Egilman

2 hours ago, vaddoc said:

Now, this is impressive. Its one thing to design a hull on CAD, but these complex shapes like brake handle and gear selector or the gearbox, this is on another level! 

Why Thank You Vad, I've been into engineering drawing for a long time, mostly paper & ink, occasionally vellum... Mechanical drawing mostly aircraft & machinery but some surveying and spatial representations, (read technical illustration) A couple of years ago I decided to learn how to do it on computer, I'm no expert and it has taken a while to get the hang of it but I'm getting there... It definitely getting faster, but that is practice...

I know enough to know that line drawing hulls for ships is a very technical genre of drawing has it's own issues separate from pure mechanical drawing... That is why Marine engineering is it's own separate science and art... It does flow over into pure mechanical drawing and design from time to time but only after the purely marine design elements are mostly done... It's every bit a technically demanding a field as aircraft design... Doth are derivatives of mechanical design, specializations if you will of the basic core skill... I've done some fuselage work in the aircraft industry and know that some of that experience will translate to ship hull drawing...

But I'm not there yet... (hope to get there eventually, sooner rather than later) There are some ships I want to build before the end and since there are no models or easily available plans, I'll have to do it by reverse engineering off pictures... Which is what I'm doing here... Honing the skills required...

I know enough and have been advised that Rhino is the software to use for ship hull modeling and the little I've played with it has shown me the way, so hence the title of this pathway into modeling, getting back into and keeping my head in the game...

2 hours ago, vaddoc said:

Hope all go well with your health.

As far as my health, right now it's stable, the last scans said I am clear of tumors, the nature of the cancer doesn't allow for a remission diagnosis or proclamation, and I will be receiving treatment for it the rest of my life... (currently in my third cycle of Chemo) But then with the grace of the man above, I'll get done what I need to get done... And there is no sense in worrying about it, when it's my time it's my time which isn't today... Thank you for the kind words and thoughts, they help a lot....

EG

The next update, the rear shock brackets and spring brackets...

What they look like in place....

The shock brackets were easy a slight difference in shape and location, Unfortunately the spring brackets needed a complete redesign...

Here they are in their real configuration... (where they live)

And what they look like out of the car...

And of course an overall shot of where she sits today.....

The basic frame is complete except for the little things like the occasional bolt head, the holes that mount nothing but are there,,, and such things like that I'll add them when I get to them...

Going forwards now, deciding which way to go,,, Probably the suspension next, need to get back to a rolling chassis....

Anyway, following the path now....

Onwards brothers...

Thanks OC I'm sure you could do it, it's simple with software....

4 hours ago, Canute said:

Head movements like that could induce vertigo and or tumble those tiny gyros in our ears.

Thanks brother, I knew that an experience flyer would know the specifics... The things you guys had to learn to compensate for flying on the edge all the time is simply amazing.... To the point of fighting your own body to do it it's a miracle that your all still here...

Thank you for your service...

Yes brother, There are several visual differences, Yes the Airbrake is a different shape to accommodate centerline ordinance... The fuel dump on the vertical stabilizer is larger and more boxy looking... The tail is substantially taller with a much larger rudder... It has fowler flaps under the completely redesigned main wings to lower landing speeds... The wing shape is completely different... (like the F-104 it was considered a "hot" aircraft to land and if you didn't pay attention to it it would bite you) The second Squadron Aircraft in Action book #190 has all these and more details fully explained...

1 hour ago, CDW said:

That's a beautiful jet.

Only one purtier was the Tbirds...

That Aircraft is a late "D" model with the bent refueling probe on the starboard side.... (the early ones had a straight probe) The reason they raised it was cause some of the pilots would lose their visual distance relationships cause they had to angle their heads to see the drogue when guiding the aircraft to connect... it would also cause havoc with having two critical operations occurring at the same time... (flying the aircraft and guiding the probe, any good pilot will readily tell you that is not a good situation while flying, two operations related to each other but impossible to watch both at the same time)

The resolution brought the probe's mating end up to the pilots horizon scan level of vision so he could easily see everything around him, Probe and drogue in the same vision window without having to bend his head in a different direction and still guide the probe....

