Sailplanes available?

[Butelczynski]

In video they say Antoni Kocjan was in occupied Poland the entire war,he never left.He was a head or part of Air Intelligence in Home Army HQ and in part responcible for setting up underground printing shop and grenade assembly on grounds of his pre-war place of employment (not sure if I got that right).He was also in charge of efforts to collect inteligence and parts of V1 and V2 rockets test fired over occupied Poland.

Picture of Dakota refers to "Most III",landing of C-47 in occupied country and retrival of parts of V1 and V2 along with other idems and people.

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_III

[Leif Ohlsson]

Thank you, Butelczynski! That was most valuable information. - Leif

[Butelczynski]

Glad to help out

[Pepo]

The life of Mr. Kocjan would be good basement for the movie. You knew this link https://saba-modellbau.jimdo.com/mod...s-lockstedter/

[Leif Ohlsson]

Thank you for reminding me of this fine glider and the kit of it in 1/33 which is available in two versions:



For those interested you can read about the real aircraft, and its history in Wikipedia. And you can download the models from the SABA models site: SABA-4 (white), and SABA-5 (red).



The white, Lockstedter, version is a true replica of an existing glider:



The red one was used in a very popular film with Louis de Funes. There is also one existing Castel C.25S, F-CRML, in a very nice livery:



This would make a very exiting recoloring project! Look particularly at the wonderfully translucent fabric covering of the unpainted sections of the wings. Thanks again for reminding me of these models and starting me to think about them.

Leif

[Leif Ohlsson]



Above an inspirational photo from 1939 (Wikimedia), showing the Orlik II, Antoni Kocjan’s most famous design, waiting for the RWD-8 glider tug plane to start its take-off run down what seems to be a mountain slope. Two of my favourite aircraft in the same photo (for the RWD-8, see this thread: RWD-8 in 1/16 scale as flown by the Jewish resistance in Palestine 1937-48).

As for the Orlik, in researching the design so many fascinating features, details, and historical events turned up that I fell in love with the type.



The Orlik story is the story of a legendary pre-war Polish sailplane, that by rights - and but for political pressures from nazi Germany and fascity Italy - would have been designated the official common sailplane to have been flown by all contenders in the Olympic games 1940. Below you can see the Olympic Orlik to be, at Italian Sezze where the selection took place:



The 1940 Olympic games as such of course never took place, but the officially selected sailplane instead of the Orlik - the German DFS Meise/Olympia - became famous, since drawings and instructions were sent out into the world for every country to build their own planes. As an example, 17 of these German sailplanes are said to have been built in Sweden during and after the war. On the opposite, every exemplar of the Polish Orlik except two were obliterated by the German and Soviet Russian forces occupying Poland, and no later Orliks were ever built.

It's designer was first sent to Auschwitz, and then summarily executed in September 1944 after the Warsaw uprising - but not until he had pulled off one of the most daring espionage coups during the war, resulting in a complete V2-engine being picked up by a British C-47 especially despatched to occupied Poland (for this story, see some posts earlier in this thread: 176, and 178).

The Orlik story takes us further, across the Atlantic, following one of the two Orliks destined to survive the war in America, since it had been selected as one of the Polish contributions to the World exhibition 1939 in New York, and then stranded there at the outbreak of war.

On this continent it would first take part in the pre-war US nationals in gliding at Elmira, then being impressed by the USAAF to serve as a possible training glider. Below, the stranded Orlik as seen at Elmira:



This Orlik barely survived several years of abysmal neglect in army storage (or rather outside an army storage building), and was saved only by the care of a non-army enthusiast who was still alive just a few years ago.

It would then change owner and, like a Phoenix raising from the ashes, help its new owner to a world altitude record for gliders, and a place in the US glider hall of fame. His surname, MacCready, denotes an addition to an instrument which is used by every glider pilot to this day.



Above, you can see Paul MacCready in his Orlik, the very same prewar glider that got stranded in the US, now repainted, in which he set the world glider altitude record. Later, that same pilot would go on to design the world's first man-powered aircraft, a later version of which would cross the English Channel powered only by one pedalling man.

