Grumman Bearcat - 1/33 - GPM

[Richschindler]

Really coming together now. Fantastic work.

[Erik Zwaan]

Ricardo, thanks for your feedback - I used the same gluing technique, a small dot of glue at regular intervals. I normally use Tamiya Rubber Black to touch up the tires, which is acrylic paint basically meant for plastic modeling. So the paint wil hold on (white) glued surfaces.
Indeed, even if you roll tightly it seems like the total thickness is more than the sum of the separate windings. I came to the conclusion it's 10% thicker, which matches the figure of 0,113mm you mentioned (0.1 + 10% = 0.11mm).

Good and impeccable progress by the way!

Cheers,
Erik

[Royaloakmin]

That's a tight fit!

[ricleite]

Sorry for being "off" for a while...

The (real) landing gear is quite peculiar. As the legs have to be very tall, to preserve airscrew clearance, they have an extra hinge. The upper part of the leg rotates 90º outwards and the lower part rotates 90º inwards. So, the hinge rotation is 180º. The idea was to keep the mainwheel track within decent limits. The “normal” hinge is simply painted on the upper parts but the extra one is clearly visible.

[Isaac]

Originally Posted by ricleite

Sorry for being "off" for a while...

The (real) landing gear is quite peculiar. As the legs have to be very tall, to preserve airscrew clearance, they have an extra hinge. The upper part of the leg rotates 90º outwards and the lower part rotates 90º inwards. So, the hinge rotation is 180º. The idea was to keep the mainwheel track within decent limits. The “normal” hinge is simply painted on the upper parts but the extra one is clearly visible.

I am always fascinated by complicated landing gears.


Bravo on this one


Isaac

[smithdr]

Agree with Isaac. Clean and neat landing gear. Matches the clean and neat model!

Dan

[gotham]

That's some work, just for the landing gear alone.

[Don Boose]

You always do such clean and precise work!

Don

[ricleite]

Thanks for the comments, friends
@ Isaac - you are not alone When the landing gear retracts into the fuselage on some jets, the complexity is incredible. Think of the F-18, MiG-23 and Tornado, just to name a few...

Optionally, the outer wing panels can rotate. The pictures show the fixed part of the wings. The structure is very simple and not very solid to my taste. I added a connection to the fuselage at the rear spar location. The idea is to apply the same fold mechanism as FlyModel used in the Tigercat. It needs a bit more space and I adapted the structure accordingly.

[ricleite]

The pictures show some curved pipes that link the air intakes in the wing leading edge. They fit well but could be a little longer. The last picture shows the gun bulges on the wing upper surface.