4 minutes ago, king derelict said:

Those blue bands suggest they got over 900F if thats the titanium showing.

Yep the grade of Titanium they used could go to 2100 degrees before it would start to degrade... Everything in the tail of that aircraft surrounding the AB was Titanium....

13 minutes ago, CDW said:

jets flying to/from the Avon Park bombing range

Yep, they were a supersonic ground attack aircraft, the only place they could fly in that envelope was in the ground target ranges and test areas designated for supersonic practice...

33 minutes ago, CDW said:

Got it. Thanks!

 

I think that Mr Color super silver 2 will be perfect for the painted silver surface of my model. 

My pleasure Brother, yep aluminum silver, shiny, but barely reflective, your color should work well... For General Reference, Do note: the thunderbirds aircraft, (F-100C's & D's) were stripped to bare metal when they served in the unit, when they were transferred out and R&R'ed they were repainted to standard... No active operational F-100 was bare metal otherwise, a lot of modelers make that mistake with this aircraft... Only the T-Birds aircraft were bare metal...

7 hours ago, CDW said:

Just some interesting photos of the subject aircraft found on the net. These help me get revved up and show me the way to go to simulate the real aircraft finish.

You have a Private Note Brother...

10 hours ago, CDW said:

Can someone here please explain why this particular aircraft has those distinctive color striations at/near the afterburner? I've often wondered but never read an explanation of why they all seem to have this look.

Afterburner Heat... would discolor the Titanium skin and got hot enough to burn off the paint.... and BTW- All F-100's were aluminum/silver painted from the 100th aircraft on... YES, All of them, it was to deal with severe corrosion issues the airframe developed during testing at Edwards.... The paint was retro applied to those first 100 that survived... Bare metal is not appropriate for this aircraft, except the titanium sections of the tail skin... So the reflectiveness comes from the shinyness of the paint not the surface condition/fineness of the metal...

9 hours ago, Canute said:

My semi-uneducated guess is it's the heat effects on those sections, since that's where the afterburner/reheat sits. The F-4 had that area sheathed with titanium. Don't know if the Hun used any Ti in the aircraft skin.

Yes it did, NA used 80% of all the Ti used in the aircraft industry until 1954...  It didn't matter if they had the original J-57 petal type afterburner installed or the Later F-102 type.... the paint still burned off and the Ti discolored on all of them in direct proportion to AB use..

9 hours ago, king derelict said:

I'm thinking its heat effects and the striations are caused by varying metal thicknesses and structural members. Its a whole new aircraft for me so I have no idea what the back end looks like inside so this may be totally wrong.

The reason for it was most of the Aircraft parts were machined from billet stock instead of riveted formers and panels, it was thought that by using solid parts to build the airframe they would act a heatsinks and keep the heat off the skin panels... (see, even great engineers can sometime be real dense) what they thought would serve to protect the panels actually served to concentrate heat in the AB areas.... 

7 hours ago, CDW said:

I think it may have been our first supersonic combat aircraft. Also, its shape and resemblance to its predecessor, the F-86 Sabre, is remarkable to me. 

It was, I don't see it, it was a completely redesigned aircraft using completely different materials and machining processes... All resemblance to the F-86 is purely coincidental...

As far as the Tail heat/paint, burn/discoloration issue, here are some pics I've been holding on to for my 1/32 trumpy version...

There are any number of explanations of how to get that color effect on the net... Which I'm sure you have seen... Several things to note, USAF birds flying over the USA did not have discolored tails... this was simply because the banning of sustained supersonic flight over most areas of the USA proper... Over seas and in aircraft in foreign service, all have this discoloration....

