building military aircraft
Post on 11-Feb-2017
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Building military aircraft Ralph Savelsberg
Military aircraft are among the most impressive and complicated machines
Grumman F-14A Tomcat, Wings over the Rockies museum, Denver
I have been building aircraft for a long time
and I have built rather a lot of them
Pictures of my models have been published in books and magazines
I designed the aircraft for Ed Diment’s USS Intrepid
The model is on display at the Intrepid Museum in New York
Contents
• Scale
• Shape – Building compound curves
– Building weird angles
• Working Features – Landing gears
– Cockpits
• Camouflage
• Bringing it all together
What size should your aircraft be?
1/100 1/43 (minifig scale)
1/36 1/22
It is your choice, but most of mine are built to a scale of 1/36
• large enough for lots of details and working features
• Retractable landing gears are relatively easy
• small enough to allow building big aircraft
Shape can be very complex
Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon, U.S. Air Force
B-1B ‘Bone’
• Difficult angles • Curvature in multiple directions
For compound curves, the solution is making small steps
Shape of cross section changes only slowly along the length
F-14A Tomcat
On larger models, I plan this before I start building
B-1B ‘Bone’
LEGO make many different wedge plates that help with the angles
Sometimes wedge plates are enough RA-5C Vigilante
Su-27 ‘Flanker-B’
But there are angles for which there isn’t a suitable wedge plate
By combining wedge plates we can make different angles
We need parts to connect them
Plate hinges
Presto!
Sometimes it helps to mount (almost) the entire wing at an angle
Because the engines are not at an angle, the central lower bit of the wing is straight
E-2C Hawkeye
Sometimes only part of the wing is mounted at an angle
F-16C ‘Viper’ A-10 ‘Warthog’
This technique has made it into an official set
The set was designed by AFOL Mike Psiaki
A few plate hinges aren’t always strong enough
Official USAF photograph, Senior Airman Sarah Shaw
B-52H
Some triangles have special properties: Pythagorean triples
3
4
5
Pythagoras (3,4,5) (5,12,13) (7,24,25) (8,15,17) ( . , . , . )
𝑐2 = 𝑎2 + 𝑏2
a
b
c
We can make triangles in LEGO using Pythagorean triples
3
4
F-105 uses (3,4,5)
• Triple gives proper angle for trailing edge
• Leading edge built using 2x4 wedge plates
Wings need to be strong to carry the weight of the model
B-52 uses (8,15,17) divided in half
Leading edge built using 12x3 wedge plates
The wing is pretty much rock solid
Working features add realism
SB2C Helldiver
The way the landing gear works is usally based on the real design
F-14A
The aircraft designers have already solved much of the problem for you
F-111A
Opening canopies
Usually, the canopy is attached to a strut that slides out and allows the canopy to hinge
RA-5C Vigilante F-14A Tomcat
This even works for the weird canopy of the F-111
Randomly mixing parts with different colours will not work, because camouflage is not random
Building camouflage
Simple rules for building camouflage
1. The border between colours should never be a straight line of more than 3 or 4 studs long or plates thick before it changes direction
2. Once a demarcation line has changed direction once, it should change again as soon as possible
3. The contrast between the colours should be small
USAF South-East Asia camouflage
• Dark green
• Dark tan
• (old) dark grey
F-100D Super Sabre F-105D Thunderchief
A few more exotic combinations
Israeli Air Force • Tan • Dark tan • Sand green
Russian Air Force • Reddish brown • Dark tan • Dark green
IAI F-4E Kurnass 2000 Su-25 ‘Frogfoot-A
Bringing it all together
I always use blueprints to get an idea of the shape
And I gather reference books
These are some of the ones I used for the B-52
I make drawings to work out the geometry and the size in studs
I always build difficult bits first
Top tips
1. Chose a scale that suits you (1/36 is good)
2. Don’t be afraid to build at weird angles
3. Build complicated shapes using small steps in every direction
4. Add working features for added realism
5. Stay close to the original: its designers have already solved most problems for you
6. Before you start building, do your research
7. Make a plan (and stick to it)
8. Build the difficult bits first
If you do all this, you can get pretty close to the right shape
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