The Fi-1 vintage Swedish sailplane

[Swampfox]

Leif, I've been watching this unfold and you have really outdone yourself on this one.... It is just amazing what you are doing with this model.. You have completely changed the character.

I've been playing along in Photoshop and Illustrator as your doing this and your really taking recoloring to a new place. If you can, please make sure that you document your steps and approach so that others can learn from your experience..

I can truly appreciate what your doing here, thanks for letting us sit on the side lines and watch.

More please,

Swampfox

[Wad Cutter]

Leif, in some ways it reminds me of the days when I was a kid making U-control models with wings paper covered and dope. Man did that stuff make a smell and could give you a high. I had to wear a breathing mask. I didn’t know you could do the same thing with Photoshop which I too have but I know very little about. For the most part I use a program called Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 and I also have 9 with the Premiere which I use for my digital photography and skin alterations for IL-2 aircraft. I have to explain something about myself. I get cluster migraines and have to take medications that really dull my brain output. Makes thinking very hard but not sleepy, at least. So it’s either living with the pain or take the meds which I hate with a passion.
The great thing about card stock modeling is the amount of deep concentration it requires at times when I want to make the model correct that it helps a lot with the pain levels. Card modeling has been a blessing and I wish I had found this hobby log ago. Thank you for allowing me to tag along and explain things on a level I can understand. Johnnflys was kind enough to give me a link to a site where they have tons of glider models we can fly in MSFS X. I haven’t loaded any yet but will soon. The idea we can read along with you and others and also fly these beautiful birds of the wind is really something you have to do as there is no way I will ever be able to do it for real. Leif, my very deepest thanks to you and the others who have been kind enough to add to this thread and keep it going. I look forward to our next session. Waddy/john


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5BMP_41bI

[Leif Ohlsson]

Bernie - so glad to know you're watching over me; looking forward to what your next project will be, in due course.
Cmdr - glad to have you aboard!
SFX - truly appreciate your comments, knowing they come from you. Thank you! Please let me know at times, whether or not you can replicate stuff you would wish to replicate; and I'll try to be clearer (if I can; I'm only just learning to understand what the various settings of the software may mean).
Waddie - thanks for the exquisite video of flying with the birds; and for keeping Swampfox's thread about mixing colors alive! You are also spot on about this thread being very much like building balsa models; you'll soon see how right about that you are…


"Building" the fin & stab; plus "painting" them

Here are the fin and stab skin parts with the paint washed off in places to show the underlying structure of wood and ply, sheet metal, and fabric:



The various components are stacked on top of each other in the same order as they would be in a real build, full-size or model:

• In the bottom layer we lay out the diagonal braces (only in the fin here; for the wings there would be rear spars in this layer). On top of this, we lay out the ribs, followed by the trailing edge stringers, and, at the top in this group, the ply gussets on the trailing edge.

Stacking the structural parts in this order makes the shapes of the individual components less critical - ribs (and the diagonal braces) start under the trailing edge and end beneath the top ply layer, so no need to bevel their edges very exactly. And the trailing edge, in turn, conveniently beings and ends under the top layer of ply as well.

• Before we lay down the top layer of ply pieces, we position a layer of "fabric" . This is made up of a copy of the full outline, filled with a dreary olive drab, viewed at 50% opacity. The result is a uniformly translucent layer, hopefully looking like doped cotton.

It would have been more realistic to lay down this layer of fabric on top of the ply layer. I did that on the Inka glider. In that model, you can actually see where the "fabric" is glued on to the plywood, by the different look of translucent fabric over ply, and over uncovered ply. This time, however, I wanted the ply to be more distinct (not partly blurred out by the fabric layer), so I placed the fabric layer under the ply, unrealistic as it may be.

• The next step is to create a more lively and realistic translucent effect of the fabric layer. How to accomplish this will be detailed in the "tech notes" tomorrow.

• Now the time has come to lay down the main top layer of ply. If you look carefully, you will see that it is made up of a lot of separate pieces of ply, realistically cut out and oriented. I tried to imagine how a real builder would have had to divide up the plywood covering, taking rudder splits, size of ply sheet, direction of grains, etc. into account.

