popeye the sailor

oh yea!..........some sweet detail for that mill! following along!

very glad that it all worked out for you! the graphics came out super! really nice racy look. I wonder how it would look if you were to change the wheel color to red? well done........stage that one for top shelf!

yea.....WOW....so you saw it! I was amazed to see how they accomplished this! there was extensive testing on carrier decks, as I mentioned starting with the Wasp. of course there is no information on how these two crashed.....there were two other crashes in 2000 that almost sidelined the whole project. I'm sure you might have read this. I took the model and tried to simise how to modify it, but I would need to cap the opening off, and create a pivot for the wings.......it would be an awesome mod if I could fold the wings too, but they are fixed on the rotor. Ken.....it would be something if Italeri came up with a kit......likely more expensive too that wouldn't be the case OC.......scroll down in the link and there is a diagram of the Osprey with wings fixed and in helicopter mode. with the height and the dehydral of the wings, it must make up for the size of the blades. planes are set up for thrust and lift.......to add in the helo equaison changes these numbers and factors in for gyro { whatever that is}. all have adjustable pitch for prop or rotor blades........I'm sure these are trimmed when changing to the different modes. they have tested the craft in both modes, so it must have the ability to take off in fixed wing mode. I just got home from work..........I took the rest of the week off {since I hate work}............I'll get to more later, if not tomorrow hope to have some pictures too!

I just assembled the blades on the rotors.........they are massive! unless the wings were a significant height off the ground, it would be almost impossible to fly in fixed wing mode. the six initial prototypes flew trials in helicopter mode in March of 1989.........in September Of 1989 in fixed wing mode. looking at these blades.......you would think otherwise. two crashed between '91 and '92.......trials halted until '93. two completed successful sea trials aboard the U.S.S. Wasp in 1990. by this time modifications brought them up to the V22B standard variant. there is an image on the Wiki.........the wing does fold.....wait till you see how! Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey - Wikipedia

the narcelles have been started as well.......work in progress checking out the dry fit, I added the wing, and noticed the gaps on both sides in the front. in some of the images, they are there......in others they are not. I do have some sheet styrene.....I may patch them up. it doesn't mate up too good either......figures that I'm out of putty. this time I won't forget the interior dry fit.......please excuse the horrible paint work..... this shows the spacious area forward of the seats.......I think there should be a bulkhead here. looking on the starboard side, the main entrance door is located there. the cargo opening is forgiving.......once the wing is in place, it will be the only way to view the interior the flash can be annoying......... another thing I noticed is that they give you five round window inserts. not counting the little one in the main entrance door, there are only three round windows. if you look at the picture above {and others that show the interior surface, you can see the outline of additional windows. there are no signs or them on the outer surfaces. there's one on each side......makes one wonder what the tooling significance of this is. most interesting.

thanks gents........when I got back from shopping, I took some time to look at images. I'd better get on with the update though, before some other interruption happens. the images kinda go along with what I have to show. I did get a couple of pictures of the cockpit dry fit....it was still together anyway. the dash has enough room.....I don't need to make any more adjustments. here's a shot of the interior via the cargo opening...plenty of room in there. the rotors will be mainly the same color....so I started to assemble them......numbered so I can keep track which is which I did the interior paint which is a med gray......then added the gear buckets. the tabs for the cargo door added here. the images threw me somewhat......a couple of pictures showed the door as one long unit.....other pictures show it as split and in the positions shown in the kit. I'm allowing the flash....some come out good, others don't.... it can be seen that I added more paint to the cockpit insert....you'll see it better in further pictures more paint was added to the passenger area. the seats themselves are a red color. looks like a dog's breakfast, but I still need to touch them up. it did confuse me a little.....I goofed assembling it. I had to take it apart and redo it...that went better than I thought it would.....it was a mess. at one point I did a dry fit of both sections and I thought I had still goofed. the cockpit section would not fit into the fuselage half.......off about 1/8 of an inch. I later found that the passenger section bulkhead was in the wrong place......an adjustment later, and all was good. the rotor parts are assembled......along with the tires there are a pair of fins that locate near the ends of the wing.....they were cemented in place. the rotor blades have also been assembled and sanded....no picture yet.

