1/48 Eduard Nie.11 N1135 by speedgraflex

[Stikpusher]

Ideally the filler should be at the peak point of the tank to maximize the capacity of the tank.

[speedgraflex]

Thanks, Carlos! That's a perfect explanation. Thank you so much. I still have some flu left, I thnk, so my replies aren't going to be totally coherent, please forgive me. I also should note that I think the "Bebe" purchased by the Vintage Aviator is one of a pair built in the United States and that photo is I believe a French copy; and that leads me back to Carlos's Rule 2 of Scale Aircraft Modeling which is never base your primary decisions on a replica. This continues to be the absolute best advice I've received and I keep trying to follow it. I really do. But there's so little available even on an aircraft that is well known.

[cbaltrin]

Cool and fun looking kit!
BTW, I have never seen so many replies to a thread in such a short span of time — this almost led me me to think this was some ancient thread that got revived recently and made me skip over initially! ha ha ha.

[Stikpusher]

Bruce, I found this photo that is supposedly a Nieuport 11 fuselage stripped down.



The tanks appear to be curved to match the upper fuselage contours, so I would go with fuselage centerline for the filler ports. If the tanks were flat on top, then an offset port would make more sense, as the position might be offset for ease of access.

[speedgraflex]

Cool and fun looking kit!
BTW, I have never seen so many replies to a thread in such a short span of time — this almost led me me to think this was some ancient thread that got revived recently and made me skip over initially! ha ha ha.

Happy Holidays, Chris! Thanks so much for writing! I really have been concerned about how Spam was doing, but thanks to all of the stalwarts like yourself who still come here to share their work and support others, I think the source of the fire—creativity and community—still burns here.

I continue to be grateful to you for the quality of your work and your understanding of history and aircraft. The combination of these two elements makes Spam special. We aren’t about marketing methods, we’re about modeling and the creative joy that comes from successfully building anything.

Re this older Eduard kit: this is one that marked the transition of Eduard from short run into the bigger leagues. I’ve been concentrating on older models and really thought this particular kit exemplifies Eduard’s best efforts at WWI plastic kits. I have partially built their Fokker in this same scale and somewhere in Utah my buddy is holding a Nieuport 17 with most of my stash, but this kit appears to be one that Eduard kept producing without changes. It’s also early CAD designed tooling too—quite innovative!

[speedgraflex]

Carlos! Thanks so much, buddy! I reversed image searched your image and enhanced it so I could see everything inside! Last night I made a V3 cockpit with a bit more attention to the craft of modeling, but I couldn’t do any of this without your advice.

[speedgraflex]

Last year one of my photography clients hired me to take care of her jewelry design studio for two weeks, it was part time work, simple, really, but she did teach me how to sweep up her work bench at the end of the day because the carpet monster might be eating gemstones that she dropped.

Flash forward to today and I dropped a small cockpit part - the bar with the stirrups - these little pieces bounce and hide so fast I told myself immediately to forgot it, it’s a lost cause, but then I remembered that I should sweep the floor contents into a pile then into a dust pan then sort it as though searching for gemstones—

And lo, the piece was found.

[speedgraflex]

Good morning, I spent my night working just on making the best stirrups I can with the two critical factors we all face—those of scale and our own abilities. After four attempts to make to the thinnest possible strip of paper thin styrene sheet and form it to the smallest size possible failed, I made a pair of stirrups that were a touch larger. Still better than my Version 1. I’ll take photos later.

[Stikpusher]

When you start improvising in the cockpit, start thinking outside the box”styrene” box… look at bits of foil, wire, paper, etc. for use in there to detail with. Hell, if you ever use PE brass, save the excess and old frets for this stuff. I keep this sort of stuff in old Altoids tins for just such purposes.

[speedgraflex]

Great advice! Thank you so much, Carlos!