Again changing hands, this very special Orlik, originally built in Poland 1938, would then go on to become the one glider remaining airworthy for longer than any other glider ever built. And it can still be seen, in a museum in the US, in airworthy or near-airworthy condition, albeit no longer flown.

Leif

Main sources for the Orlik:
• Wikipedia - note that this basic source translates the name "Orlik" as "dove". I would guess that ”Dove hawk” (Swedish name; don’t know the correct English name for that bird) would be more to the point. What is the correct translation, anybody?
• Polish Sailplanes - Orlik (Polish version by Piotrp.de; contains extra material; click here for Google-translation).
• Scale Soaring UK - The Polish Orlik III - 1939: A high-performance, single seat Olympic glider (Fantastic drawings, photos, extra material - you can delve here for a long time…)

[Leif Ohlsson]

So I am building this, the most famous of the glider designs by Antoni Kocjan. There exists one good model in 1/33 scale by GPM, and Ostoja has made an excellent build and report of it.



The original model unfortunately was published as just a small section of the magazine Kartonowka (cover image of the Orlik model above), which was kind of hard to get hold of at the time I bought it. Nowadays, GPM has made a special print of just the Orlik model; see the GPM site.

I will continue my own exercise in building small scales (for me 1/48 is small). So I rescaled a scan of the original model, and made my own little kit. Here’s what it looks like:



Parts have been rearranged, and I made up a reverse-side print page for the cockpit section. This is to create a grey inside, instead of having to paint it as the original instructions recommend.

I will have to introduce a caveat here; an early warning for those with a weak stomach: The build will sometimes look quite ugly. I am not good at this small scale, even though I intend to get there eventually. Since my camera is reasonably good and I use the macro setting, creeping up to the model sometimes within its own wingspan, the photos are merciless.

One of the things I regret is using a set of children’s simple water color pencils for edgecoloring. I thought I’d go simple as a change, but the color ran quite heavily into the parts, and the color match was far from good. So those pens are gone now, and I have returned to my quality Derwent dry water color pencils, applied with a fine brush. But not so for this model, as you will see.

On the plus side, I did some experimenting with making transparent canopies without having to vacuform them (which I greatly fear). I’ll get back to that in due course. Here’s my start:



Already at this stage, you can see how flimsy the cockpit rim is. All the cockpit details between the formers are just doubled-up paper, not laminated any further than that, as per original instructions of the kit. In the future I will make sure to insert at least an extra layer of building paper when making such doubled-up parts.

(Resting in the background, is another of Antoni Kocjan’s glider designg, the Komar. Build report of my 1/48 rescaled version earlier in this thread, here, and a couple of posts following that.)



Creeping up even closer, the sight is downright embarrassing. Even the Chinese pilot looks as if he/she has had enough of it. At this point I left it to another day, quite disgusted with my inability to do justice to a very nice design.

Leif

[Mike1158]

You are like the rest of us, Sir, imperfect and sometimes it just does not work. I learn something from each and every time you post for which I thank you. Live long, stay well and prosper.

[Leif Ohlsson]

Thank you Mike, for your good wishes!

Mercifully, the initial skinning of the cockpit section managed to straighten up the flimsy skeleton structure. I was quite happy to see the petal-design of the nose going together acceptably well. So I happily went on to add the tail skin, plus both fin and stab sections.

It was only when I stopped to take a few photos, that the extent to which the bad edge-coloring color match became truly visible:



I hope this might serve as a warning - never take edge-coloring lightly! Always take care to mix or otherwise obtain as good a color match as possible. And don’t use color pens that run deep into the paper edges.

End of another humiliating day.

Leif

[Butelczynski]

Pencil y best bet for edge coloring for many years now.Why?I read somewhere that for some reason human brain tends to "not see" small amounts of grey color when next to other,more vivid colors.We have that in common with most of other mammals and that's one of main reasons so many animals and birds have fur/feathers in combination of grey shades+black and brown.

It works for me and pictures of my builds are proof.