warm water softens the film..........look'in good

hi everyone........yea......there was a rush on the research here. the Truman reference was probably the the initial call for the need of such an aircraft, after the proposal of the Marshall plan. transport aircraft that could get into tight places where an airstrip wasn't an option. I did some looking in on this, but couldn't find any correlations either. there was The Berlin Airlift......that was quite an undertaking in his era I realize that there were quite a few variants of this aircraft .......and concept, through the years of its development. I really did focus on them, since this is the model I'm building. I'm sticking to that it doesn't say on the box, but from the decal sheet and the box art, it's Marine.....so if the abbreviations say anything more, it's an MV. the placement of the engines is exactly that.......a gyrocopter. the Marines needed an aircraft that could take off and land in tight places.....they also needed speed on their side as well.. after the Iran hostage crisis, this underscored the need for such an aircraft. with the narcelles fixed on the wing, the tiltrotor concept wouldn't work....it compromised the integrity of the wing and cramped the mechanism to operate it. I think the length of the props was another issue. as seen here, they are large and likely longer than a conventional fixed wing plane. being this large, I believe also negated the need for a tail rotor.....especially if the engines were lowered to the fixed wing position during flight. one drawback they found, was during operations in the middle east. as with helicopters, the downward air currents from the props brought up dust clouds, which clogged intakes and caused the plane to crash......I haven't read to find what the fix was.....but there were a few incidents caused by this phenomenon. gone shopping..........be back in a bit

noticed you painted the frames from the inside.......interesting. are you going to paint the outside too? what's with the gap at the top?

great look'in spit.........glad to hear your feeling better

the cockpit looks good I like the foil idea......will it be painted over?

I've had fits with decals that large too. they never conform, and if you force them........well, then your dealing with two decals. I bought a Cutty kit from E-bay.......the decal sheet was trash, so I got another one from Revell. that one broke up into thousands of shards due to micro cracking.......so your assumption of decal age is true you might have done better to purchase a sheet from an outside source. Drag Racing Decals - Mike's Decals Archer Fine Transfers, Decals, Surface Details and Dry Transfers for model builders personally, with the masking ability that you have, I would think that paint might work better. decals can be the most discouraging thing about the car model medium I hope you can fix it. root'in for ya good buddy. I've even thought about pull'in out the decorations myself...........we all need something to smile about

thanks all for your kind comments at 1:48 scale, this should be a good size model. there's some really nice detail too. one thing I am going to do though, is model it with the props in the raised position. if I build it so they can be lowered, I will need to eliminate a couple of parts.......I think it will look better if these parts can be seen. I'll likely be making a base for it too........I wouldn't think this model is tail heavy, but they do instruct weight to be added to the nose. at one point in it development, all four branches of the military was involved with it. but around the point where Clinton took office, the Army had backed out, and the navy was juggling around the idea that it might not work well if deployed for carrier service. it would depend if the development team could come up with a way to fold the wings, or the props. the wings was a no go, since.....in the event that the Osprey lost an engine, the single engine could keep both props turning, by means of an internal drive shaft, connecting both engines together. this was required due to the large blades......requires a lot of torque. paint isn't too tough......I've seen images like the ones you posted OC.......thanks for doing that all the real good ones I've seen.....in any of the projects I've taken on in the past, have been copyrighted. I don't see the harm.......we're only using them for research, but it must be respected. I did notice that there are marked indentions inside the fuselage for a third pair of windows.....much like the Chinook. there is no outside detail that would denote that there would be a third pair.......so I won't exploit it. I should have more to report by this evening........I'll see you then

apparently, I didn't get a picture of the dry fit.......we'll visit that soon I figured I'd put some of the 'meaty' parts together....the main parts of the wings and the tail. ...the rotor/prop blades I marked them so I could tell them apart due to their pitch. I'll finish cleaning them up later. when the wings were dry, I added the parts that define the mating surface to the fuselage. they didn't fit too good.......I will need to clean up the four corners, fore and aft of the wings. the cargo door halves will need to be separated, if I want to show the door in the open position. this went on without any problems. if I panned the camera down a little bit more, you would be able to see how the door{s} locate. gluing is fun.....but paint is more fun the interior parts got a coat of ghost gray. when dry, one section of the seats was painted green.......it's not olive drab, but it's a military color and close enough to pass muster. the aisle in the middle of the floor is to be painted gunship gray. I used a brand X masking tape, so I have a few touch ups to do. the admiral had a doctor's appointment.....when we got back, I cleaned up the four corners of the wings. these areas need to have a smooth curvature, especially at the front corners. the rear corners needed to follow a curvature of their own. outside of that chigger in the middle, they look good. the chigger happened by my being stupid, twisting the part off the sprue. I have been a good boy, using my nippers more to come.......

