Hobby King 1875mm B-17G Flying Fortress V2

[Elbee]

Grossman56

Good-lookin' design as well.

The 1/2 sphere is clunky, i.e., it can't be sharpened up easily.

You can bring in several of the the 1/2 spheres and rotate each on top of the other to add more sections and then combine all those into one.

This adds a lot of complexity to the design and high pixel count, however.

Or you can use the Hi-Res Sphere and slice it in half if you need a smoother 1/2 sphere.

Best, LB

[Grossman56]

[Grossman56]

Yeah, silly me Elbee, I should have done that in the first place, but as I haven't used Tinker Cad in a while. It looks as though there have been some upgrades as well. This is a preliminary whack at the cat. Interesting when you see just how the conversion on the real thing was done, it's not as though they chopped the whole tail off, for instance the small window under the tail is still the stock window, they cut the original section off just aft of that.

[Elbee]

Danger, Dial up the resolution of the spheres: located in the 'drop down' for the part. You're getting there. Best, LB

[davegee]

Tweaking...

Sounds good, Dan. The shape just makes sense to me when you're trying to do a Cheyenne turret. It had a lot of benefits for the gunner, not the least was a little more comfort!

What do you think about cutting out a channel for the gunner? I would definitely like to use this mod if we can get all the dimensions to fit ok. Let me know any dimensions you need. I wold like to get together sometime soon with the fuselage and the V1 prototype I cobbled together and go from there to see what your thoughts are going forward.

Cheers

Davegee

[Grossman56]

Tweaking...

[Grossman56]

What's interesting is that they take a stock 'steeplechase' tail and go through the steps of converting it into the Cheyenne version in the video as well as the fellow gathering and restoring a Cheyenne tail turret. The video is really worth watching. Consider the conversion just a full scale model.
Check it out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9j98R3_rbg

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

[davegee]

Davegee,
Good to see two scale modelers working together to improve their scale models. Makes life fun with more involved.
As for Toledo I'm thinking of entering my FMS P-47 (LUCKY) in the WW-2 category and my F-4 Phantom in the Jet category. Need to make my canopy open and check all blemishes on the P-47, detail the cockpit. Will soon start the mods on the F-4, plan to post progress if enough interest. Seems all forums are slow about posting builds this season.
Best Regards, Rex

Hi Rex: I got a quick scratchbuild of the Cheyenne turret completed, learned a lot about its size and strructure. I was hoping that I could just add onto the existing fuselage structure but found when I did that, the size of the "cockpit" of the gunner's position was too tall. Maybe some wouldn't notice that, but I would! So, I'll see if Dan and I can come up with a much more scale Cheyenne turret that is 3D printed and will just stick onto the end of the fuse where I will saw off that foam end of the fuse. I'll continue to post updates as we hopefully will get on track to do this. I was planning on this being a winterlong project anyway, so might as well do it as scale as possible.

Please keep us in the loop on your preparations for the big conteest next year and how that goes. I think that is a wonderful event, and I haven't even been there in person, but I'm impressed!

Cheers

Davegee

[Elbee]

Davegee, Seems all forums are slow about posting builds this season.Best Regards, Rex

Rex,

Which is precisely why you should post your build pix/vids, too.

I know I like it when everyone posts build pix and vids.

Always good to see what modifications others are making and how they are solving those problems.

Though y'all know I am quite easily entertained.

Best, LB

[jetfool]

Davegee,
Good to see two scale modelers working together to improve their scale models. Makes life fun with more involved.
As for Toledo I'm thinking of entering my FMS P-47 (LUCKY) in the WW-2 category and my F-4 Phantom in the Jet category. Need to make my canopy open and check all blemishes on the P-47, detail the cockpit. Will soon start the mods on the F-4, plan to post progress if enough interest. Seems all forums are slow about posting builds this season.
Best Regards, Rex

[davegee]

Hi Dan: when I started putting a trial Cheyenne turret change to this model, following the slope of the fuse to put the window glazing on, it comes out a bit too tall. I’m thinking to get it more accurate, I really need to remove that area and replace it with a printed more cylindrical tail as you have drawn. Can you hollow out a groove in the top where the crewman would go?

I f you come up with a prototype we can use for a first whack at this, we might be able to come up with a better and more scale looking turret. Once we have an STL, I can print it and see where we need to make changes from there.

What are your thoughts?

