ok im going to ask a really dumb question. this will be my first time with retracts.
my questing is. with the retract now being at an angle when retracted. how do they turn straight when down. surely if the wheel dose not turn to the front when coming down it will face to the side alittle and not track true.

yes i know its a dumb question and i feel silly not knowing the answer but i dont know anything about retracts.

The geometry works itself out really. The mounting plate is at a weird angle to allow the wheel to be straight when it is fully extended in the landing position. Normally you'd have to play around a lot to get this right, but the templates that John gave me and that I have posted on this thread are an excellent starting point. I had to tweak this a little but not by much.

That's as good an explanation as I can do, but I am sure someone will chime in with something more techy and scientific!

Originally Posted by amxen

ok im going to ask a really dumb question. this will be my first time with retracts.
my questing is. with the retract now being at an angle when retracted. how do they turn straight when down. surely if the wheel dose not turn to the front when coming down it will face to the side alittle and not track true.

yes i know its a dumb question and i feel silly not knowing the answer but i dont know anything about retracts.

Amexen; when the main gear are down you would set the tire. when it retracts on an angle the wheel will be slightly tuned in the wing. This isn't a problem provided the wing thickness is enough. We have this on a plane my buddy Zeke and I designed. The strut and tire actually retract at an angle forward at roughly 20 degrees from the straight line. This isn't an issue because it retracts towards the thickest part of the wing and tucks itself in quite nicely. Basically you do not need to worry what it is doing inside the wing your concern is when it is down and locked,

Originally Posted by CapMike

Amexen; when the main gear are down you would set the tire. when it retracts on an angle the wheel will be slightly tuned in the wing. This isn't a problem provided the wing thickness is enough. We have this on a plane my buddy Zeke and I designed. The strut and tire actually retract at an angle forward at roughly 20 degrees from the straight line. This isn't an issue because it retracts towards the thickest part of the wing and tucks itself in quite nicely. Basically you do not need to worry what it is doing inside the wing your concern is when it is down and locked,

ok thank you very much i understand now 100%. i had thought thats how you could get away with it but i tried watching the video of it running and the photos but could not see it turned when retracted

Gree, with reference to your earlier post....'ashamed of you' for one or two teeny co*k ups! never! I had to learn everything I did by myself and a lot was one step forward and two back type of learning. the idea is not to tell anyone then they think you're incredible...just like your opinion of me!!!!

Jeff

Gree, what degree retracts are you using, 85 or 90? Just curious. I have some 90's and by the looks of this picture I should stick with them instead of exhange for 85's.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/albionp...n/photostream/

I used 90 degree units to compensate for the incidence of the wing. In the very first post I added a list of retract parts.

And Jeff you are truly the great one! :P

wow what a work of art.

Apologies for hijacking the thread but I have just started a sliding canopy build modification thread for those that are interested

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showt...9#post23376684

Gree hope you don't mind me posting

--
Mark

Are you back yet? Surely it's been a week. I need an update

Ha! No I'm on a beanbag believe it or not in the airport in New Zealand waiting for my return flight!

Thanks very much for the link to the sliding canopy conversion Mark. I'll check it out when I get home.

Markings Done and Dusted
Well after an intense week overseas for work, I am back and this morning I have completed the 14 kill markings on the left side of the fuse. By no means perfect but good enough!

Callie's masks are good for the price but they are not great. On the positive side:
- They are cheap
- The adhesive is very low tack

On the negative side:
- There are no registration marks
- the cutting is not very precise. The circle cut lines were misaligned leaving a weird edge.

Would I use Callie again? Yes, but not for small masks, or those multi-coloured masks that require aligning like national insignias etc. Still, she got me out of a jam and I think they are good enough, even though the swastikas are a little wobbly (they have that 'painted by a crewman' look - at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it!).



Extending the Spacing Between Individual Markings
I must have made an error when drawing up the kill markings in Illustrator. They were not nearly long enough - meaning they were not spaced out enough so that they would start and end in the right place on the fuse. If you look at the first photo below of the real plane, you'll see that the first marking is forward of the panel line of the long vertical panel behind the engine, and the last marking ends at the edge of the 'F'. Mine were 55mm short! So I measured everything up, and extended the gap between each marking by 4mm. This gave me roughly the extra length I required while at the same time not making the markings too spaced out. The first marking is is still not far enough forward but a good enough compromise. Things like this show you that everything is not perfectly scale, and there are a lot of variables with panel lines etc that all add up in the end.

This was a labour intensive process, requiring a lot of measuring and precise placement of the masks. It turned out that I didn't centre the swastikas exactly in the circles, but pretty close once I got better at applying them. The first one is pretty wonky though! I detailed my process in the photos...



Weathering
I ended up doing the weathering this morning too. I left the last 4 untouched since Dahlburg scored his final 4 victories in one mission, and I thought this model could represent a time not long after this had occurred. So I weathered the earlier markings progressively more as they neared the front of the plane.

Overall I am relatively happy with the effect - especially given that I cut up the masks and aligned each one by hand!




Next will be painting and attaching the oil cooler doors and exhaust (if I can find something the right diameter for the exhaust pipe!).

I'll never be anal enough to make anything this nice

Thanks for the "compliment"!

Gree it really is a compliment. He means that your attention to detail is something he could not do. Some people are known as anal retentive to the point of perfection in what they do. In this case we know you aren't anal but that you are striving for perfection with the plane