Hobby King 1875mm B-17G Flying Fortress V2

[Grossman56]

Turret in place, not glued...

The rear piece fits over the original piece, with a bit of trimming but acts as a guide to align the turret for gluing. The pics show it roughly in place, just some fine tuning. Up to Dave now how to proceed.

Looks good though!

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

[Elbee]

Looks great, Danger. Nicely done, Sir. Best, LB

[jetfool]

Looks great. I envoy you guys 3d/design talents. Feel that I'm still in caveman mode. Excellent work Rex

[Aros]

Looks great. I envoy you guys 3d/design talents. Feel that I'm still in caveman mode. Excellent work Rex

Welcome to the club.

[Grossman56]

The trick, to me at least, was to get the shape I wanted, then scale it to the correct dimensions. Worked well. The trouble is that if you don't use the program regularly, you forget some things, so I have to come up with something else. That is after the Tigercat and the Corsair and Old Crow and the P51B and the possible saving of BBD and, oh yeah, Rex's pilot to finish
I'm going to have to retire, I don't have time to work

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

[jetfool]

Grossman56,
I highly recommend retirement, every day is Saturday.
Aros,
New tools are great but hard to teach an old Donkey new tricks.
Had good news about my better half, no cancer, so life can get back to normal (more honey-do's) Stopped by the hobby and bought a few supplies for the P-47 & Phantom. carried these out in one hand- $35 worth. What happened to the good ole days
Back on the 47
Best Regards, Rex

[davegee]

Grossman56,
I highly recommend retirement, every day is Saturday.
Aros,
New tools are great but hard to teach an old Donkey new tricks.
Had good news about my better half, no cancer, so life can get back to normal (more honey-do's) Stopped by the hobby and bought a few supplies for the P-47 & Phantom. carried these out in one hand- $35 worth. What happened to the good ole days
Back on the 47
Best Regards, Rex

Hi Rex: great news to hear on your wife's health status!

So, as Dan said, he is working on a marvelous painting of the pilot figure for you for Lucky. I have a number of parts that I have printed, I'll list them below. If you think of any others you need at this time, let me know and I can put them in the box. Otherwise, once Dan finishes the pilot, probably next week sometime, I'll be ready to send the whole package of what we have so far. Anything you find out you need down the line before the show, just let me know and I can print those up too to send to you in time.

Here's what I'm looking at that we'll send you at this point:

1) four (4) Freewing F-4 drop tanks. All been used some, a few small creases or scratches in them, but all usable for flight, or even a repaint if you desire.

2) Five (5) CE prop cuffs. Just slide onto the prop and secure in place with CA, especially around the edges to get a good seal with the prop to be sure they stay on.

3) One(1) CE prop dome. Some minor printing imperfections, just need to be sanded down a bit, primed, and painted silver. You can hand torque them onto the prop shaft to create a thread inside to keep them on. They stay on fine in flight.

4) Printed pilot seat, primed, ready for painting. Has metal frame attached to back of it to fit onto the back of the cockpit. You'll just have to fiddle around with it and the pilot a bit to get the best position to glue it for proper fit in the cockpit. I attached a couple sizes of paper seat belts and shoulder harnesses I found online. I used these to look more realistic of the pilot strapped into his airplane. You can use them, or not, some fit checks may be requaired. Just cut them out and see how you can get them to fit. Glue on with white glue, or whatever.

5)Control stick, primed and painted. You can repraint the control stick's green color to better match you cockpit color if you wish.

6) Mk II RAF Gunsight. This is the type commonly used by fighters and the 56th FG at this time in the war. There are a couple of attach points that I painted silver on the front of mount that you'll see. That is where you glue it onto the front of the cockpit in the proper area so that the reflecting glass aligns with the height of the pilot's eye. If you want to fortify the mount a bit, you could glue a little strip of plastic over those two silver-painted mounting points that I mentioned. Your choice.

7) printed throttle quadrant for the left sidewall of the cockpit. You may have to cut out the one that comes in the OEM cockpit, not sure.

8) Dan's finished pilot, ready for installation

So, that's what I have so far. Should be able to send next week. I might need you to PM your address again, but I might have it on file. I'll check first to confirm.

Cheers

Davegee and Danger

[quitcherbitchen]

The Cheyenne turret is looking great Grossman. By any chance did you weigh it? I know this plane isn't affected by payload very much, but just curious.

