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Old 04-19-2019, 04:07 AM
Diderick A. den Bakker's Avatar
Diderick A. den Bakker Diderick A. den Bakker is offline
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Douglas DC-4 / C-54 for Paper Trade: Berlin Airlift.

Agreed, my designer Cor van Haasteren and I are a bit late for the anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, which lasted from 24 June 1948 60 12 May 1949. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade/ has a very interesting article on that. Very briefly: when the Russians blocked all overland links to West Berlin, the Allies set up an airlift - in 200,000 sorties flew up to 12,941 tons of necessities per day into Tempelhof Airport to support the West Berliners. The DC-4 / C-54 played a very important role.
Also known as the Skymaster, it was the first transatlantic passenger plane. 1163 DC-4's were built between 1942 and 1946; after the war many of those were sold to companies in civil aviation, the KLM among them.

We thought it might be interesting to create a thread here to give builders an impression of all the work that goes into designing a highly detailed top model. Cor has more than earned his stripes with models like the Delta Dagger, the Fokker Friendship, the British Sir Nigel Gresley steam locomotive and many more. With Ecardmodels out of order, download versions can be ordered through my website zeistbouwplaten.nl (bilingual). All models come with extensive sketches and English instructions.

So here goes.
Step 1 - where does the idea start? In this case it was a suggestion from Eduardo Barriga Caro, a former contributor to this forum. So I started trying to find pictures, drawings, general information, and getting Cor interested in the idea.
As so often, finding suitable drawings was very difficult. Just one example here, more in a next edition of this thread.
Attached Thumbnails
Douglas DC-4 / C-54 for Paper Trade: Berlin Airlift.-600px-c-54landingattemplehof.jpg   Douglas DC-4 / C-54 for Paper Trade: Berlin Airlift.-featured_dc-4-768x510.jpg   Douglas DC-4 / C-54 for Paper Trade: Berlin Airlift.-airplane-douglas-dc-4-over-tempelhof-airport.jpg   Douglas DC-4 / C-54 for Paper Trade: Berlin Airlift.-dc-6-three-view-plan.jpg  
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Old 04-19-2019, 06:21 AM
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Rubenandres77 Rubenandres77 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Diderick A. den Bakker View Post
...a former contributor to this forum....
Just curious what the tangible "contributions to this forum" of that individual were... I mean, besides publicly defending piracy in almost every post he wrote with his many different aliases.
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Old 04-19-2019, 08:20 AM
Petestein Petestein is offline
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Excellent idea Mr. Den Bakker. The DC-4/C-54 has been neglected by almost all plastic kit makers until recently. And a nice card version, especially by Mr. Cor is going to be a beauty. I am sure of that. And thanks to Mr. Eduardo Barriga Caro for suggesting this fantastic airplane. Looking forward to its progress.
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Old 04-19-2019, 08:55 AM
Petestein Petestein is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rubenandres77 View Post
Just curious what the tangible "contributions to this forum" of that individual were... I mean, besides publicly defending piracy in almost every post he wrote with his many different aliases.
You should be careful with your comments here. Nobody is asking your opinion on any member or exmember of the forum and it is not good manners to express personal issues or offensive remarks of anyone. Don't promote piracy yourself by scaring off members or future members with your most disrespectful comments completely out of context.

Don't contribute to reduce even more this forum's bad reputation.
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Old 04-19-2019, 11:45 AM
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Diderick A. den Bakker Diderick A. den Bakker is offline
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OK - with 113 hits in just a few hours, I guess people are interested.
So if you are all sitting comfortably, I will continue.
Step 2 - more drawings. As I was searching for information, Wikipedia and other sites told me that versions 4 to 7 were all very similar. The DC-4 was stretched to accommodate more passengers, engine nacelles were adapted to house larger engines. Only minor changes to wings. These were the drawings which illustrated that. Please note the complete absence of landing gear!
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Douglas DC-4 / C-54 for Paper Trade: Berlin Airlift.-douglas-dc-6.jpg   Douglas DC-4 / C-54 for Paper Trade: Berlin Airlift.-cola-de-los-dc-4-6-7.jpg   Douglas DC-4 / C-54 for Paper Trade: Berlin Airlift.-motores-de-los-dc4-6-7.jpg  
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Old 04-19-2019, 12:16 PM
Petestein Petestein is offline
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What version will be the one chosen for Cor's card model? Or perhaps several versions will be included with the kit so the builder can chose his favorite.
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Old 04-19-2019, 01:49 PM
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This is an interesting thread. I have always wondered, how paper model designers went about to design a model.



From a technical point of view, note that in the plan view of the wing, the main wing panel had three spars, where most aircraft had two. This contributed to the very low stress during normal operation, and therefore the long crack-free life span of this wing. It also explains why the wing could be adapted so easily to carry ultimately the much heavier DC-7C.

I believe, there are stil DC-6's flying in commercial operation. It's because of Donald Douglas' decision to adopt a 3-spar wing. Just a little side step.
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Old 04-19-2019, 03:02 PM
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Diderick A. den Bakker Diderick A. den Bakker is offline
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Petestein:
The version is a point we are postponing till later. In fact, it is just about the last decision we will have to take. Of course, being Dutch, we will certainly do the KLM version - but more versions are possible. Our mutual friend Eduardo has already offered to do the colouring / (re)painting, and the decision will also depend on suggestions we may get via this thread. A Berlin Airlift livery will of course be our first alternative option.
If anyone has a different suggestion: it would certainly help if they can do the necessary research: pictures, texts and numbers, necessary company logo's. But please be aware of the fact that a repaint takes a lot of time - so we would like to be sure of at least a number of buyers. Just an example: when we were working on the Fokker Friendship, someone suggested a 'white' version, so people could do their own painting. As far as I know, none was bought... The Hughes version sold just one copy...

More pictures - as I explained, one seldom finds drawings of the landing gear, so real life pictures can help. I also found a half built copy of a plastic DC6, and a picture of landing gear parts for a (plastic?) model.

All this takes time: I kept entering various key words into Google Images, and often it is also a matter of serendipity: trying to find one thing, one suddenly comes across something useful.
Attached Thumbnails
Douglas DC-4 / C-54 for Paper Trade: Berlin Airlift.-2018-12-17_16-47-03.jpg  

Last edited by Diderick A. den Bakker; 04-19-2019 at 03:32 PM.
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Old 04-19-2019, 03:19 PM
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Diderick A. den Bakker Diderick A. den Bakker is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by scon10 View Post
This is an interesting thread. I have always wondered, how paper model designers went about to design a model.



From a technical point of view, note that in the plan view of the wing, the main wing panel had three spars, where most aircraft had two. This contributed to the very low stress during normal operation, and therefore the long crack-free life span of this wing. It also explains why the wing could be adapted so easily to carry ultimately the much heavier DC-7C.

I believe, there are stil DC-6's flying in commercial operation. It's because of Donald Douglas' decision to adopt a 3-spar wing. Just a little side step.
As always: once one starts delving into a subject, it becomes more and more interesting. Thank you for that piece of information, Scon.
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Old 04-19-2019, 03:23 PM
Petestein Petestein is offline
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Mr. Den Bakker, you may or may not know that Revell issued a highly detailed DC-4/C-54 model with a very detailed landing gear. This would help, do doubt.
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