1/48 B-Wing Scratch Build

Thanks, Kris! And just in case you'd not had enough landing gear, here are three views of the "main" gear, which have three ganged struts per landing pad (needs extra assistance for energy absorption given the short stroke of the struts...)

landing gear main detailed.jpg

Notice the mounting hinge fixture (blue on the right) that affixes to the internal structure & the integral 'web' bracing in the landing pad itself. You may notice a 'cutout' on the landing pad end (bottom edge in drawing) which allows for extraction/replacement of the main 'leg-to-pad' pivot pin. Like-wise, the pins for the bottom of the pad rotation strut arms have a depression in the pad to provide pin-pull clearance. I don't think I'll try and depict the 'overthrow' locking features on the struts themselves; that is left up to the modeler to do if they want! ;^P

Also, the struts are in the 'compressed' position & the plan view is a transparency from the "bottom" and lacks much of the topside details.

Regards, Robert
 
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Another progress update - the S-foil gun housing. This is a rather irregular shape that will likely be updated once I start working up the gun parts themselves, as this will provide more clues for this part. But as it stands, this is as accurate I can draw it just using image analysis. As always, any constructive comments are appreciated.

Sfoil_guns housing.jpg

Regards, Robert

---------------------------addendum --------------------------------

I just noticed I've not shared the drawing for the S-foil hinge assembly. The hinge views are on the left while the full hinge 'pin' is shown on the right.
Sfoil_hinge assembly.jpg

R/ R.
 
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those gun covers sure are an odd shape.
I agree; I'm sure they started as something but what part for which kit, I have no idea.

Kris, thanks; glad you are enjoying my efforts.

More tweaking on the 312T engine bit... plus some of its accessories. Just when I thought I had it "licked", when applying it to its hole in the engine box and trying to add the other items, it was definitely 'off'. The result below however I believe is even better & more accurate especially with regard to the depth of the side 'rib trench'. It would be cool to have some measurements to confirm, but that is the way it goes. At least this iterative approach seems to be working; when I look at the drawings as a whole, it certainly seems like a B-Wing.
engine bit_updated.jpg

Here it is in place, viewed from the rear (one thing throwing it off a bit is the thickness of the engine box I am depicting):

engine bit_insitu.jpg

Thanks for looking!

Regards, Robert
 
Certainly am, Robert! I had considered buying one of Alfred Wong's kits at 1/48 scale, but seeing the work your doing has inspired me to try my hand at scratch building a 1/72 version. Of course it'll be some time before I start, but the community here really does a great job at creating and sharing work. I look forward to being able to share as well.

-Kris
 
Kris, if you are patient & can await my finalized drawings, my hope is to produce scalable plans that can be used directly as templates for fabricating the majority of the model's shapes. I will leave things like the tiny greeblies and hull plates to the modeler but having the basic shapes and dimensions mapped will make it much easier to 'step into' scratching a B-Wing. Heck, I'm doing it for myself, easy enough to share! If I go beyond that basic goal, then it is 'gravy'.

Regards, Robert
 
So, started into mapping (aka 'drawing') the guts of the S-foil gun housings which you can see my progress so far below. I had a thought about what if anything was used to create the shell of the housing and I started thinking perhaps it came from an F-16 intake, mostly due to ruminating on the two notches in the outer edge of the housing shell, which reminded me of the F-16's nose gear door hinge 'tabs'. The profile is also a good match with the humped curve of the F-16 intake, but when I looked at some examples in my stash, it is apparent that wouldn't fit the size & the cross section wasn't flat enough. However, following the same logic, it looks as if the Monogram 1/48 scale A-4 Skyhawk kit could have been the donor, or by extension, the ESCI A-4 kit - both of which were available at the time the filming models were made & have the right size & shape. By cutting off the intakes from the fuselage halves, you basically have the housing shell, only lacking the 'jawbone' extension at the front which can be made by trimming the forward section off the intake or cutting a section from the A-4's nose. The pinched area where the 'jawbone' connects to the remainder of the housing indicates it was a separate piece.

This is of course speculation as I have no other information but at least it offers a candidate for my own build (such as a Hasegawa 1/72 A-4 Skyhawk...) though again, it might be better to just take measurements from a kit part and fabricate my own 'buck' shape for vacuforming.

As always, your thoughts & comments are welcome - collaboration is a great way to make progress as 'many heads are better than one', at least in this case!

