1:72 Piaggio P.180 Avanti Polish Air Ambulance - Finished Page 2!

Coming along nicely!  I've been looking at this kit.  Twin engine canard pusher - pretty neat.

Pawel!

     Now that is one beautiful job.That is one weird looking a/c. I wonder how she flies? As a retired private pilot my curiosity is there. I always wonder how the new designs respond to pilot input. I know a lot are "Fly by wire" today, But? 

    Those windows allow more viewing than I thought they would.

TB,

I read that when FBW (fly by wire) was introduced in the 1970s a lot of pilots hated it.  The reason was that the engineers thought that by placing strain gauges on the stick, the stick no longer had to move.  See, that's what happens when engineers are allowed too much unsupervised play time.

So the solution was to allow the stick to move a bit, and artificial "feel" gave pilots physical feedback on control surface loads.  

I believe Airbus and GD's F-16 were the first mass production planes to incorporate FBW.

Pawel, your Avanti is coming along nicely!

Hello everybody!

Thanks a lot for your comments!

John - I read it's more correct to call this one "tandem wing" and not canard. More about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandem_wing

Doc - thanks a lot for your kind words! I don't have any experience with this aircraft, other than I used to see it (and hear it - it's got an unique sound) out of my window, approaching the runway in Poznań. But if you look it up on youtube, it gets very good reviews from pilots flying it. People also say it's got a performance of a jet at at an operating cost of a turboprop. That sounds good to me.

Real G - thanks a lot. I don't think this Piaggio is fly by wire. This is a funny machine that also has deceiving looks, for example it looks like it's a composite aircraft, but it's made of aluminium. The italians like good looking machines but in this case, to my knowledge, they didn't sacrifice anything for looks - I hear this is a very carefully designed aircraft.

Thanks for reading and I'll try to post an update soon! Have a nice day

Paweł

For some reason I think catfish when I look at that plane.

Hello!

John - must be the whiskers...

And I have another update for you all... I feel a lot of relief, the decals are on. Not without problems, but could be worse... I'm happy about how the painted colour matched the decalled colour. I used Gunze H13 with a hint of Gunze H2 mixed in:

Now I'm working on various doors. The main gear doors have hinges made out of wire, and the cabin doors still need a lot of work on the interior, they have this large lever for opening and closing them, mounted ona pretty convoluted-looking panel on the inside.

Thanks for looking and have a nice day

Paweł

Well done, Pawel.  I think the jury is still out on what to call a three surface airplane.  Triplane sure doesn't sound right, but a little research says all three surfaces do provide lift on this one.

Your plane looks fantastic!  You certainly have modeling skills.  I'm sorry I don't post more, but the pop-ups are getting too obnoxious to ignore.  Seeing your work is worth it. Thanks for posting. 
                                          knox 

Hello! Thanks a lot for your comments!

John - naming conventions aside I heard this design is very well thought out and performs great, which I think is very cool in the end.

knox - thank you very much for your kind words! Our forums here somehow are getting less friendly and harder to work with with time, not a good sign and no wonder people are posting less.

And I've got another update for you, and I think this will be the last one before that little ambulance is complete! I've been working on the cabin door:

That macro sure is ruthless...

I have also done the lights: On the wingtips:

And on the tip of the vertical stabilizer, top of the fuselage (red) and bottom of the fuselage (white):

I guess now it's time to put it all together... Thanks for looking and have a nice day

Paweł

Hi Pawel!

    The more I look at this ,the more I am falling for it.Gosh, I wish I could still fly, I would love to get a trip behind the controls of this one! You are doing a beautiful job!

Hello TB, thanks a lot for your kind words, I'm glad you like it!

Yeah, I heard that his machine flies great!

And today is a great day - I'm done building here and here are the finished photos:

I hope you like them - thanks for looking and have a nice day!

Paweł

Yes a beautiful job Pawel, It will certainly stand out and be an eye catcher when when displayed alongside other aircraft. The pictures are pretty sharp too.

Joe