Davegee

[Grossman56]

Video link is in post # 80
Was playing around with the tail some more tonight, I like the challenge.


Obviously needs some tweaking, but it's way out of scale as well. Picture that being maybe 3 inches long and a lot of the imperfections disappear.

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

[davegee]

did you check out that video on a guy restoring a Cheyenne tail turret?
There is some info on the waist windows as well, pretty interesting vid.

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

Hi Dan: I didn't see the video but if you could point me to it that would be great. Just to be clear, you mentioned "waist windows" and I want to be sure we are talking about the same thing. The "waist windows" as I see them are in the middle of the fuselage where the waist gunners were located. This model really has the waist windows in that area done pretty well as a later model G. I don't really have to do anything to them other than stick a machine gun barrel out both windows. and add a waist gunner (at that point of the war waist gunners were reduced to one versus two gunners so I'll put one gunner figure in that area.)

The "cheek guns" that I am referring to just to be sure we're both on the same page are the ones in the nose, just behind the clear plastic nose cone. These were additions to improve fire power by adding a convenient .50 cal machine gun into each of these windows so that the bombardier and navigator could use them when their normal duties would permit them to do so. I'm hoping to get some general dimensions of these panels that were added onto all later models of B-17s. I can sorta figure it out, too, if I have nothing better to go from, using pictures of real airplanes.

Cheers

Davegee

[Grossman56]

did you check out that video on a guy restoring a Cheyenne tail turret?
There is some info on the waist windows as well, pretty interesting vid.

Grossman56
(Dangerous Dan)

[davegee]

Wild idea that might be worth a shot.. You could try swapping the stock retracts out for the FMS 1400mm FW-190 units. Those only extend to 74 deg vs the stock 90 deg units. Would lower the stance quite a bit, especially with the bent stock gear legs. I don't know if even know if they would fit though, but they are available: https://www.fmshobby.com/products/ma...1zMz0CB9KzQQsP

Hi F106DD: I'll take a look at that idea. I haven't even taken the wings out of the box yet, but as soon as I can, I'll power up the gear and see how bad they look. I'll see if I need to go with something outside the box with the fw190 struts to see if they might be compatible. Thanks for that idea, though. Good back up idea from the stock gear.

Couple of questions: first, do you have any drawings or sketches showing the size of the cheek windows that I am going to try and make up and install om my fuse? I did buy a 1/72 scale Airfix kit which is pretty detailed that I can try to scale up to the parts but if you have any ideas to use that might save me a lot of footwork and probably hassle along the way that would certainly be preferable.

With the exception of the wonky main gear for this model, I don't see a whole lot I need to change. The top turret glazing is the older style B-17F/G, but I probably won't change that out unless I can get someone to vaucufom one to replace the stock part. Do you happen to know of anyone that does stuff like that?

Really appreciate you excellent ideas and help on this. I may not get it flying uptil late winter/early spring, but I think the whole thing is definitely doable. I've already got Callie working on the markings.

Cheers

DaveG

[F106DeltaDart]

Wild idea that might be worth a shot.. You could try swapping the stock retracts out for the FMS 1400mm FW-190 units. Those only extend to 74 deg vs the stock 90 deg units. Would lower the stance quite a bit, especially with the bent stock gear legs. I don't know if even know if they would fit though, but they are available: https://www.fmshobby.com/products/ma...1zMz0CB9KzQQsP

[davegee]

Hi Dan: I’m going to work the ping pong ball angle for a V2 version of the turret, but please hang onto the idea you came up with for a future version. If I make another B-17 someday, or even pick up another fuse, I’d like to physically saw off the tail to install a piece like you drew up. That’s how they did on the real ones. But it was such a pain to install the retractable tail wheel, I’ll probably just stick with my V1 version for the time being. I still need to do a mod for updated cheek windows and guns in the nose.

The rest of the plane should be pretty standard, although I want to add some scale looking support struts for the main landing gear so it doesn’t look so funky. If I could find someone who has a couple Freewing B-17 struts, that would great if they are willing to sell them.

cheers

dave

[davegee]

based on what I can see, maybe something like this?

yeah, that looks similar to when you look at the contour of the fuselage tail area.

d

[davegee]

Thanks a lot for that information, Danger Dan. Very cool stuff there!

Cheers

Davegee

[Grossman56]

based on what I can see, maybe something like this?