Sfoil_guns housing_updated.jpg

Regards, Robert
 
Here is a further update of the S-foil gun mounts; mostly complete for the parts in the housing just need to sort the 'barrels' now. Tweaked the housing some more as some of the visual 'cues' weren't adding up with the original draw. Better now.

Sfoil_guns housing_updated_again.jpg

Note there are a few construction lines in the lower right 'rear' view drawing.

Regards, Robert
 
Well, a two-fer today as I was able to work out the main S-foil 'gun' for the most part. I noticed that the three 'rings' (I think of them as 'doughnuts') near the end of the barrel are the same part with the outer most being a pair back-to-back. It does appear one tube of the diameter of the barrel end runs through the entire length as the smallest diameter section in the middle matches the end. Makes sense...

The mounting in the housing will be lacking as I have almost no good images showing that area. Frankly, it looks like a glob of epoxy putty was used (neatly) to hold those bits together...

I should note that I probably will not attempt to depict all four variations of this assembly; between the two filming models, each gun pod exhibits unique minor differences since all were fabricated in similar but not identical fashion - and apparently not cast from a single master. I may depict the 2 vs 4 'artillery shells' variants on the drawings however just because it is so obvious.

Sfoil_guns_1.jpg

Thanks for looking!
R/ Robert
 
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"Is that a big gun or are you just happy to see me?"

Went off a bit on a tangent and developed a two axis pivot for the S-foil guns... I also realized that I was drawing the housing for the "upper" gun but in the lower gun position - so I fixed that and cobbled up a 'two artillery shell' version to go with the four shell variant. Now working up the Gepard gun piece that goes alongside the main barrel. Not sure what was used on the original (as in what scale donor kit) but the part used is too small to be from a 1/35th scale kit. Also, if the barrels have a +- 7 degree azimuth and a + 7 degree elevation movement, then the 'shells' will interfere with that motion - so they would have to be articulated as well. The idea for the articulation comes from statements from various sources regarding the B-Wing's capability to 'focus' its weapons... perhaps I need to add a notch to the housing shell's 'jawbone' front to allow declination... nah!

First, the 'mess' that is the pivot mechanism.

Sfoil_guns_pivot.jpg
I used a pivoting cradle for the Y-axis rotation that also carries the X-axis rotation, which allows for 'combining' movements. I left out the barrels in these views. The cradle is black while the barrel 'breach' is blue. The magenta represents the 'shelf' that everything is mounted on (I also didn't show the housing greeblies in these views... less confusing - ha!) & proved the trickiest to depict as I had to allow for cut-outs to accommodate the swing path of the gun. Way too many moving parts!

Here is what I have so far for both barrels:

Sfoil_guns housing_corrected.jpg

The greenish 'blob' is an imported image object of the Gepard gun barrel parts in the Tamiya (?) 1/35 kit. It makes a reasonable stand-in for the original donor for my reference purposes. Note that the Gepard barrel is outboard of the main barrel for both S-foils.

Cheers!
Robert
 
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So, here is today's update. Worked on 'polishing' my landing gear some more (I think I am avoiding getting into the primary wing's weapons pod...) by sorting out the concept of the primary wing's support struts. Appreciate any comments or critiques on this as I have a feeling it needs something more...

Anyway, this is the view looking "into" the gear wells (it is a view upwards into the bottom surface...) where I've included most of the actuator mechanisms that might be used. The cover doors are two pieces per gear with the strut cover being attached to the leg itself. The blue structure on the right is the gear mounting yoke (a side view of which is in between the two wells.) I mirrored the pad cover actuators (far left) but intend to revisit so there is one actuator plus a hinge vice the set of actuators I've depicted.
priwing_alighting struts.jpg

This is a side view of the strut area. Note the stepped well 'floor' (roof?) so to keep with the 'complex spacecraft' paradigm - so no simple flat floors.

priwing_alighting strut side view.jpg

Speaking of the pad cover door, this is the actuator I used.
priwing_alighting gear door retract strut.jpg
Perhaps a relatively simple knuckle hinge will serve for the center of rotation for this door? I do like how the actuator can be an essentially straight throw.

It occurs to me I've not explained my drawings very much, such as the use of color I don't really have any standard application, or 'code', for color except perhaps using a dashed red line for center-lines. Mostly, I've tried to prevent too much confusion by using differing colors so the various elements can be more easily viewed but nothing is consistent.

