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