after the failure in the middle East with Operation Eagle Claw, the realization for a long range, high speed, vertical takeoff aircraft was raised by the U.S. defense department. 1981 was the start of the experimental JVX aircraft program. in 1983, Bell and Boeing was given a joint development contract to build such a craft. within a few years, the development of the V 22 was underway, and by 1989, the V 22 tiltrotor flew its first test flights. it was a start........many design changes took place......an aircraft that can do both vertical and horizontal take offs was a huge undertaking........complex, to say the least. the U.S.M.C. took an interest in this type of craft......at the time, the Army was overseeing the program. President Truman proposed a joint merger between the two to oversee it, but it was met with disputes. the Marines had to win out, as their CH-46 helicopters were slowly wearing out. the cost to build the Osprey was beginning to mount as well. the Bell XV-15 rolled out for testing in 1983. through the years, leading up to the Clinton administration, the fate of the project took many hits...the cost wasn't outweighing the benefits......defense secretary Dick Cheney tried his best to defund it. it was Bill Clinton who kept it alive. the JVX aircraft was designated the V 22 in 1985. by this time, the Army had backed out of the program, and the Navy was directed not to spend any money on it either. there is a lot of history on the development of this program.........to cover it all would take me all night. I started to tinker with this model a couple of evenings ago. I had the dash and the cockpit deck in front of me ......the assembly of these three parts was confusing, because of how the dash sat on the platform. the front tabs were plain enough to see.......but there were another pair in the dash well. cementing the dash together, it was then fitted on the platform and leveled off as the cement set. the bulkhead was added after........ dry fitting the fuselage sides together, the flash burr was removed around the cockpit opening. I had fitted the cockpit in to see if it would clear.......the picture must still be in the camera. I'll get it out in a moment........there's more to show as well. I also cleaned up around where the wings will locate. looking inside, it has the resemblance of a helicopter........the interior is similar to OC's Chinook. the cargo door can be shown open or closed.......I'm choosing to show it in the open position. more in a moment............

at least I caught this one early...... I'd tell ya what I use for an airbrush, but you have one on the way.......mine can be bought for around $30.00. gray isn't an incorrect color per say either......looking at images of panther tanks, there were some that had the panzer gray, but they were early variants. chalk it up to a rogue unit I'm certain you'll have fun with these kits!

WOW! look'in really nice! did you paint the rims?......looks sweet! the interior is well done also........ I was getting worried Lou........I was reading through the log and wasn't seeing any post from you we had a supra in the back of the garage I worked at....belonged to one of the brothers. I forget the year, but it was an early model...70's, 80's. it had a in-line....can't recall how many cylinders......but it was a long engine. we used to have to push it in and out of the shop every day, until they parked it out back. another one of the brothers has an old spyder {pain in the a**}

........look to be to scale..........perhaps you can use it as a transport can you imagine seeing them parachuting over the farm?!?!?!

well.........your running out of room you may have to annex beautiful workmanship !

quite a bit of progress Mike........the cowl looks really good amazing how you got the cockpit to fit....looks nice as well. just as well on the gun bays, since you really want the wings to fold. look on the bright side......the example you showed didn't get both of these upgrades either your doing a great job!

looks great James.....as all your other projects I've looked in on there's some really intricate laser cutting in the kit.......very nice

yea....every time I try....I look at it the next day and be unhappy with it, and then change it back. good to see you kept yourself busy during the summer

super job on your latest figures........I might send you all my horses they're a lot bigger though.......you'd REALLY be able to hone your skill I agree.......you ARE getting quite good

super looking tank.......superb weathering job too

WOW! tuning in and reading the sad news was heart stopping OC.........glad you pulled the rabbit out of the hat! one will never know what happens out in the field.......you gotta remember that some equipment was altered to better serve the unit...or the type of missions that was being run. it's a sure bet that there were a couple out there that had the windows yanked out, and turned into a gun ship. after all........look at the C 47 Skytrain.......it started out as a transport plane. it's not nice to mess with the mother of invention get this beast done OC.........before anything else happens! BTW......I started the Osprey.