P-38H Lightning, Halinski 1:33

[georgerutherford1861]

Such amazing detail work, that is amazing. Thank you as always for sharing.

Doug

[smithdr]

Whoa Doggy! That is some great modeling there, Erik! Fantastic. I appreciate your explanations too!

Dan

[ricleite]

Fine work, as always, Erik
I’d rather imagine that kind of control column on a bomber or an airliner! Solid looking and just like the original!

[Tino]

What an amazing job, congratulations

[Erik Zwaan]

Thank you Petestein, Michael, Mike, Gary, Isaac, Doug, Dan, Ricardo and Tino. Feel honored to have you as my audience . Indeed, I intend to keep the cockpit open but it is a kind of non-conventional canopy and I haven't decided yet to what extent it will be open. Regarding the realism of the cockpit interior, especially the steering column, it's amazing if you compare the model to actual pictures. I can only admire the designer of this (and other) Halinski model. It takes great skills to get to that level of model design.

Right, the nose landing gear. Life has been pretty busy lately and the amount of time spent on modeling was limited. In terms of parts order, the nose gear comes first and then the skins of the cockpit pod. I have cut out all skins at this point but the skin around the direct cockpit area needs to be pulled tight to make a good fit at the nose gear bay and that's a bit of a concern: I'm afraid to damage the nose gear during the fitting process. So what I intend to do is to pre-assemble the nose/skin sections as much as possible, dry fit on the cockpit structure until I'm fully satisfied with the overall fit, then install the nose gear and then complete the entire nose job. During assembly of the nose gear, you will understand why this order is important.

First, the main strut. Pretty straight-forward and all build up around a 0.8mm diameter metal pin, that requires accurate pre-shaping. To that extent I used the 1:1 scale template provided in the model sheets. A 1mm diameter pin would have done as well, with I think an even better fit. The rolled up main strut has a diameter of 3.0mm, as indicated in the instruction drawing. Rolling up the 0.2mm thick paper into a tight tube around the metal core was a challenge and the partly delaminated inner portion of the paper needs to be slightly trimmed as it will stick out a bit due to the rolling.

The oleo strut has been painted silver and the shimmy connectors aluminum, they will yet be detailed a bit further later on. Also installed the connector with the retraction unit (work in progress picture) and the anti-torque link.

Simultaneously, the build-up of the nose sections. For obvious reasons they need to be connected as accurate as possible. The nose cone has petals and the pictures show how the nose slowly took shape. No inside formers installed yet, in this way mating the various sections can be done in the easiest and most accurate way. After this I will install a few formers before continuing with the remaining 3 sections.
"Burnishing" is done from the inside with the help of various embossing pens. Also very useful to carefully increase the roundness of the nose tip, after the petals and the inside "auxiliary" gluing strips have been dried (use white glue for this), but when the paper is still a bit flexible because the glue hasn't hardened completely yet. Yes, it's labor-intensive, but it pays off.

Next will be the nose wheel and a dry-fit in the wheel well.

Cheers,
Erik

[MacSongLi]

Love the detailing Erik. You did a fantastic job on the nose with those petals.

Keep up the great work.

Gary

[Burning Beard]

What he said!

[yankeekilo]

amazing job!

[Vermin_King]

You obviously know a whole lot more about handling petals than I do.


Extraordinary work there

[georgerutherford1861]

There are few things quite as beautiful as a nicely constructed petal nose like this one. Great work.

Doug