Starfighter

I'm glad you guys like it! She's growing...

I have spent quite some time adding more surface detail and preparing the main gear wells. The fuselage surface detail is pretty much finished, so I went ahead and mirrored the LH side fuselage halves in order to get a full fuselage. I will now add the non-symmetrical surface detail to each half before I can print them. Basic detail added to the main landing gear wells: No need to put too much effort into the forward portion of the bay as it'll be hidden by the closed lower gear door anyway. Like the big forward landing gear door (which was even locked with the landing gear in locked position), they were pretty much always closed on the ground. Isn't she a beauty? The full depth intake trunks are visible from this perspective as well.

Cool - so Legacy Hornet parts for the Academy and a set for the Trumpeter Super Hornet, right?

I'm glad you guys like it! I've been doing some wannabe-engineering to add stability, ease assembly and to improve fit. Adding surface detail is extremely tedious work but it adds life to the model. You may call me a rivet counter, but I am actually counting them - and I often then create adifferent number of rivets on the model. In my opinion, it is more important to capture the look of the surface detail instead of offering a correct number of rivets. Keep in mind, all the surface detail is not really to scale - like I said, it has to "look" right.

Cheers gentlemen! Dave, I use an Anycubic Photon Mono X which enables me to print pretty large parts in a good quality. The cockpit is nearing completion. I made a test print of the LH side side consoles and the inner sidewalls and testfitted them - doesn't look too bad. There is a lot more CAD work to do as well. The front and rear IPs are pretty much ready for a first test print: The area behind the pilot's seat is super busy but good photos are very hard to come by. I did my best to replicate the radarscope fairing and the viewfinder based on photos and the works drawings I have on hand. The only missing element is the canopy actuator. With all the wires added, it should looks busy enough - and most of it will be hidden below the canopy anyway.

Glad to hear it inspires you, that's the aim of showing the progress on this project! I don't think Fusion is better than Inventor, but it requires less parameters which makes it more suited to this kind of work IMO. If you're used to Inventor, you will find some functionalities in Fusion annoying, but you'll get used to it. Ask me how I know!

Another test print. 0,2mm is a good width for groove lines in 1/32nd scale and I am pretty sure my printer wouldn't be hable to handle thinner details anyway. Cockpit looks quite good; fit is very tight and the parts need some adjustment, but keep in mind that thing was designed by a total moron (=me) sitting on his couch or during ht ebreak at work... I am rather happy with the look so far. The intake design works as desired as well. I will now add more details to the cockpit and add all the surface detail before printing the next parts.

Anthony, that is a thing of beauty - every update is a pure pleasure. Keep it up!

I would love to, Anthony! These are the Aires bays by the way. Like I said, there are some photos of the wheel bays around but literally nothing at all showing the gun bays.

Thank you guys! Motivation is still high and asalready mentioned, my wife's urgent desire to rebuild the living room limits my "real" bench time. The cockpit is slowly taking shape: The tail fairing wqas modified again and is now more correct shape wise and a solid part. The tailcone will be a separate part. Wings and LERX have been added. The big LERX gives it away as a late Vigilante. As you can see, I have also started adding surface detail to the rear fuselage section. Tonight, I will run another test print of the forward fuselage with the revised surface detail. Stay tuned!

Perfection!

My wife's urgent desire to remodel our living room has unfortunately had a massive impact on my progress. All I have managed was to paint the gear wells and the gun bay. Strange enough, there are tons of Skyhawk photos around but literally none of the gun bays. My friend Fred aka Stusbke was kind enough to send me the pics he had on hand and those show green gun bays - sadly,the guns weren't installed. I am wondering what was the colour of the ammo feeds - silver? If you guys could guide me towards some good gun bay photos, I'd be more than grateful!

Phenomenal work, Fanch! Great to see you 're back here on LSP. Now, keep those updates coming!

Things are getting more complex. I already did several full cockpits in CAD in the past, but it's always a challenge. I will use Anyz knobs so I already added 0,5mm holes in the appropriate locations on the front RH side console. The basic shape of the rear side consoles was rather complex to get right. The next step is to add the basic shape if the rear IP before adding the inner sidewalls and detail.

It sure looks like a lot of work - rest assured it's worth the effort. Keep up the brilliant work!

Cheers guys! Freg, I actually included the link in my last post, but here it is again: https://www.youtube.com/c/RCCAD2VR Matt, the landing gear is indeed one of the most difficult points of this projects. Printing it directly around a metal core wont be possible, but inserting one will be necessary for sure. A metal landing gear will be a must on this big beast - the question is whether to have it metal sintered (expensive!) or to solder it from metal profiles.

