Vacuform GB is On!

 Here's my first progress report.  I picked a subject and opened the bag!  I'm going with Wing's 1/48 Fokker D.XXI.

Here's a pick of the parts sheet.  Seems to be well molded overall, though note the lower wing half.  One of my major concerns is that there is no clear demarcation between the part and the surrounding plastic.  Guess I'll have to cut it large and sand/test/sand/test until correct.

The kit comes with a nice decal sheet for 2 Dutch, one Danish, and one Finnish version.  Right now, I'm leaning toward the Dutch #221, since I live only 2 hours from the replica this kit is based on in Soesterburg, Netherlands.  I've already taken some detail pics of the replica to use for this kit.  It also comes with a nice bag of white metal detail parts (engine, prop, intake and exhaust trunks, tail wheel)

 Here's a pic of the instructions.  Lots of info on the various versions included.  The sheet contains my second major concern with the kit, though.  Found this line in the assembly instructions:  "Install built up wing into fuselage.  NOTICE: there is a nasty gap between the upper wing halves and the fuselage . . . You have not made a mistake, we have!"  They then go on with some techniques on how to fix it.  Guess you have to admire their honesty, though I'll be interested to see this gap in person.

Plan on starting around GB start date.  Should be fun.

Hi Jeff:.............. The Fokker XXI looks great....and here is the usual "trick" when
cutting the parts from the card:
"Go over the sides of the parts with a "Marking Pen" to get a dark outline!!!! then you can cut the part knowing you won´t mess up!!!............ use a very sharp knife (Carefull!!) xacto 11 is fine or similiar.....you will notice that by doing this you will cut very near the part so little sanding will be required to get the parts to fit well together............

Great pics..... 

Hi everyone:.........Finished choosing the plane...here it is: The Heinkel 46. As you can see it's bare.....but looks nice and different, an old Monoplane from the 30's.

Aaronw, I'll be really interested to see the Sherpa kit.  My first assignment in the Air Force was to Zweibrucken, Germany, home of a C-23 Sherpa unit, complete with planes in the dark green and gray euro camo.  Even caught a few hops on them to other bases in Europe.  I think the USAF bought them to ferry engines and parts around Europe, but one of the crewmembers told me that the F-100 engines used in F-15s and 16s wouldn't fit, so they were pretty much underutilized.  I caught one down to Aviano, Italy (long before Aviano became a major US base, it was a piece of concrete and a few rusty hangars back then), and we had to make an ops stop in France for gas, because the Sherpa couldn't fly over the Alps.  They had a very modern glass cockpit, though, that one pilot compared to a modern Learjet.  I think the USAF gave them all away to the Army and various govmt agencies after Zwei closed in 1991.

Solid, nice subject you picked there.  I love all the old funky, interwar parosol aircraft.  Got most of the old Heller line of French interwar and early WWII aircraft waiting in the stash.  I'm too big a chicken to try one in vacuform.  Look forward to seeing it complete.

I fished out the KC-10 kit to do a quick fit check.  After looking at it, I have no idea where I'll fit the model once I'm done.

Some AIM kits come precut from the backing, and this is one of them, so I don't have to go through the cutting-out process as much (some things still have to be cut out - wing and engine openings, gear bays, etc., so I won't miss all the fun).  But there'll still be a lot of work on this one - the fuselage cuts weren't quite complete, so I'm going to have to clean that up quite a bit.

Here's a couple of pictures (yardstick for scale - plus there's a 1/72 scale Bf109 lurking as well).

The parts laid out:

And taped together for fit testing:

It'll probably be a while before I get much further, since I've got to make some progress on some other projects to clear off space on the workbench (I can lay out kits for pictures on the dining room table, but I don't think working on them there would go over too well with the wife).

Here's a couple of references for building vac kits that might be useful:

http://www.aeroclub-models.com/files/VacForm.pdf

http://www.donsmodelworks.com/reference.htm

Plus there's a few more tips in the discussion here:

/forums/730512/ShowPost.aspx

Bruce

Wow Bruce, that is bigger than I remember it!

Should be impressive! What kind of support structure are you going to do for the fuselage?

Charlie 

The kit comes with a keel structure to support the fuselage halves - I just didn't show it in the pictures.  It's a pretty thick plastic structure that fits partway inside one fuselage half, and then the other half is fit over it.  I'll post some pictures once I get to adding the keel.  The plastic on AIM kits is pretty thick, so it probably doesn't need much more than that for the fuselage.  I've done one AIM kit before (1/72 HS Nimrod, a little smaller than the KC-10) and didn't add any support and it was fine.

If I didn't have the keel, I would probably make some bulkheads with a contour gauge (which I hate doing, since it always winds up for me requiring a lot of fiddling, but you do what you've gotta do), and also add some tabs to each fuselage side that interlock to allow the halves to be put together with no step.  I'd also put some strengthening strips and buttresses in if they'll fit.

Here's a picture of my Bv238 with the buttresses and strengthening strips (and before I had added the interlocking tabs):

The KC-10 will definitely need a wing spar, though.  There's one in plastic provided with the kit.  I usually make my own from metal rods or balsa - haven't decided which to do here yet.  I'll probably decide once I get further along.

Bruce

I've got an ancient Armtec 1/76 scale Jadgpanzer Hetzer that is a vacuformed kit. It also includes a small sprue of injection molded plastic that has the road wheels, sprockets and gun tube. I may try to build this old museum piece, although I do not know how well it will turn out.

Hopefully, I will remember to finish this kit. I'm knee deep in a couple of other GBs right now.

solid wrote:

Welcome Rob, should be an interesting model....................:)

It is the only complete armor kit I have ever seen in vacuform.

