Bf109K-4, I./KG (J)6, Bohemia, May 1945

[Shawn M]

wow...this makes me want to rip my ETC rack of my Bf-110 and totally re-do it

[LSP_Kevin]

Most impressive work Mark. Your ETC rack is unbelievably good! You should cast and sell them.

 

Kev

[dodgem37]

'wow...this makes me want to rip my ETC rack of my Bf-110 and totally re-do it'

Shawn, Don't do that! Believe me, this has been a pain in the bum. After I do the same for the Hartmann build it will be a long time before I do this again. I think.

 

'Most impressive work Mark. Your ETC rack is unbelievably good! You should cast and sell them.'

Thank you Kevin. Suggesting that I cast and sell them, to me, is truly a high compliment. But! There are better and more accurate products currently on the market. This is just a home remedy of a wild idea. It isn't accurate by any means. But it does look like the ETC rack. Which is the least one could hope for.

 

Thanks again Shawn, Kevin.

Thanks for looking everyone.

Sincerely,

Mark

[Shawn M]

Im building the Revell Bf-110 kit, the whole thing is a pain in the bum! Hence Im taking a break from it for other pains in the bum, lol...a revell 1/32 corsair and an academy 1/32 P-51d.

[dodgem37]

I have put in a little more work on the ETC rack, which had been making me a little cranky. So I apologize if I sounded cranky in my last post.

What had been bothering me was the seating of the brass rod and the repeated trimming of .5mm here and there to get it the proper height in which to set properly into the bits that Jerry provided. I decided to drill the seatings all the way thru and fill the resulting hole with plastic rod and start over again. Which I did.

 

After drilling new seating holes I cut brass rod 15mm long, giving me plenty of excess length with which to play.

 

After cutting the rod I sanded one end because while roll cutting it develops a ridge, enlarging the rod diameter a little bit at that location. Then I dipped it in super glue and immediately fixed the end, to make the rounded seat. Once that was accomplished I taped on the fairing, slipped on the bushing and leg, and located the assembly into the new seat.

 

Because the rod wasn't rigidly set as before it could ride up and down and became easier to manage when it came time to locate the drop tank.

 

The bits that Jerry provided were moved around a tad to locate them in their proper place.

 

The key to making this whole thing work was drilling thru and being able to move the rod up or down as needed. The excess will be trimmed before I locate the base into the fuselage.

 

I forgot to take pictures of a head and tail shot so you can see that alignment, as those two are the critical alignments. I have a wedding to go to over the weekend so I won't be able to post until Monday.

 

After all of that, I am happy with this outcome. Thank you for all of your compliments, patience, and understanding while I tried to figure this out. And I especially apologize to Shawn and Kevin for my crankiness in the last post.

 

I've got the landing gear door for this build, the other ETC rack for the Hartmann build, which if I hadn't solved this nagging problem I had considered not doing, then the canopy for this and the Hartmann build still to do. I have ended up buying Squadron Shop K-4 canopies. They are sweet. I have pulled out and looked at a couple of DB engines and references I have lying around. A Verlinden and Hasegawa E engine and a Revell engine from somewhere. So Jerry, I haven't forgotten.

 

Thanks for looking.

Sincerely,

Mark

[Pfuf]

Fantastic work followed this tread closly to see it all come to gether.

 

johan

[JRutman]

You really captured the look of that tank set-up brother,

J

[nmayhew]

Mark,

 

truly stunning building

 

inspirational stuff

 

Nick

[mattlow]

Great stuff, as usual.

 

Hope to see more progress on your 109s soon.

 

Matt

[dodgem37]

Johan, Jerry, Nick, Matt & Oliver,

Thank you for your very generous compliments.

 

The wedding we went to the other weekend was nice, but it was way too hot (being 109 farenheit) to be in a tuxedo (as was requested on the invitation) even if it was indoors.

 

After travelling the 5 hours or so to get back to the Washington, DC area we found the lights were out on the Maryland side of the beltway and when we reached our exit the place looked like a tornado had gone thru it. No lights, branches down and trees uprooted. We found out later that it was actually a 100MPH wind shear that tore thru the area with, quite naturally, the worst going right thru my neighborhood, which I found out from the emergency electricity repair crews that came in from out of town (over 400 units from 4 states) to help repair the area.

 

When we got here the place was a mess. Trees down everywhere (too many to count), telephone poles down (2), trees in houses (4), trees on houses (5), trees on cars (4), trees on cars and in houses (2), wires everywhere (too many to count), trees across roads (4), monster limbs everywhere (again, too many to count), and 95 degrees farenheit at 9pm at night. It was going to be a hot few days without electricity.

