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Hello there. Maybe you know this phenomenon. I have several more or less unfinished models lying around. And then, something completely new comes to mind. Some months ago, I was thrilled by the idea of a 1/32 Marauder, and despite my other builds, I started to work on a 3d-model. I already printed some major parts. I now have some days of leave of absence, and hope to make some progress (as well with my other unfinished projects). But who knows when I get distracted with something completely new again Propellers and engines are lent from a free 3d-model for visual demonstration only. Here is a picture of an early stage, where you can see how the wings are made of several segments: The main fuselage is divided into three sections due to the maximum build-volume of my 3d-printer (about 20 cm). The left and right halves are 0,5 mm apart, with a recessed line in the middle. The three sections are first glued together. This approach helps to keep alignment. Otherwise, gluing six separately printed fuselage parts together while keeping alignment would be a nightmare. On the fuselage, I already scribed the panel-lines, with the drawing in the Warpaint book as a reference. The fuselage is now more or less ready to be sawed apart into left and right halves to get access into the interior. The most important "tool" when doing this kind of modelling: Cheers Alex

VERY interesting day at Udvar Hazy and spent more than a little bit of time in the restoration hangar. Here are some of the pictures from the visit, but please visit the ImageShack link to see them all - so I don't end up posting 65 pictures here and boring you all to tears. I have the high res versions of all of these if someone is looking for something in particular, just message me. The stories from Pat, the gentleman who was talking about the restoration effort, were fantastic and I'll try and capture some of them here for your enjoyment and amusement ( as well as education ). She got lots of attention from the tours, as you can imagine. Hint for next year. The facility stays open till 7 for the Open House. BIG crowds for the restoration tours starting at noon. BUT if you get there around 3, the crowds really thin out and you have LOTS of time to talk to the experts, which we did anyway. We ran into Buz Carpenter (SR-71 pilot who came and did a program at our club meeting a couple of months ago) as well as the gentleman who painted the Uhu (by hand, he has a fascinating time-elapse video of him doing the wing - in a 100 degree paint booth. Took him 8 hours!). Flak Bait was a big draw with a constant crowd: First, Flak Bait was over painted olive drab over gray after the war, and much of the restoration is focused on getting that post-war paint off. Thus far most of the 'new' OD is gone, but what was left behind is not exactly what the aircraft looked like at the end of the war. VERY poor storage has worn the paint even further than when she was found in a boneyard outside of Munich at the end of the war. What is particularly interesting is that once she was 'discovered' she sat for more than a while, and in the meantime, air and crewmen would take pictures with her, and then sign, or scratch their names into the gray paint on her undersides. Some was in ink, other names in pencil and at least one was via a knife and scratched in. There are hundreds of names they are trying to preserve thus the gray undersides are taking forever to preserve. There is some talk that since this really amounted to vandalism care should not be in preserving the signatures, but instead in preserving the original paint. Not taking sides here. The preservation will not put her back into any sort of 'fluid operation', just mechanical. Her nose wheel, made of magnesium, was cleaned up and when the original tire was put back on the wheel, instead of the usual 32psi, they wanted to inflate it to 10psi. It exploded at 5psi. Oh well! The main gear was preserved 'as is' thus the dirt and grease is as original as they can make it. Here is Pat doing his discussion. Cockpit details are also the subject of preservation including the padding inside Talked to the woman doing the preservation work and it is just fascinating to hear how painstaking the conservationists are in their work. Here is a photo of the right side wing and I see more than few patches on the top of that surface! And here are a few pics of all of the pieces Top turret: Hope you all enjoy the pictures. Chris