Thanks Leonardo , after fitting it and using the dremel to round off the corners of the board i just tacked the Bravo fuse together with superglue ( it does come apart again easily....... ask the wall ) i used a small screw for the tail and the rear bottom part of the main body.

Originally Posted by Leonardo_L

Hey... that's a good work sonnetg! I love it and must to contact Mike for that fuselage.
Regarding the painting, have you ever tried painting one of those transparent canopies from the inside? I can see the primer looking quite glossy in one of your pics, Perhaps using and airbrush to paint from the inside might be an easy way to deal with this little models...

Thanks for sharing it with us and keep up the good work!
Leonardo

Thanks man. I actually ordered 2 more Airwolfs for $20. Not bad considering how much work goes into molding these plastics. i wish the Airwolf fuselage was a bit more stiff. It's quite flimsy to work on, but it can be done. As for Airbrushing, I dont have any more $$ to spend on new tools. Paintbrush will do for now. Paining inside out, I have not thought of it, but how do i apply primer? You do have to sand the fuselage a little before applying primer/paint, else to paint can come off easily in a crash or two.

Anyways, I ordered a CH53 and Sikorsky Chickasaw, and planning on a Bell 222 Civilian model. It would nice to add those in my small collection.

You can contact Mike here: http://www.mmanrow.20m.com/contact.html

Regards,

I had no idea how much work is involved in creating these fuselages

There has to be an easier way than this...one would hope.

You are very welcome!
I've sent an email to Mike a while ago and are waiting for his answer.... and I asked for the CH53 too!

As long as for and easy way to do the fuselage mold, yes... there are You can 3D scan the surfaces and then CNC milling the mold. Anyway there always will be a hand finishing process that must to be made by expertise hands with a lot of patience!

Have fun! Leonardo

Originally Posted by sonnetg

Alrighty guys.....finally finished the build after work tonight. Took me almost 10 hours to build. It's much more involving than the Huey, but, hey it's the Airwolf, can you blame anyone?!

Here' you go, some pics of the final product. I am including some additional pictures for documentation. Overall, I am happy with how it turned out. Not perfect by a long shot, but not bad either. It's an enjoyment of manual labor, which an artist can appreciate a bit more. I am not an artist or anything, but i am lot better at photography than I am with a paintbrush.

Anyways...here you go. Enjoy

I want one!

Originally Posted by Leonardo_L

You are very welcome!
I've sent an email to Mike a while ago and are waiting for his answer.... and I asked for the CH53 too!

As long as for and easy way to do the fuselage mold, yes... there are You can 3D scan the surfaces and then CNC milling the mold. Anyway there always will be a hand finishing process that must to be made by expertise hands with a lot of patience!

Have fun! Leonardo

Looks like most of these molds (especially the micros) are created using Revell or various scale kits. I guess CNC would be the high-tech option. It would be nice if you could just dip the Revell Kits in some Plaster materials to create mold. I guess CNC/wood option would be more durable and reusable.

Hope you hear back from Mike soon. Shipping to Spain may take a while. Mike seems to have the best deals out there. Let us know how your next scale project goes.

Originally Posted by SoloProFan

I want one!

Go Get one. The Airwolf Does look cool when you fly at night. The Blue LED blinky does add a nice bling to the the heli.

Originally Posted by sonnetg

Hope you hear back from Mike soon. Shipping to Spain may take a while. Mike seems to have the best deals out there. Let us know how your next scale project goes.

I have some projects going on... I will keep you updated.
Actually I'm waiting for things to come from all around the world... USA, UK, China, Germany... the magic of Internet, just a dream not so far ago.

Have a great week! Leonardo.

Added a few more birds over the holiday weekend. Not too shabby.

Some pics. njoy.

And the grand finale. Had too much fun. I think i should stop now.

Will be looking forward to seeing more work from ya'll

Cheers.

I can see you have been very busy sonnetg! That's a great collection!
I specially like that big Airwolf!

What mechanics are you using in your models? I mean, the original helicopter.

By the way, I have no answer form Mike yet... but I'm working in other V911 conversion anyway. I will have something to show you in some more days.

All the best,
Leonardo

Oh yeah...the big airwolf is my pride and joy. so many hours put into it. i dont want to go through that again.

The little ones do require a lot of patience as well. Assembly time is almost 5 hrs each from start to finish. Painting is such a pain.

As for mechanics for the little ones, all are NE 260A. It's nice to control 15+ helis with one remote

The Big Airwolf is a 500 T-Rex clone. The walkera Airwolf is 300 scale i think (maybe 250).

Not sure about Mike. He must have moved on and away from this hobby, or maybe just trying avoid shipping overseas. Have you tried these sites:

http://darthdrk.4t.com/photo3_6.html
http://www.heli-scale-quality.com

Kinda pricy, but a lot better quality job than Mike's helis.

Cheers.

A bit off topic, but i had no idea the CH-53 can actually float. I gotta try this stunt with my micro

HH3F Helicopter Water Landing at Jesolo Air Extreme 2011 (1 min 25 sec)

Thanks a lot for the answers and links.

I'm trying to do this based on the V911. It works great and I can control all of them with the FS-TH9X.

Thank you also for sharing the CH-53 video. Quite noticeable the swash plate movements and the blades flexing! Amazing!

Have a nice weekend,
Leonardo

Originally Posted by sonnetg

Looks like most of these molds (especially the micros) are created using Revell or various scale kits. I guess CNC would be the high-tech option. It would be nice if you could just dip the Revell Kits in some Plaster materials to create mold. I guess CNC/wood option would be more durable and reusable.

You can make 2 part molds from plaster. I used to do it a lot when i was casting metal parts for my R/C Tanks. Although i used gypsum plaster, not that junk plaster of paris for drywall. You would have to take that built Revell body, sand and fill unwanted details and holes and heavily gloss it over. But the part I'm uncertain about is the vacuum forming part, which requires a totally different approach from casting with metal or resin. I would imagine that the mold of just the heli itself would require micro holes drilled into it so that the lexan or whatever polycarbonate used would be sucked into the mold negatives. The holes would have to be small enough to draw the air pulling the plastic inwards but not too large to leave impressions of holes/bumps in the fuselage.
Great thing about creating molds with plaster is it's cheap enough to experiment with......but the plastic is not.

Edit:
Or you can do it the easier way.

Take the Revell heli body, don't glue both half's together. Fill each half with plaster or epoxy putty, then vacuum form just the halves. Done.....the latter makes more sense. Casting a mold isn't necessary so I wrote all that crap for nothing. Lol

Edit a-fricken-gain: Now I remember why my original post was firstly suggested (late night for me). A reverse mold forming will allow you to keep most if not all the panel lines of the molded heli as the details will be outside of the produced fuselage. Vacuum forming over the original heli halves , you would keep no details whatsoever since the details of panel lines would be on the inside. The plastic would have to be as thin as cling wrap to duplicate details in the copy visible on the outside.