• Another special feature is that there are no outlines in black to any of the ply sections. You can spot where one ends and another begins only by the sharp change in pattern orientation. This is very realistic in my opinion.

How the ply pieces are "cut out" is be detailed in the tech notes to follow immediately after this.

• In the painted version there is a coat of paint overlaid on the fabric & wood layers. The painting procedure likewise will be outlined in the tech notes.

• In both versions the absolute top layer contains insignia & markings - rudder split lines, insignia, bolts, etc. This layer is common for both wood & fabric and paint versions.

---

Tech notes for texturing follow below. Tech notes for fabric covering and painting will follow tomorrow. I have now learned how to make all effects (shading as well as translucence) in Illustrator; for both natural fabric and paint layers. This is both simpler and gives more control & replicability.

On the wings I only could make the translucent effect in Illustratror, not the paint effects. I will now go back and fix that.

Photoshop is now only used for saving chunks of wood textures, and for importing appropriate sections of it into Illustrator, as detailed below.

[Leif Ohlsson]

These are the promised tech notes for SFX, any likeminded, and not least myself.

Once you arrive at at standard procedure, it is very easy to repeat it if you've got notes. That is why, in the next three posts, I am taking very serioiusly SFX's advice to document what I do. I will now be able to go back to these notes, and if I just repeat the procedure here mechanically, I will get the same result for any and all parts; in this or any other model. All the thinking, and tinkering, and experimenting has been done - for now…


Cutting out pieces of ply, using both Illustrator & Photoshop:



• The outlines of any intended small piece of ply are copied in Illustrator (left window) and pasted over the correct kind of saved wood texture (mahoganny in this case) in Photoshop (right window). The size of the selection is increased by 4 pixels, and the mahoganny ply texture copied and saved as a Photoshop (.psd) file, with a distinct name, e.g. "Fin ply-1.psd".

• This chunk is then "placed" in Illustrator. This means that it is linked to the "Fin ply-1.psd" file; not actually pasted; this way I can go back and edit the Photoshop file directly from Illustrator, should the need arise, and any changes in Photoshop will automatically and immediately be reflected in Illustrator.

• The texture piece is trimmed to exact size by making a "clipping mask" using the original Illustrator outline originally selected, and then slightly increased in Photoshop to create the chunk of mahoganny texture. The procedure is the equivalent to our cutting out a part of a paper model slightly oversize and then trimming it to fit exactly.

• Any black outlines of a particular ply section you may originally have made in Illustrator (red in the illustration above), will automatically disappear when you make a "clipping mask". This is good for our purposes here. If, for other purposes, you would have wanted to keep the outlines, you would have had to make an extra copy of the outlines (not a problem).

• Whenever I need a particular kind of wood, I go to my own "lumberyard" (a big Photoshop document with saved textures). This is an important resource, since it stocks the selection of wood I need (free textures from searching the internet; you can see a part of them in the multilayered "lumberyard" Photoshop document).

• The large ply sheets required for some covering tasks (e.g. wings) are made by copying the original, relatively small, texture; then flipping it horizontally or vertically; moving the copy to join seamlessly; and then saving. Repeat as required to get a large enough chunk of raw material texture.

• The ply is the only wood actually textured (imported from Photoshop) so far. Stringers, gussets, and ribs (i.e. small and narrow parts) are made up of regular colored fields in Illustrator. Colors of these are chosen to be as close as possible to the Photoshop look of each wood texture (gussets would be an example in point, colored to look like the mahoganny veneer; stringers and ribs are colored to look like spruce).

Tech notes for fabric covering & painting tomorrow.

[Leif Ohlsson]

Covering the framework with doped fabric, using only Illustrator:



• One complete layer of "fabric" is made from the outline of the whole part, e.g. the entire fin. Fill it with fabric color; in my case is CMYK 10-10-50-15; opacity 50%. This is defined as a "process color", so that when I change the color of a particular process color master swatch, all details using that color in the document will change accordingly.

