in stage, compartment by compartment and will probably work on the hull when I'm fed up with internal details. Let's dive into this.

I really would really recommend to venture into the world of multiplayer gents. When you're serious about this, it's really a new different ball game Below is a vlog of a wannabe pilot with other wannabee pilots and wannabee controllers (most of us are also real pilots or real controllers

thanks gents, I plan to get a max of bench time today, so the day looks bright enough Cheers

Weird choice about the B? Did Kitty hawk release a B? Or is the D easily converted to a B model Hope they plan on releasing a D model cockpit (or is the N about the same)?

I can't believe they did this? I saw it and I thought what? finally a MLU in 1/32 ... but no just a nice decoration on an incorrect F-16 model... Really Revell?