[jetfool]

Davegee,
You and dangerous have gone out of your way to help on this project. I'm looking forward to seeing the parts and getting them into Lucky.
Best Regards, Rex

[davegee]

The Cheyenne turret is looking great Grossman. By any chance did you weigh it? I know this plane isn't affected by payload very much, but just curious.

Hi Quitcherbitchen: Dan has done the design work and I have been doing the printing. After several iterations, I think we have something close enough for this project. The latest print weighs about 2.2 ounces, using standard filament and making the walls as thin as possible. The real breakthrough I am hoping for is using some LW-PLA suggested by Elbee which can theroretically reduce the weight up to 65 per cemt. through the foaming action of the filament using a hotter temp at the nozzle and some other changes. I have printed a few parts using both standard PLA and LW-PLA. The weight is the same, but I know I don't have all the print setting changes in place at this time. I'm trying to get someone who prints a lot on various filaments in town to print up one and hopefully we'll get it less than 2 ounces, maybe quite a bit more. We'll see...

Appreciate you posting all those great period photos of the parts of the Cheyenne turret. That was quite helpful. If things work out, I hope to use the printed turret on my foam model and fly it later this year. In the meantime, I'll fly the one that I cobbled together which is passable for the time being.

Cheers

Davegee

[davegee]

Davegee,
You and dangerous have gone out of your way to help on this project. I'm looking forward to seeing the parts and getting them into Lucky.
Best Regards, Rex

We're happy to help in some small way. Looking forward to seeing pics when you finish yours up and when it goes to the show this spring!

Cheers

Davegee

[Grossman56]

I like to think that every once in a while we, as a community can chip in and help. The guys here on Hobbysquawk have been very good to me over the years so I try to pay it forward when I can.
Great news about your wife Rex. Diane's colon turned out to be cancer but the good news is it doesn't require chemo or radiation, doc says it was cured with the operation. Still, they are being cautious, she goes to see the cancer doctor next week.

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

[jetfool]

Grossman56,

Foremost glad to hear your wife will be ok. Seems these things dwell on a persons mind when we reach this age. We lost a lot of friends the last few years, makes you put things in perspective. We have good faith and that has pulled us thru.
This Forum has a lot of people that give generously of their ideas and help, and I think it's the best. Hopefully I can pay-it- forward to someone in the future.

Best Regards, Rex

[davegee]

Well, we got a good ending for the saga of my HobbyKing B-17G! This morning, my friend Cliff (retired Navy captain and F-14/F-18 pilot) and I installed the model from the ceiling of the Choice Aviation building at the Cody, WY airport. Cliff hired a hydraulic lift to get up to the eyebolt that we hung the airplane from and it was short work to get the model installed.

I'll attach some photos of Cliff on the lift and afterwards. Still working on having an appropriate plaque made up that we can hang on an adjacent wall to explain the airplane and crew. Basically, this airplane is painted up as one of the aircraft my late father in law Fred Wiese (pilot) and his crew flew some on their 35 combat missions over Germany in WWII. They all survived and lived long lives afterwards. This is a tribute to them and everyone else in the 8th USAAF in Europe in WWII who flew back then.

Cheers

Davegee

[Aros]

Beautiful work and beautiful tribute davegee! You never fail to disappoint.

[davegee]

Beautiful work and beautiful tribute davegee! You never fail to disappoint.

Thanks, Aros. Although a disappointment it had so many electrical issues for me to fly it, one of the most important things for me was to honor my late father in law and his crew for their service. He passed away last March at age 102. A long and eventful life he had. A missing man salute flying over the gravesite last May 21 at Ft. Logan National Cemetery in Denver. The other photo shows some of the crew, 1944, Polebrook AB, England. Fred (my father in law) is the tall one standing on the far left of the photo

[jetfool]

A nice tribute to the men of the 8th Air Force. Model looks great

[davegee]

Here's a pic I found of a B-17F converted to a fire bomber with Rolls Royce Dart turboprop engines. It had some success doing this until things went horribly wrong and the plane crashed, killing Ray Elgin and his copilot.

[Grossman56]

Reminds me of the Basler Turbo prop conversion DC 3. Got to go into one at the factory, the fellow who was showing us around was saying that it was strange to see a DC 3 back up and also that it could go near vertical in a climb on one engine!

https://www.baslerturbo.com/

Dan

[davegee]

Reminds me of the Basler Turbo prop conversion DC 3. Got to go into one at the factory, the fellow who was showing us around was saying that it was strange to see a DC 3 back up and also that it could go near vertical in a climb on one engine!

https://www.baslerturbo.com/

Dan

Amazing!

Good post.

davegee