Most of the Birds that flew in Vietnam were "D" models with some "C" & "F" models, the "C" model was the fastest of the Super Sabres with a top speed of 925mph at 35K feet... (the "D" was the second fastest at 910mph) In standard combat load as well, Yes it was the first production supersonic aircraft in the Airforce inventory, (closely followed by the F-102) It's maiden supersonic flight was flown by none other that George Welch CMH the fighter ace of Pearl Harbor, two weeks later that first production aircraft killed him... 

For a brief time the Super Sabre held the world's Absolute Speed Record  as the fastest thing in the sky quickly surpassed by the F-101, F-104 and the F-110 (F-4 Phantom) Known as the "Hun" in SEA service it was the primary fighter bomber of the US military until gradually replaced by the F-105 around 1969... As such, (during it's time in Vietnam) it carried and dropped more ordinance than the entire force of 15,000 some odd P-47's that flew in the entirety of WWII...

It was a remarkable plane... Bit of a widowmaker, (when it first was adopted) but loved by the pilots that flew it and even more loved by the troops it covered and supported on the ground....

Hope this helps brother...

Just to keep myself busy, I went ahead and dropped the engine back into the chassis today as well....

All that was needed at the moment was revising the rear flange to match what is actually on the car rather than images of what was on the standard engine...

It fits beautifully... (I narrowed the frame about a inch and a half, it was part of the reason I was having problems fitting parts before)

Next up Frame Accessories, the Rear Shock brackets and the Rear Spring mounts which it turns out are completely different from what was modeled earlier...

Onwards My friends.....

Another Can't miss...

Well time for another update....

Motor Mounts and crossmembers....

First up the Rear Motor Mounts....

And the Crossmember that supports the engine is next...

And then of course we have to support the front of the motor as well...

And the back side showing the connections to the Frame....

Finally all assembled into the full frame....

Simply beautiful!!

Bet she's a stunner in the sunlight...

Very well done, best I've seen... (including my own)

Making progress....

The next two cross members...

The Brake Intermediate Shaft crossmember and the Thrust crossmember....

And the Thrust Crossmember...

And mounted to the frame rails...

She's actually beginning to look like something belonging to an automobile... {chuckle}

Next up the Rear Motor Mounts and it's crossmember.....

Onwards my friends...

Beautiful job on the original configuration of the 14-Bis... So many kits of this built, but no real research into what it actually was when first built...

This has it all....

VERY NICE!!!!!

3 hours ago, CDW said:

I may yet decide to dirty her up a bit but that won't happen, or a decision made until after the decals have been applied. From all I can see, the crews maintained these planes very well for the most part. 

Oh please don't, (aside from normal streaks & stains) way too many of these birds are made to look like they were flying out of garbage heaps or never got any maintenance on the flightline... They were always being wiped down and cleaned, the ground crews were very proud of their planes and pilots and kept them looking their best, Especially in England... (flying side by side with the RAF almost mandated it, they wanted them to look their best...)

1 hour ago, realworkingsailor said:

Personally I’m not a fan of having to take all these risky extra steps. 

Me neither, I tried them a while back using the Micro sol trick with them, didn't work for me.... they all tore in some fashion, at least when a standard decal tears, you have a chance to recover from it, with these wet-transfer decals, no chance if they tear... You cant reassemble them into a useable decal....  Next to impossible to get them off cleanly once they have fractured as well...

Not worth the risk IMHO...

Another update....

The first two crossmembers, now modeled accurately...

Rear Cross member....

With the frame rails...

Reverse side....

And finally the rear firewall crossmember....

Accurate to what is really on the car....

Still making progress...

Onwards...

Not sure yet Brother, gots to get it designed first... Then reduce it to a scale which will preserve it's details yet allow it to be printed.... I'm still a long ways from there.....

But I'm going to finish it..... and then decide....

Yes, long about 1908 the differences between the three types began to blur....WWI brought it to a concordance... Afterwards, mortars were trending downwards in size, (becoming an infantry weapon) howitzers stabilized at around 150 or 155 mm, (but the largest were still 240mm class) and were the heart and soul of the artillery branches and guns became anything firing in a flat trajectory in direct fire, however with a lot of overlap in application... 

