Does anybody else ever have constant bad luck?
On this ship I got, the planes pretty much got a lot of parts way out of scale, but I figured with a lot of cutting, and shaving, and little extra plastic they could be made to look close to what they are supposed to look like.

The wheels were just wide plastic strips hanging down to touch the ground, they look nothing like wheels or struts.So I ordered all the round stock from Plastruct in hopes that one would be the right size of the wheels, and I could carve it out, and get a lot thinner plastic for the struts to glue to them.

Well here they come, and I go through all the stock that came in, and I start to put them up against the plane to see which one is the right one for the size of the tires.

The .045 is just to small, then all I got is the .060 which is to big, so I looked at the order form, and it said the .050 was out of stock, now that would of been just right I believe, but here I am again on hold on that project.

The radar disk on the E2C Hawkeye, it was way to thick, but I got a pile of shavings on the floor about an inch deep, and now it looks like the one you buy from L'Arsenal, all I got left to do is work on the support for it, and cut it off and make a new one for it to, otherwise the rest of the plane is OK outside of the props.

They look like 4 4x4 wooden clubs sticking out from a center hub. I tried shaving them from the back, but I don't think that will work, I got to come up with another idea, they still look awful.

Any suggestions on the props, on what I could use, all help greatly appreciated.

Kerry

Kerry,

What ship, what scale, what mfg.?

J

Good day Kerry!
For the props outside of buying a pe set for it, you could use spare pe parts or the brass frame of a pe fret and cut out your own props. L'arsenal do make 1/400 aircraft, plus they could have a pe set for there aircraft to, I would have to chech on that though.
I know its hard to make somthing out of badly molded parts look good! To bad you are having trouble mate!

HTH,

Garry

Hi Kerry

Although I haven't done it myself, one guy of our real physical modeling club (AMA - Almada's Modeling Associaton), have been working in 1/700 aircrafts and using the following tricks:

Landing gear: streched sprue of different gauges, when needed or as needed.
Also vey fine wire, for details...

Whells: using a very sharp (new) scalpel he cuts very thin section of solder and use it as whells - also streched sprue could be used!

Propelers: PE sets or drawn in paper the apropriate size and shape, cut, varnished three or four times, bended a little so not to appear that flat, glued in place and painted in apropriate painting scheme.

Aerial: His wife hair :-)

I know this works very good for 1/700 braille scale
Hope this could help you getting out of that bad feeling, Kerry!!
And where's the fun of a model without a challenge?

Hope I could help....

Skipper

Jeff it is the Charles de Gaulle 1/400 by Heller.
Then for one of the other planes the .060 will work fine for tire size, but with this plastruct, I got the shoulders carved off one side, then cut it off the rod, but if I try to clamp my hemostat on the first click, it will smash the plastic, so I tried it without locking it, and it took forever to trim the shoulders off the other side.

So with 2 big medicine vial's full of planes with at least 3 wheels each, I might try solder there skipper to see if it trims any easier.

Gary, the Rafale M is a pretty good looking plane outside of the wheels, and the E2C Hawkeye the wheels and props are it's weak points now, and the Dauphins are fine, but the Super Etendar everything is useless on them, the wings are way to thick for it's size. They haft to be replaced completely, unless you can place them where you can't see them from the sides.
Kerry