That is one of the problems when you lack any ortho views - the 3D relationships can be tricky to discern. The actuator drawing above is an example. It appears that the strut would 'hit' the landing pad while moving, but the pad is circular and the strut is not centered on the pad's C/L and so has more clearance than is obvious in the side view. (Also, the pad and door are both 'opening' so this relationship changes,,,) This is one reason I tend to 'extract' smaller details into sub-group 3-views, to assist understanding the shapes being drawn.

Sorting these things out into 3-views is a fun challenge however and is really exercising my drafting skills which I've not used much for many years. Perhaps a prelude to getting into some 3D tools?

Thanks for looking!

Regards, Robert
 
Little update on my progress. First blush on the primary wing weapons pod is apparent in the first as is my final revision of the pri wing landing gear, closeup of which is the second image:
Initial work on priwing gun.jpg

priwing_alighting gear final.jpg

When I started doing the analysis of the depth of the gear wells, I realized the impact of the wing curvature on the gear's placement within the wing would be significant. Result is I moved the two gear parts closer so they both could be in the thickest part of the wing, which is also has the flattest contour. Still, clearance 'bumps' are required for the forward strut, as indicated by the red arrows, to accommodate the height of the landing pad and the mounting bracket. This placement would impact an armature tube, but this isn't an issue for the 'real deal' of course - and landing gear is an element of my concurrent "real thing" conceptualization & not of the filming models... which lacked any landing gear.

Nice thing is, the new gear placement doesn't interfere with the four surface mounted 'fins' (found on each side of the primary wing.)

As expected, the shape of the priwing 'gun pod' is proving difficult to define. Stay tuned for developments...

R/ Robert
 
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That is too weird! I was actually working on the drawings today after being 'off' it for a while (since April, apparently...) The big 'weapons pod' on the tip of the primary wing was just presenting a challenge but after I started on it again, just 'fartin' around', it actually was working out. Besides not having any measurements, it is apparently asymmetrical either side of the vertical centerline plane. Unless it isn't! ;^D

The weird oblong shape is the 'maximum widths' cross-section, so any projections require an appropriate adjustment for the specific 'station' contours. I expect I will need at least one more iteration while I attempt to resolve detailed cross sections, same as I did for the crew nacelle.

So, in short, yes there is some more done on it. Being that the drawings are the first milestone I must complete, it may take a while more.
Here is a view of my work space on it:

PriWeaps Pod.jpg

This is based on a near direct plan view from Jason Eaton's pix archive, which I overlaid into my DWG.

Other things I've determined are that my original layout of the F-14 drop tank part, which I based on a 1/48 scale kit part (not having access to my Tamiya 1/32 scale kit at the time), was too short. I'd assumed that the Academy F-14 part would be a correct depiction of the prototype tank and hence equivalent (with proper scaling) to the Tamiya depiction. Then, just for grins, I'd checked the Tamiya kit scans and found out that things didn't match. So I redid the drawing to match the Tamiya parts... especially in light I was using the 'tank' as one of my yardsticks for my drawings!

Another couple of findings from this same process was that 1) the "fairings" atop/under the engine box's mounting covers, which I assumed also came from the 1/32 Tomcat kit are actually trimmed from a 1/48 scale Tomcat kit's Phoenix missile mounts (there are several candidates in that scale for that time frame, such as Revell, Monogram & Fujimi.) Comparing these fairings to the size of the drop tanks makes it obvious that the 1/32 parts would be too large, so...; 2) the pressure bottle part mounted on the aft face of the 'S-foil' hinge structure' is from the Tamiya 1/32 F-14 kit (it is the pressure bottle found in the nose gear wheel... perhaps a hydraulic accumulator tank...) When I used the ruler in a parts scan, the dims forced a re-do on that portion of my drawing as well, since the distance between the hinge 'pins' was too small as was the distance between the hinge structure and the primary wing fairing, to properly accommodate the donor part. I attempted to correct all these issues, being obvious in the pix once I noticed the discrepancies.

Fairing (in place on the hatch - the blue circle represents the mounting pipe underneath):
engine box fairing.jpg
Drop tanks & in-place:
F14_droptanks_revised.jpg F14_droptanks_revised_inplace.jpg

Revised S-foil hinge structure & details.
Sfoil_guns_pivot_revised_inplace.jpg

So, the quest continues!

Regards, Robert
 
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