Thank you guys! Geedubelyer, I don't have invented the term "scratchprinting" - it's a thing on Facebook and is the best way to describe printing parts you have designed your self IMO. Thomas, I am clearly a beginner wirth Fusion but I would not consider myself a beginner with CAD in general. I did similar things in the past with Inventor but never used the surfacing option as I did on this project. Anyway, there is a very good tutorial which has taught me most of what was needed for this project - it's a tutorial how to design an R/C plane but describes pretty much all needed basics to design an aircraft (except surface detail). Check out this channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RCCAD2VR Last time I told you I wasn't able to modify the groove lines which were too wide to my liking. I decided I couldn't live with them as they were so I decided to redo them entirely; they are now 0,2mm wide. The IFR probe door was pretty tricky but worked out rather nicely. I just need to add two more subdivisions. Here's a quick comparison between the fuselage with 0,2mm and 0,3mm groove lines: 0,2mm (IFR probe still missing) 0,3mm Not super obvious on screen but I am pretty sure the difference will be significant on the printed parts. Quick look at the intake and main gear wells. The gap between the forward intake portion and the intake trunk is part of the fuselage. Forward fuselage with new groove lines as it looks now.

As some of you may know, the RA-5C is not only one of my favourite aircraft, I had also started building a 32nd scale one from scratch some 10 years ago. Whilst the shape didn't look too bad, my choice of material was not ideal for scribing and I didn't have a propre solution for the wings. It has never been out of sight and I worked on in from time to time, but the more time I spent on it, the more clear it became that my old scratchbuilt fuselage was not the right base for what I wanted to do. Despite all the other ongoing projects, the Vigi was always on my mind. @Dandiego was kind enough to share some excellent works drawings he had gotten from user TomcatKirby with me. They were so detailed and looked so accurate that I decided to start working with Fusion 360 right away - I needed to learn surface modelling for which Fusion is an excellent tool. After watching a few tutorials I gave it a go. The early drawing looked good enough to convince me this was doable. Here is a look at the early drawings with the surfaces being very basic: As already mentioned, these shapes are very basic - the surfaces are not tangent causing the curves not being smooth. This required a lot of tweaking and threedimensional thinking. The learning curve is very steep and it is huge fun - this is how it looks after two weeks of intensive work with surface detail added to the forward fuselage: The tail fairing is a very complex area. Drawing this was a real mindf*ck to say the least. Adding material thickness to this part is very difficult and I haven't found a solution for this yet - but I am working on it. When designing an entire aircraft, one has to bear in mind how to build and paint it later on, so a bit of engineering is required. I decided to combine the intake trunks and main landing gear wells with structural elements to ensure the very large fuselage will not deform over time once assembled. Details will of course be added before printing the parts. The intakes with the variable ramps are pretty much ready. The forward one is part of the intake, the rear one will be installed after painting. Of course I couldn't resist and ran a test print of the forward fuselage to check the shapes and surface detail. I am pretty happy with the result; the groove lines are 0,3mm wide but look a tad wide in my opinion. I sadly cannot modify them anymore at this point. They will become finer after a coat of primer anyway and I hope they won't be too dominant on the finished model. I'll reduce their width to 0,2mm on the next model I do for sure. I hope I can finish the CAD files in the foreseeable future - I will update the thread as I progress. Just one remark right at the beginning of the project - there are NO plans to sell either printed parts nor STLs at this point.

Another gem in the making - great start, Marcin!

Just a little update. Some small parts got heir initial treatment and I unmasked the hell holes and nose avionics bays. The photos taken with my mobild phone overemphasize the contrast - I'll push myself to take my pics with the DSLR from now on. Some weat and tear on the pylons. I'll add a little more grime on the leading edges and around the hatchs, but not too much. The rear a/c did not wear that TPS paintjob very long . The nose avionics bays add a lot of interest and a bit of colour to the rather dull scheme. The hell holes were detailed with lead wire and braided lines (the latter from Anyz). I left the Mr Masking sol on for too long, so I'll have to clean up the edges.

Brilliant progress Peter, almost there! Can't wait to see more!

Profimodeller it is, sorry faor causing confusion! I will revise the post - thanks for pointing it out!

I have printed the canopy for my S-3B on a Formlabs Form 2 back in the day and the Formlabs clear resin does not yellow over time. Most if not all clear resins compatible with cheaper DLP printers seem to yellow over time.

Thank you guys! Matt, that's indeed another one in the background - this one is going to be an ES-3A once it's done. Did I mention I like esoteric stuff? In the meantime, Mr Portrait and me were busy preparing some more masks. I need a new blade, but even with the old one, the results are pretty nice. I love that little machine! And here it comes... The other side sadly wasn't as successful - I pulled off a bit of paint when I removed the mask. I possible pulled it off too quickly... So out came the sanding paper... Touched up. After a coat of matt varnish, it should be good enough to repaint the "Bandits" logo. Bonus: gun barrels and refueling probe tip from Profimodeller (not plusmodel as initiall stated!). The barrels are mightly impressive - just have a close look at them!

The engine looks lovely, Dave! Makes me want to dig out my Tiger as well...