This is very neat, and makes it dead easy to try out how various mixtures work when viewed at reduced opacity.

• Make another layer on top of this, where you group simple outlines (invisible) of each section of "fabric over air"; i.e sections of fabric not in direct contact with any wood below.

Important - ignore any diagonals under ribs not in direct contact with fabric; this is what later will create the most stunning effect.

• Paint this layer, the "pattern" stencil if you will, with your doped fabric color - CMYK 10-10-50-15, opacity 50% in my case. The only immediate effect is a darker doped fabric surface over these areas.

• Now treat this layer of fabric pattern with: Effect - Stylize - Inner glow.

• In the Inner glow box (see illustration above), check: Preview, so you can see the result of what your'e doing. Mode - Normal; Opacity 100%; Blur 2 mm; Center (not Edge). The glow itself should not be of any color at all; i.e. white; CMYK 0-0-0-0.

This is a point I have only just come to realize; the "Color picker" box at lower left opens when you click the very small color square in the inner glow box at top right. In the color picker box, click "Swatches" and select "White".

• Click OK everywhere, and you should now have a beautful translucent effect, almost blotting out the deeper lying diagonal members (or spars in wings) at their centers, while they are only realistically shadowed closest to the ribs. At the same time there is a nice shadow of the fabric area close to where it touches any wood.

• You may want to adjust the opacity of the underlying base layer of paint for best effect. The stab for me looked good with this layer at is original 50% opacity; the fin looked better at an adjusted 100% opacity of the base layer of fabric (not the "pattern stencil" layer).

I cannot explain why this is so; I really tried to keep everything the same for both parts. It may have something to do with different sizes of the fabric pattern areas (generally smaller in the case of the stab).

[Leif Ohlsson]

Making a complete paint job, using only Illustrator:



• Apply one base coat (layer) of your chosen paint - in my case cream yellow CMYK 10-5-25-4. Again, define it as a "process color" swatch and adjust the CMYK-values to your liking. 100% opacity.

• Copy the "pattern stencil" layer you already made for the doped fabric (a lot of small pieces of fabric over empty spaces), position it on top of the paint base layer; and fill it with the same color as the base layer (thus replacing the doped fabric color). Same 100 % opacity.

• Treat this layer with Effect - Stylize - Inner glow. Keep the opacity to a full 100% (which is different from the fabric treatment).

• In the Inner glow box (see illustration above), check: Preview, so you can see what's happening. Mode - Multiply (again, different). Click in the little box for paint samples, select your cream yellow swatch (different) in the Color picker box (lower left).

Note how the little paint square in the Inner glow box at top right now gets the cream color selected in the color picker box at lower left.

• In the Inner glow box top right, change Opacity to 25%. Blur - 2mm. Edge (not Center; different)

• Click OK everywhere, and you should now have slightly shadowed outlines of the "fabric over air" painted areas, so that they are just visible, without displaying those unrealistic black outlines we as paper modelers so often have to content ourselves with.

This procedure is the equivalent of what the airbrush artists do on a plastic model. The difference is that you don't need any artistic or other skill. Just follow the procedure outlined here, and you will get a satisfactory result.

I understand the differences in approach pointed out here, between natural & painted versions, as a result of working with covering paint, as opposed to translucent doped areas. In the painted version, the goal is to achieve dark, covering shades at the edges of each small fabric-over-air area. In the fabric version, the goal instead is to create light, translucent areas in the middle of these fields, partly blotting out any underlying structure (such as spars or diagonal braces).

A difference compared to the wings is that for the wings I used 3mm for blur, instead of only 2 mm for the stab & fin. It seemed to render the same proportional result, the probable reason being that fabric areas in the wing generally are larger.

Anybody wanting to help me better understand what I am doing?

Leif


PS. I'll go offline for a week or so from Monday. We are going on a trip in a rented mobile home to the south of Sweden. - L

[Don Boose]

Once again, I come late to one of your projects, Leif. I have been committing education during the past two weeks and have barely been able to glance at the Forum. Now I have looked quickly through this thread and see that you are once again bringing together craft, art, skill, and genius to capture another aspect of aviation history. The idea of producing a model, the structure of which can be seen through the transparent and translucent skin is brilliant and a great joy to see.

