building military aircraft
TRANSCRIPT
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Building military aircraft Ralph Savelsberg
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Military aircraft are among the most impressive and complicated machines
Grumman F-14A Tomcat, Wings over the Rockies museum, Denver
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I have been building aircraft for a long time
and I have built rather a lot of them
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Pictures of my models have been published in books and magazines
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I designed the aircraft for Ed Diment’s USS Intrepid
The model is on display at the Intrepid Museum in New York
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Contents
• Scale
• Shape – Building compound curves
– Building weird angles
• Working Features – Landing gears
– Cockpits
• Camouflage
• Bringing it all together
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What size should your aircraft be?
1/100 1/43 (minifig scale)
1/36 1/22
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It is your choice, but most of mine are built to a scale of 1/36
• large enough for lots of details and working features
• Retractable landing gears are relatively easy
• small enough to allow building big aircraft
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Shape can be very complex
Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon, U.S. Air Force
B-1B ‘Bone’
• Difficult angles • Curvature in multiple directions
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For compound curves, the solution is making small steps
Shape of cross section changes only slowly along the length
F-14A Tomcat
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On larger models, I plan this before I start building
B-1B ‘Bone’
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LEGO make many different wedge plates that help with the angles
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Sometimes wedge plates are enough RA-5C Vigilante
Su-27 ‘Flanker-B’
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But there are angles for which there isn’t a suitable wedge plate
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By combining wedge plates we can make different angles
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We need parts to connect them
Plate hinges
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Presto!
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Sometimes it helps to mount (almost) the entire wing at an angle
Because the engines are not at an angle, the central lower bit of the wing is straight
E-2C Hawkeye
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Sometimes only part of the wing is mounted at an angle
F-16C ‘Viper’ A-10 ‘Warthog’
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This technique has made it into an official set
The set was designed by AFOL Mike Psiaki
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A few plate hinges aren’t always strong enough
Official USAF photograph, Senior Airman Sarah Shaw
B-52H
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Some triangles have special properties: Pythagorean triples
3
4
5
Pythagoras (3,4,5) (5,12,13) (7,24,25) (8,15,17) ( . , . , . )
𝑐2 = 𝑎2 + 𝑏2
a
b
c
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We can make triangles in LEGO using Pythagorean triples
3
4
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F-105 uses (3,4,5)
• Triple gives proper angle for trailing edge
• Leading edge built using 2x4 wedge plates
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Wings need to be strong to carry the weight of the model
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B-52 uses (8,15,17) divided in half
Leading edge built using 12x3 wedge plates
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The wing is pretty much rock solid
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Working features add realism
SB2C Helldiver
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The way the landing gear works is usally based on the real design
F-14A
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The aircraft designers have already solved much of the problem for you
F-111A
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Opening canopies
Usually, the canopy is attached to a strut that slides out and allows the canopy to hinge
RA-5C Vigilante F-14A Tomcat
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This even works for the weird canopy of the F-111
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Randomly mixing parts with different colours will not work, because camouflage is not random
Building camouflage
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Simple rules for building camouflage
1. The border between colours should never be a straight line of more than 3 or 4 studs long or plates thick before it changes direction
2. Once a demarcation line has changed direction once, it should change again as soon as possible
3. The contrast between the colours should be small
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USAF South-East Asia camouflage
• Dark green
• Dark tan
• (old) dark grey
F-100D Super Sabre F-105D Thunderchief
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A few more exotic combinations
Israeli Air Force • Tan • Dark tan • Sand green
Russian Air Force • Reddish brown • Dark tan • Dark green
IAI F-4E Kurnass 2000 Su-25 ‘Frogfoot-A
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Bringing it all together
I always use blueprints to get an idea of the shape
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And I gather reference books
These are some of the ones I used for the B-52
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I make drawings to work out the geometry and the size in studs
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I always build difficult bits first
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Top tips
1. Chose a scale that suits you (1/36 is good)
2. Don’t be afraid to build at weird angles
3. Build complicated shapes using small steps in every direction
4. Add working features for added realism
5. Stay close to the original: its designers have already solved most problems for you
6. Before you start building, do your research
7. Make a plan (and stick to it)
8. Build the difficult bits first
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If you do all this, you can get pretty close to the right shape