SPA Modeler

Great sketches Bruce - I always enjoy seeing them (I did 5 years of technical drawing at school and collage) - pieces of art in themselves.

Looking forward to seeing where you're going with this.

Stuart! Hello! Thanks so much for your comments.
Five years... cool. Your training shows in your work...
I’m thinking also about your photography.
It’s good to begin with training like that.
What you wrote today I connect with strongly.
I wrote this earlier to another modeler:

My Dad encouraged me to look into architecture as a potential career. In fact, one of the coolest guys I met was an architect my Dad knew. My Dad and I went to see the fella together but he told my Dad he wanted to speak to me privately, and politely shooed my Dad out of his office. As soon as he closed the door he asked me: “So what do you really want to do?” I told him I had no idea but I liked art. He said immediately: “Do that.” He was right. Always follow your heart.

speedgraflex wrote:



Breaking down the HS-1 Ejection Seat for scratchbuild.

Seriously, book, start one!

Trumpeter kit :



As a cost-cutting move and in the hope that a modern tooling job will be a less painful entry into jet building, I chose the Trumpeter kit.
However Trumpeter chose to mold the fuselage pieces in left and right halves, a serious mistake in terms of structural integrity.
With the Vigilante being such a wide and flat airplane, there is nothing to prevent flexing of the top and bottom of the fuselage.
Instead, they should have made a top and bottom rear fuselage section and a separate left-right front nose section...

Very nice Bruce - That's light years,ahead of the Airfix kit I had. I'm sure with a little fettling it'll fit nicely.

you may want to add some internal bulkheads as stiffeners to reduce that flex there Bruce.

Thanks for those ideas, bud! I read a review of the 1/48 version that made me want to chuck this kit due to inaccuracies and idiotic assemblies such as the very basic fuselage to wings one that is now fast becoming problem one. I believe Trumpeter shrank their 1/48 version to 1/72 and brought all of the issues along with the scale change. In the review I read there was an aftermarket kit to fix the fuselage weaknesses made in wood by Nautilus Models. I can only imagine that the owner of Nautilus bought the kit and had to make a brace for the interior himself then decided to include one for sale. Here is my simplified idea:

speedgraflex wrote:Trumpeter kit :



As a cost-cutting move and in the hope that a modern tooling job will be a less painful entry into jet building, I chose the Trumpeter kit.
However Trumpeter chose to mold the fuselage pieces in left and right halves, a serious mistake in terms of structural integrity.
With the Vigilante being such a wide and flat airplane, there is nothing to prevent flexing of the top and bottom of the fuselage.
Instead, they should have made a top and bottom rear fuselage section and a separate left-right front nose section...

I hate when they do that to an aircraft that has some flat surfaces. And it seems that Trumpeter is bad about it. I had their T-38C kit that I chucked because the fuselage would not line up no matter what I did.

I feel ya, Mike.