I hope to be able to spend more time enjoying and learning now that another U.S. Army War College Distance Education class has graduated and I have passed the baton to my teaching buddy while (after finishing up the evaluations and otherwise policing up the battlefield) I turn my attention to paper model building (with first priority to trying to get Jim Gausman's Vietnam-era Otter completed) and the next book project.

Don

[Leif Ohlsson]

Thanks, Don! Every time this year you have me worried - I know you have other things to do, and you have said so, but there's still the horrible thought that you've tired of us all and left us hanging... Perish the thought!

So, it is good to have you back.

Meanwhile, and for a while, I'll publish Rich's build of Aarons Fi-1 here as well:



It is very nice to have this one before the eyes, as the texturing & repainting will continue when we get back from Skåne.

Leif

[Bengt Fredén]

Excellent and very interesting tutorial on the texturing techniques in Photoshop and Illustrator, Leif! Thank you for sharing the clear desktop images.

I will remember this if I should have the time to try this for myself some day. It is certainly very tempting.

All the best,
Bengt

[Leif Ohlsson]

Thanks, Bengt! I do hope you would try the technique some time, on some little detail or part, just to see whether it is possible to transfer techniques & experiences this way, by writing about them.

Now for a little bit of interlude:


What the fuse of the Fi-1 looked like when stripped

Arriving back from a week in Skane, I had many photos and much written material waiting for me. It was sent by Knut Uller, a true vintage glider veteran. He had been visiting the birthplace of Swedish gliding, the Alleberg hill, where there the Swedish Vintage Glider museum is situated.

Knut had seen the Fi-1 glider when it arrived at Jonkoping in 1997 (the veteran group there got the assignment to restore it) and was stripped down for restoration. At that time this Fi-1 (no 4 to be made) had been dismantled, stripped and robbed of all loose detials like instruments, pilot seat, control system, etc., and had been in storage on Iceland since 1949 - almost 50 years!

Here are the photos Knut took 1997 during the restoration work:



The wings have been stripped, and the fuselage placed upside down. The tail, Knut tells me, was made of baked plywood, just like the fuselage.



These two photos are interesting - above, the fuselage and three-point tall boom fixture. Below - one half of the plywood egg-shell fuselage has been removed:



This is an excellent detail view of the steel-tube inner structure, and the landing wheel behind the skid.

Here's a rare photo from the original production line of the Fi-1, at the Halmstad AB Flygindustri factory:



'The fuselage is built up in two halves of plywood. Here, one layer of plywood is applied on top of the solid mold (the striped structure). It is worth remembering that the AB Flygindustri stemmed from a company which used to make canoes!

The two halves were then attached to the steel-tube inner structure. The objective here was to achieve a "light but strong, and easy to repair" structure. The veterans restoring the Fi-1 at Jonkoping, however, report that it was far from easy to repair - quite the contrary!

Here's a page of photos from the French vintage glider newsletter "Dedale - Lettre d'Information" No 99 (2011), very kindly sent to me by the chairman of that association, Didier Pataille:



These photos come from Peter Urscheler of the Dédale association. They are of great interest, since they show additional tail details. Note particularly the rudder horn fillet which follows the taper of the tail boom.

A rather funny detail is that one of the photos is shown upside down. This photo looks very much like the one I got from Knut Uller, which makes me suspect that he is the original source...

There's a reminder here - as late as three weeks ago I found the Dédale site through the discussion in the sailplane thread (see this post). Now that entire site, with its plethora of fabulous vintage glider photos and the entire set of downloadable newsletters, has gone off-line! According to Didier Pataille the reason is that the person responsible for keeping the material online no longer felt he was able to carry the burden.

As fantastic the world-wide web is, it is also very vulnerable and sometimes crucially dependent on the good will of individual human beings. As things now stand, I am very grateful that I was able to get in contact with Didier Pataille in time to access this invaluable source material.

All of these photos are excellent for anyone wanting to make a really detailed model of the Fi-1.