 

We had practically no damage, and none to the house, luckily. 4 monster limbs were torn off of a couple of tree on my and my neighbors lot and knocked down a couple of sections of our adjoining deer fence. Our neighborhood was developed 50 years ago or so and is situated next to a wooded preserve. Poplar is a common tree in this neck of the woods, and poplar is a relatively soft wood (I still wouldn't want to run into a poplar tree, though) with a superficial root system. So any hard wind will either topple the tree over, rip the upper trunk from the lower trunk (2), or rip limbs from the trunk.

 

The sound of chain saws had been filling the air from dawn to dusk, with the sound of the chippers now drowning them out. We were without electricity for 4 days and internet access until Saturday, I think. Luckily we really didn't need it, which some of our neighbors who require oxygen, did. There were over 300,000 without power in Montgomery County (the county we live in) alone.

 

During the last big power outage our neighborhood had my generator gas tank sprang a leak and spilled onto the hot exhaust shield which created quite a scene on my front porch. As luck would have it, both of my fire extinguishers had lost their charge so I had to drag the generator off of the porch onto my driveway as my wife called the fire department while I hosed it down to try to just dissipate the flames somewhat for what seemed an interminable amount of time until the fire department showed up. It turned into a 3 alarm fire when 3 trucks from different fire stations showed up. Because we live in the woods the fire department was not taking any chances.

 

So now that the power and internet has been restored and life is a bit back to normal (although the ac went out the moment we got electricity and is only now being fixed) I have done a little work on the canopy.

 

I was planning to move right into the G-14 ETC rack when I found myself breaking out the modified rack and a drop tank from a derelict kit and matching them up. I took this as a sign that I was mentally tired from working on the K-4 rack and looking to short change the G-14, which I don't want to do.

 

I mentioned in an the earlier post I had purchased the Squadron K-4 vac. It is easily .040 thick and has taken a bit of sanding to remove the excess. I dipped it in future and have let it, and all of the other clear parts, set overnight.

 

I have decided not to post the side and end views of the rack as they seem to me to be redundant imagery.

 

That's all for now. As if it hasn't been enough!

Thanks for looking in.

Sincerely,

Mark

[JRutman]

Wow man,happy to see you back and safe. Hope that things rapidly resume their former order in your life. Here's hoping that one day our country will start burying the power lines like Europe does. As snow ,ice and wind seem to be with us for good(and why is this not realized by the powers that be) it really is time to address this issue.

Looking forward to your excellent updates.

J

[WrongWay]

Fantastic work! Will be watching this one.

[dodgem37]

Thank you, Jerry. Things are back to a relatively normal state now. At least we have AC, which is good.

Thank you as well, Don.

 

Well, let me see if I can do this without embarrassing myself further by double posting, AGAIN! AGAIN!

 

For as laborous as the ETC rack felt, that is how easy the canopy fell into place.

 

This is the Squadron Shop Late G-6/G-14, K-4 vac. I guess I give it about an .040 thickness. Plenty sturdy to work with, hard to cut, and a little time consuming to sand. But for me, worth the time and effort. Here the construction is in its mock-up stage. I have already dipped the unit in future and let it dry. Since I am using super glue to glue the parts together I decided to tape the inside area I would not want affected by super glue fogging. I didn't want to take a chance. Most of the parts are taped together but there are some pieces that are super glued. In a post on Jerry's P-38 build he mentioned casting a canopy in clear resin. That got me to thinking. But that is for another time.

 

I modified the armored headrest, removing the tri-angular protrusion along the bottom that would set into the kit canopy.

 

In this and the last pic you may notice a little square of white plastic attached to the framing, just in front of the headrest. This represents a plexiglas to frame attachment point.

 

The headrest to bottom framing is an angle piece of .005 strip.

 

It's hard to see in the previous and this pic but I located the attachment point onto the headrest and the framing for a bridge connection.

 

More to follow.

[dodgem37]

I think earlier in this thread I had mentioned that I had stalled out on a Wild Sau G-14. Well, I decided to fit the canopy onto the maiden so she wouldn't feel forgotten.

 

Overall view. I need to do some clean-up painting where the tape is. When I'm at a similar point with the Hartmann build, I will continue this exercise. I made the stencils for the markings.

 

From the front. My apologies for the blurriness.

 

A liitle from the port side. I need to repair that plexiglas to framing attachment point.

 

More from the port side. The starboard side of the canopy base framing needs to be extended a minimum of 1 mm so it can set onto the canopy railing a little more securely.

 

From the rear. Here it is much easier to see the headrest to frame attachment points.

 

Thanks for looking.

Sincerely,

Mark

[PhilB]

That canopy really is a masterpiece Mark!

Wouldn't worry about double posts, can happen to any of us sometimes!

Looking forward to seeing more of your superb work.

 

Phil