X-45A UCAV

Originally the wings were to be formed separately but I figure the best way to get a good match will be to shape them along with the fuselage. Due to the thinness of the wings I will shape these from balsa over a styrene profile.

 

The X-45 was powered by a Honeywell F124-GA-100 turbofan. The engine is tightly cowled and difficult to see in photos however the front and rear will be visible so I have begun fabricating these.

 In this picture only 3 of the first stage fan blades have been fitted and the nose cone is glued in position ... many more to add.

1/35 Guntruck Factory Iraq

 The diorama will have a portion of a shipping container filling a corner. The container was made from scratch in styrene from diagrams found on the net.

 At this point i have the base colours applied. This started with a preshade in matt black over a undercoat of Tamiya primer. This was also applied inside.

 Following the preshading I applied a patchy coat of Tamiya XF-19. This was lightened a little before lightening the roof as well as using a colour modulaton style on the raised elements of both the container and doors. This will be further enhanced later by brush painting with Vallejo colours.

 As art of the initial painting I also applied the Maersk logo that i created from images on the net.

Next step will be to heavily weather the container and doors.

Huey Bushranger Gunship 1/35

The shape of the windows in the Panda / Dragon kit is good and they fit well but they are incredibly thick and to use them seemed a waste of all that interior detail, so I decided to vac form new ones. I want to make each one as thin as possible so rather than make them fit into the openings I will make them fit over. This also simulates the raised plates with double rows of rivets around each opening. Once formed and glued in position I can add yet more Archer rivets around their perimeter. Luckily the kit incorporates rivet lines into the airframe around each window and you will see from previous posts and the image below I have sanded everything back level with the airframe. For the windscreen I've added a lower mounting flange as well as the central vertical frame.

All the side windows were made from clear acetate cut to shape and glued into position with Gator Glue. The sliding window in the doors was depicted in the open position.

To create the vac form patterns Ive added flanges around each of the original clear parts as well as reinforcing the edges with sheet styrene.

In addition I pored plaster into the openings to make sure there was no chance of collapse when the pressure is on.

Here is the small vacuum former, it takes a 24cm x 15cm sheet ... perfect for small parts.

 

1/35 Guntruck Factory Iraq

All the parts of the star of the show, the Humvee under construction. This is an older photo and I've already shown some of the items painted. Wheels are resin items from Voyager.  

The frame and suspension is as Tamiya made it, the only thing I've added is a few bolt heads to the bull bar brackets.

 In this view you can see the fill in panels added to the load bed, the scratch built roll hoop as well as a series of small brackets.

 The radio brackets were remade and the aerial bracket was from a Voyager Humvee Electronic Antennas photo etch set.

 Difficult to reach areas have already been painted matt black while they can still be reached, most of this will be covered by the interior colour once painted.

Creating the canvas roof folded back had me scratching my head for a bit. In the end I made the internal frame pieces from piano wire tacked in place with super glue. I then rolled out some Milliput very thinly and made the first layer running from windscreen to roll hoop. Once this had hardened the entire assembly could be removed and worked on separately from the body work.

  Once the first layer had hardened I made the folded back portion laying it back over the first.

 I finally added some of the detail flaps and rivet holes and puttied a couple of slight imperfections.

 

X-45 A UCAV

Filling and sanding complete and both top and bottom halves are ready for vacuum forming.

X-45 A UCAV

Another scratch built drone, this time the X-45A from the early to mid 2000's. So far I've put together a simple set of working drawings and started with the profiles. Next will be lots of filling and sanding.

Huey Bushranger Gunship 1/35

With all the interior components painted they were squeezed into position and glued with Gator Glue. Thanks to numerous test fits everything got in there but it was very tight.

 Once the glue had dried on the roof I could then finish the riveting with even more Archer rivets. The non slip pattern was again from Archer, this time their woven fabric texture which looked close to the real thing.

 The smaller hole at the rear of the fuselage is for the display stand, this will be an in flight model so I can show the door gunners in action.

1/35 Guntruck Factory Iraq

In Iraq templates for cutting the armoured plate were cut from plywood and images show these scattered around the production area. Normally i would achieve this by applying oils over an acrylic layer and adding a streaky effect with a course brush, however this time i thought i would give the wood effect decal from Uschi.

First the parts were spray painted with a gloss light flesh colour before the decal was cut roughly to shape and applied.

 These decals are very good, they are quite fragile due to them being quite thin but once dry the final look is magnificent and looks just like a part cut from a sheet of plywood.

Huey Bushranger Gunship 1/35

The rotor head is a combination of Panda / Dragon main blades with Academy detail parts and a lot of scratch building in styrene. The mast is made overly long so it locks securely into the gearbox but remains removable for transport.