Ralph McQuarrie A-Wing build

[Kiwimaddog]

Because I'm lazy and because I struggle to find time constantly I have yet to start a thread here on my McQ A-Wing build even though it started early 2023. So, better late than never I suppose, I thought I should show some of the work start to finish.

It began with me wanting a companion fighter for my McQuarrie X-wing build I did a couple of years back, and the A-wing is kind of a given. I also wanted it to be roughly at studio scale which in this case meant 1:24.
I started by roughing out the shapes in CAD using the sketch as my main reference.

Status July '23

When I had all parts roughed out I started to import data to Zbrush for the cockpit and Pilot-build.

This was pretty early on in the process with mainly getting the components into place etc.

This was a bit further on and closer to the first testprint of the parts.

I'll start the thread as thus and will come back with a post on the printed parts and ideas on strengthening the model internally and such.

 

[joberg]

That entire cockpit combo is the bomb Will follow for sure!

 

[Kiwimaddog]

That entire cockpit combo is the bomb Will follow for sure!

Thank you very much, It's nice to hear, i feel pretty good about how it turned out

 

[TazMan2000]

Some really nice work there.

TazMan2000

 

[Kiwimaddog]

After I finished the cockpit I needed a structure to support it from inside the fuselage. The same structure should be able to support the Mic-arm I intended to use for the baseplate so I began to draw up a model in CAD. Another use for it was to support the resin-fuselage to prevent it from skewing/warping with time. The intent was to have it printed in my FDM Voron-printer.

This is what I ended up with, a 2-piece carrier that also supported held the bottom compartment thingie behind the nose wheel landing gear doors. It's held together by a D20mm dowl and two screws. After a few iterations and a few too many reprints most of the kinks were ironed out and it worked really well.

This was the status before I started to add details to the fuselage, somewhere around April/May this year.

I also wanted to make sure that the front part of the fuselage sat as tight as it possibly could to the skeleton so I wanted to be able to put some tension between the parts. I don't really trust the resinprints to be able to hold tesion without cracking on the surface area of a spacer or such so I designed a small nut-trap that could be installed in the resinprinted front fuselage-part and spread out the tension over a larger area.

Nuttrap with an M5 hex nut.

It ended up working really well.

More to come later....

 

[joberg]

Wow! An engineer's way of doing/building solid things

 

[Kiwimaddog]

Wow! An engineer's way of doing/building solid things

Funny you should say that, That is my dayjob. Carparts during the day, spaceships and helmets at night

 

[Kiwimaddog]

After I defined the Carrier skeleton parts I started thinking about how I wanted to light up the cockpit.
I had several learnings from the X-wing build I previously did and primarily wanted to avoid the mess of the fibre optics underneath the cockpit.
With that as a goal, I made a pretty simple design that I printed that could house the LED's and that I could feed the optic wires into. Each hole can house 4 x D0.5mm wires which I secured with PVA-glue(so that they would not break which I learned that they will using CA)

For the X-wing I used a blinking light kit and I had a couple of these left lying around so I decided to use them on this project as well. I also added some extra 3mm static LED's of assorted colours.

LED-kit used for the blinking lights.

LED-house for 3 x 3mm + 1 x 5mm LED.

Setup and result

To be continued....

 

[joberg]

Clean and sharp; that cockpit is going to be the bomb

 

[Kiwimaddog]

Here's the completed A-wing ready to print:

I've hidden a couple of eastereggs in the model. It's quite easy to miss so I've put the answer as a spoiler below.


It's two minor parts used on the ANH 5-footer in one of the openings on the topside. a TAMIYA 1/12 TYRELL F-1 part and one other that I'm not entirely sure where it comes from.

I might also give you the final dimensions of the model which ended up being L540mm W350mm H109mm when printed at the intended 1:24.

 

[joberg]

Yep! Love the scale and the details: great job all in all and eager to see your next update

 

[Kiwimaddog]

So, a little bit more photos from the build then.

Some parts are more visible on the sketch, others are less so. The bottom compartment is one of the less visibles ones so I had to do quite a lot of artist interpretation here. I assumed that that the structures visible were tubes and channels so that is what I put into my build. I guess it could be open bomb-bay or some such as well but in my mind it's an access hatch opening for mechanical reasons.

A wip-shot of my version of the hatch

Below is almost the complete set of parts printed(missing a couple of tubes that connects from the rearplate to the inside of the engines).

All parts loose

...And assembled, kind of.. missing the motors and vanes

I had to attack the canopy glass as well during this stage. I have a small vacuum former here so I decided to bring that out of storage. I printed the buck in my FDM-printer mainly due to that being more stable dimensionwise as compared to resin and I needed it to be pretty spot on for it to not look bad when assembled. I primed and sanded the buck and made a mold of it into which I poured some Jesmonite. When that had cured I made several pulls on the former and they turned out just spot on!

Canopyframe and glass match. I fixed the with double sided tape.

Dryfit-test. Tha canopy assembly sits in place without glue due to the overlapping parts of the formed plastic hugging around the cockpit. Worked better than I thought it would.

More to come...

 

[paulsboutique]

fracken fantastic build up !!!!

 

[Kiwimaddog]

fracken fantastic build up !!!!

Thank you very much, It was quite a fun build(mostly )

 

[shaunsheep]

UNBELIVEABLE PROGRESS THUS FAR cannot wait for moreupdates

 

[joberg]

Wow, that cockpit is the bomb Love how you made those two pipes (on each side of the cockpit) and the rise you got from the end not touching the main body Impressive little details that rock!!!

 

[Kiwimaddog]

So, Now it's time to put everything toghether and to dissapear the gaps and such. This is also the time to swear a bit about the characteristics of resin printed parts. As you all are aware they shrink a bit after the prints dry up and are UV-treated. Therefore I printed all bigger parts of the fuselage 1% upscaled but of course, the shrinking is not the same in all directions so gaps there are.
All in all everything fitted pretty good at 1% up and my idea of sliding in the Side-parts (where the cannons sits) from the sides and locking them in place with the L-shaped covers worked better than it had any right to.

With the help of some Clamps I could get the parts to sit pretty flush. I still had to do a lot of sanding and puttywork(and rescribing some lines) but is wasn't too bad.

After that I primed several coats before painting. I primarily used my old stash of Archive-X enamels for the paintjob. I used Grime(LT) for the motors and fuselage, The Canopy frame and rear + top of the fins + front triangles where 1975 Reefer white, The blue parts are a mix of NG Big sky blue + 1975 Dark Blue. The Cannons I painted with 1975 Lettering grey and some Alclad dull Alu. I also used some ILM stormy sea/1975 SP Armour Yellow and 1975 SP Lark l.T Grey and some oils and weathering mediums.

Next up I'll show the final result I suppose. I do wish I would have taken a bit more photos of the buildprocess but Alas, I forgot as per usual.

 

[joberg]

Wow...this build is sharper and sharper at every update

 

[Analyzer]

Excellent work!

 

[stevielewis]

Wonderful!