Colin Droidmilk
Sr Member
Mike, hi. For a pretty nice hero look we only really need to get the top cans tighter in on the fuse - in such a way as not to change the wing angle as I have it here. Here's an account of my work on the wing alignment and how I see the block needs a little tweaking.
On Day One I decided that the wingblocks had to be flush with the lower fuselage not the upper (REL had done this and I 'd liked his wing angle best of the V3 builds). I also saw that if I stuck the upper wings on flush with the top of the wingblock, the guns and the engines were just gonna sit too high for the fuselage. So then I decided - and this is what forced my top cans out from the fuse - to glue my upper wings on lower down so that they were not flush with the top edge of the wingblock, but were almost flush with the lower - as in the Red 3 pic! But to do this I had to glue my top cans to the wingblock. My cans don't hover above the wingblock, they're glued to it. But this moved my cans out from the fuse by 2mm, creating an ugly visible line of wingblock which I knew I just had to live with, as my priority was wing position. The problem, I think, was caused by the upper wingmount being simply too tall. I checked the ref and this does appear to be the case (see pics below). It comes up too high against the fuselage. I wanted to file off 2 or 3 mm, so that my cans could be moved in and hover over the wingblock, but I didn't rate my chances of keeping the plane smooth and parallel, so I chickened out. However, even if I had done this, the block still needs to get a little closer in on the fuse, but I don't know how I'd do that short of building a whole new wingblock from scratch.
So that's a summary of how I see the block could be changed to attain a better hero look, not forgetting that some shimming would be required somewhere; my blocks are currently rocked out slightly from the lower fuse to get the 'X' shape in line. Also, there is extra 'smoke and mirrors' in my build in that I've tilted the lower wings down slightly from what they would be if they were glued straight onto the block. This tilting was done with razor thin styrene shims, and hours and hours of maddening sanding!
But yes, that Red 3 pic! I had kinda worked out my strategy, and then saw that ILM had done the same thing. You can clearly see a conscious decision by ILM modellers to stick the upper wings on at a different point on the block to where the lower wings are stuck on. They really wanted those upper wings lower down on the wing mounts, making them almost flush with the bottom edge, and they wanted the lower wings lower down too, leaving that step of 2 or 3 mm. I can't see any reason for this other than an aesthetic decision to get the wings, guns and engines low in relation to the fuselage. Thankfully you spotted that and added those mm, otherwise I'd never have got those lower wings on where I wanted them!
Meanwhile, the business about the lower cans being so low on that Red 5 frontal shot is a geometrical curio that I've not been able to properly work out. I'd like to see a front shot of Red 2 to compare, cos I reckon Red 5's wings are more open than 2, and 2 is the wing angle I'm trying to base mine on here. But it may after all even be related to the old issue of the ILM fuselage being a tad thinner. Damnit, the geometry of this thing is so perplexing!!
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