Hi everyone...................Its been quiet for the last week, I guess we are all
busy or working slowly but surely in our models. I am finishing the cockpit interiors of
the HE and should be done on the weekend. Will shoot some pics and post....see you all.

What´s up Aaronw?......Where did you order from?...its been a long time coming!!!
Hope you get it soon my friend.....

I ordered from Roll Models, they say an order takes 2-3 weeks and I ordered 3 weeks ago so hopefully I'll have it soon. I'm out of town next week but if it hasn't arrived by then I'll search ebay and find something else for the build.

I've never ordered from them before so I don't know if this is abnormal of them. I've ordered twice from Tower in the same time and already have my second order, but Roll Models has a much larger selection.

2 or 3 weeks!!!, are they making it for you??????.......checked their site, what an awfull place!!!

Good luck!!!! 

I thought I had heard good things about Roll Models which is why I decided to give it a try. Looks like a good selection and decent prices, which I thought makes up for the rather spartan site. Apparently they are rather slow, I figured 2-3 weeks not a big deal, I have stuff to work on, after 3 weeks I'm starting to wonder though. At least they don't charge until they ship so worst case I just have to order all over again from someone else. If my order isn't at least in the mail next friday I'll be surfing ebay for something interesting to try out, vacuform adds a whole new dimension to whats available so I wan't to give it a try when there are others building along that know what they are doing.

We had a better than usual tax return this year so my modeling budget was expanded a bit and I thought I'd try out a few of the other online shops I'd never used before. I've found Megahobby (which advertises here) is pretty quick, and I am very happy with Tower hobby, fast, good prices and a fixed shipping rate, it also has the best selection of Model Master Acryl I've found online. Still waiting on Roll Models and Lucky Models.

Lets bump this one back up to the top with a quick update.  Started on my Wings Fokker D.XXI a few days ago.  Got the fuselage halves cut out, the wings cut out and glued together, along with the horizontal stabalizer halves.  Here's an initial pick of everything taped together:

Note the canyons at the wing roots, and the poorly shaped wing fillet.  Things like this are probably why only 4-5 guys signed up for this madness!  I guess using your brains and stretching your modeling skills are what make vacuforms fun, though. I had to reinforce the forward fuselage halves to get them to line up.  Pretty successful here:

Despite careful sanding to help ensure the minimum amount of plastic was removed, the cowling did not come out round.  I'm shimming in styrene strips with white glue to figure out how much to add to get it back in shape:

Hope to start scratch-building the interior soon.  The D.XXI had a tube frame, so I'm thinking stretched sprue is the way to go.  I have some nice pics of the instrument panel and forward cockpit, but can't find any of the seat and aft area.  Guess I'll have to make an educated guess. 

Any other Vac GB updates out there?

arrrrgh, my order arrived and no Sherpa it is backordered.

I'm off to ebay, I'll let you know what I end up with.

Where did everyone else go on this, don't make me struggle with a vac kit alone.

We're still here.  I'm just backlogged on my scratchbuilding project so I probably won't get to the KC-10 for a while.

Bruce

I'm still here, too.  I've also got a couple of other projects I'm trying to clear out so I can devote the lions share of my time to the D.XXI.  I did pick up some plastic tube stock yesterday at my LHS to build the tube frame with.  I tried to stretch some sprue to use for the tubes, but just couldn't get the consistent size I was looking for.  I also found a nice internal diagram of the interior to help lay out the tube structure.  Also shimmed up the cowling to get it back in round.  Other than that, no updates and nothing picture-worthy. 

Aaron, sorry about the backorder.  I was really looking forward to seeing how the Sherpa went.  Any idea how long before delievery?

I'm still here with my half and half XP-72. Just had very little building lately! I've made a little progress, but nothing that would really show in pics!

Charlie 

OK, dug my vacuformed kit out and here it is in all its splendor. Picture one is the front cover. It looks like someone in Spring Lake, NJ paid $2.50 for this kit originally.

Picture two show you what $2.50 got you when you bought this kit. The green items in the plastic bag are the injection molded road wheels, drive sprocket, exhaust and gun tube.

Picture three is a close up of the vacuformed parts. Sixteen vacuformed pieces and eighteen plastic pieces. I believe I have a detail set that was available for this kit that added pioneer tools and objects like that. I will search for that set.

jeff wrote:

Rob, that looks like an interesting build.  Have to say I've never seen vacuformed tracks.  How on earth are you going to get them into shape!?

Yeah - good question.  How thick is the plastic?  I wonder if it's thin enough that you can bend it fairly easily.

I think it's great that you're tackling a vac armor kit - it's pretty rare that you see one of those done.  I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Bruce

jeff wrote:

Rob, that looks like an interesting build.  Have to say I've never seen vacuformed tracks.  How on earth are you going to get them into shape!?

Hi Guys.............

 Am still here, and will shoot a pic or two of the Heinkel. I am also finishing 2 solid wood models, the B-18 Bolo and a Cant-501 which have taken more time than was planned!!!!!........keep pitching guys!!!!glad to see you all in the battle.......................

Rob, why don´t you substitute the plastic card with " cardboard " for the track....it works perfectly and you can make each "track link" with a ruler and pointer. I did this for a Renault WW1 tank and no one could guess how I had done them...... several leyers or cardboard will get you the thikness you want.

Had to go all the way to page 3 to find this thread.  Just checking for any status reports out there.  I finally got the bench cleared off and started work on the D.XXIs tube frame.  I'll post a couple of pictures in a day or two if anyone out there is still interested.

Cheers!