By the end of WWII massive howitzers and guns had no real distinction on the battlefield, they both could do the same jobs... This is clearly seen in the usage of the 155mm & 8" guns and howitzers of the US army the 280 mm Atomic Annie was classed as a gun rather than what it actually functioned as...

With Big Bertha, in1914 they reduced the weight of the explosive charge from just over 900 kilos to less than 800 kilos and gained some 5,000 metres in range out of the exact same barrels...

Ballistics is always a relative game, you identify what you need your weapon to do and design it to accomplish it... Once that's all done, someone who knows less than the designer slaps it with a type name and it is forever typecast into that....

Metallurgy is a science, and a very extensive science at that... And yes Chilled Iron for a long time was considered the best armor one could buy and was one of the hardest metals produced, but by 1936 most high velocity guns could easily penetrate it and armor production moved into homogenous plate and cast high carbon steels at much lighter weights.... Chilled iron armor also had the very bad habit of fracturing into hundreds of small pieces, when it failed it became it's own shrapnel...

One of the drawbacks of Chilled Iron for artillery shells is sometimes it was just too tough... They would hit and go off but the casing wouldn't fracture, they would blow the fuse out of the tip when they went off... this is why there are thousands of big artillery rounds that have been recovered from the WWI battlefields... Essentially buried intact but with no fusing or explosive charge.... 

Yeah the Carbide cutter, and in 1936 the diamond tipped cutter.... (Hughes Tool Company) But then again it wasn't just metal cutting tech that improved, steelmaking did as well, pretty much leaving cast iron methods behind

When she is done, I hope we can get a look at her in natural sunlight....

Ok, does anyone know the difference between a Mortar, Howitzer and Gun?

Big Bertha was a Mortar, (Morser in German) the British and American 9.45" (240mm) Gun was a Mortar....

The difference is in the angle of fire they produced, Mortars are relatively short ranged weapons to deliver plunging fire, when originally designed Big Bertha only had a range of 9k metres... extremely short for an artillery grade weapon.  But, it fired a projectile that could penetrate 1.5 meteres of reinforced concrete, 4.5 meteres of cast concrete and created craters that measured 6 meteres deep and 30 meteres wide...

As you see in the video, large shells were pressed into basic shape while white hot then hammer forged and allowed to aircool this had the effect of aligning the grain of the steel and eliminating any stresses created by forced cooling, toughening the steel but leaving it malleable... (as the press forming of the casing showed in the video establishes)

There are two ways to quick cool newly formed steel, water and oil, both create a hard outer surface and a tough grain aligned interior material it's generic term is called case-hardening.... High carbon steel is heated to an orange color, (do enough of it and you quickly learn to judge temps by the color of the metal) then plunging it into various liquids to cool it rapidly, what happens is the surface of the metal crystalizes and when cooled it creates a hard outer casing and a tough inner material... for steels that have less than 3% carbon content, the steel needs to be carbonized first before the process of case hardening it can be done... But the idea is to create a very hard outer surface with a tough inner core... That is not what is being shown in the videos....

'Hartguß' or Hartguss, is the German name for Chilled cast iron, part of the ductile iron class of materials specifically... Yes it can be formed in press machinery like in the second video, but it is difficult to machine given it's formulary makeup, it can be ground though and is used to make camshafts and other such long wearing products... It acts in industrial uses like Case Hardened Steel... It is easier to produce than steel but harder to work into useable parts...

I imagine they can make shells from it and looking at the old deteriorated examples in the museums I would say they did.. (they look like rusted corroded cast iron)..

If you want, I can dig out my Machinists handbook for the section on hardening the various types of metals for more accurate info.... 

Not saying your wrong, just saying that from specific knowledge I know that artillery rounds were not made from case hardened materials, it made them too hard....

And this video shows the German process of forging large artillery round blanks before machining....

I believe it's from the Krupp works long about 1918....