P-38H Lightning, Halinski 1:33

[paperairforce]

Looks fantastic, nice model!

[dhanners]

That’s stunning through and through….

[rmks2000]

Excellent work. I envy your skill.

[Erik Zwaan]

Hello everyone, thank you once more for your kind comment....! It's well appreciated .

The main landing gear is a three-dimensional miracle and required some studying. When figuring out how the landing gear was actually retracted it also provided insight how to reinforce it. The model itself doesn’t include overall structural strength other than templates for core pins and a number of alterations are required to ensure the models stays upright for the coming years. Based on this, I divided the main landing gear into four sub-assemblies:

• Main strut
• Retracting unit
• Retracting rod (pushing for retraction; pulling for lowering)
• Main wheel

Let’s concentrate on the main struts and wheels first. The core of the main strut is a 0.8mm dia brass pin, bent at 90 degrees angle, allowing the main wheel to be attached firmly after completion. The pictures show the build-up of this assembly and at the “fork” you can see two pieces of brass pin sticking out at either side, which will hold the strut in place in the wheel well.
Although the paper is a bit thick, it rolls very well and there is hardly any delamination. The instructions indicate to which diameter the paper needs to be rolled and everything rolled "spot on".

Then the wheels, consisting of a sandwich of several concentric 1mm discs and on top on either side a 0.5mm one. The fun part is to make a smooth wheel out of this sandwich, for which I simply used my way too big drilling machine (why would you need something fancy?), with specially prepared tools to hold the wheel properly in place. I’m still grateful to my uncle the mechanical engineer, who once made these small parts for this specific use. They serve me well. After sanding I applied slightly thinned white glue to seal the wheels and then painted them with Tamiya rubber black. Nice details are the hubs with spokes. The wheels fit nicely onto the main struts/axles but at this stage are not glued to them yet.

So far so good, next will be the retracting parts.

Cheers,
Erik

[Michael Mash]

Fine work Erik.
I have only recently learned about the challenges of creating strong landing gear. Apparently, it is not uncommon for them to collapse under the weight of the model. We can see your well-engineered method in the photos. Also, nice technique for creating the wheels.
Mike

[romanmodels]

good work so far on the landing gear and a good jig for the wheels. will have to make something similar myself.

[ricleite]

@ Mike - even with prior knowledge of the challenge to get the required landing gear strength, it is all too easy to have nasty surprises. I have had quite a few, including in Halinski kits. Sometimes, it seems that kit designers rely too much on the glue properties…

[georgerutherford1861]

God bless you Erik, you put more thought and effort into landing gear and wheels than I do into entire models, and the results are amazing.

Doug

[Erik Zwaan]

Thank you Michael, Ricardo, David and Doug. Reinforcing landing gears always pays off and ways to optically disguise the reinforcements as much as possible .

Ok, the retraction mechanism is in place now, as well as the main landing gear struts and retraction rods. I used acetate glue to fixate the various parts and placed small pieces of 1mm board underneath the retraction framework, to support the assembly and to absorb the weight of the retraction rod towards the gear bay ceiling. It's hard to explain and also hard to notice as the cardboard pieces are almost entirely hidden by the landing gear components. Besides, much of the landing gear will be hidden from sight when the bay doors are in place.

After 24 hours drying and hardening of the glue it surprised me that the entire structure is in fact quite strong. The nose gear was already prepared a long time ago and is also in its extended position now. Just to see how things have turned out I put the wheels on the axles (not glued yet) and placed the model for the very first time on its own legs. It's tilting a bit backwards, which is one of the odd characteristic of the P-38 and the weights in the nose are just sufficient to prevent the model from tail sitting. As still some parts still need to be fitted I hope this will not affect the center of gravity of the model.....

Well, that's it for now. The finishing touches of the landing gear are next and then on to the gear bay doors.

Cheers,
Erik

[Siwi]

Such a good moment when a model stands on its own three feet for the first time.