Tom's Fiddler on the roof

[rob_van_riel]

Aha! and the light bulb comes on I haven't seen a production of Fiddler on the Roof since I was a young boy (Dad was a stage manager for our local Operatics Society) so you'll have to excuse my ignorance.

I would have been just as ignorant if it hadn't been for the liner notes on my DVD For some reason, this bit of trivia stuck. If only I could remember the important stuff as easily

[MarkyM607]

As far as the AA-5's go, Dragon did a set of three Soviet weapons (air to air, air to ground etc), is the missile(s) you want in there?. I have these sets so will have a look if you want?.

[rob_van_riel]

As far as the AA-5's go, Dragon did a set of three Soviet weapons (air to air, air to ground etc), is the missile(s) you want in there?. I have these sets so will have a look if you want?.

I already checked. No dice
The new Hasegawa sets don't have them either. Not too strange, when you think of it; only the TU-128 ever carried them, so interest is going to be very limited.

[rob_van_riel]

Whoops, forget I mentioned that. I just found out I was looking at AA-6s, not AA-5s. Good thing this came up, otherwise my 128 would have ended up with some very wrong missiles..

Within 24 hours, "Feeling rather stupid" turned into "Gotta get me some real AA-5s", which in turn turned into "Whaddaya mean, there aren't any AA-5s on the market?", closely followed by "Stuff that, I'll make some". And while I was on the subject of AA-5s for my own Fiddler at some point in the future, I also started thinking about what to do with the completely smooth blister that was supposed to represent the rather large and prominent cockpit bulge along the forward fuselage. This spent some time bubbling around in my brain, and I came up with what I consider to be a rather cunning plan.
Cunning or otherwise, this plan will take some scratchbuilding effort, and with the my own Meteor project also about to kick off, it would be some time before I'd get around to it. Unless, that is, I could appeal to some enlightened self interest somewhere, and get an accomplice on this project. It didn't take much to convince Tom we could be of use to each other, so you'll all get to see the plan succeed of fail miserably, right here on this thread

Regardless of what happens to the cockpit, the missiles were too much of an itch to ignore, so production of AA-5s will also be drawn into this project.
As luck will have it, the AA-5 has a body diameter that is exactly the same as the AA-6, which is a longer missile still, but has completely different wing shapes. I should be able to scratch the simple shapes of the wings, and AA-6s are available through several MiG-25 and MiG-31 kits. Since the LHS had a Zvezda MiG-31 at a nice price, this kit will become the donor for the missile bodies. I'm loathe to disarm the MiG, so the first stage of this project will be to duplicate the AA-6 missiles. Conversion to AA-5 will start afer that.

[rob_van_riel]

At a rather unacceptable hour that was technically today, I set up a mould for the cockpit module. In the picture below, the featureless kit part is seen sitting on a bed of plasticine. The rather prominent trench between the plasticine and the Lego is there on purpose; this will provide an extended locator tab to along the mould halves in the future.


The resulting mould half that greeted me this morning is seen below. This half is actually just temporary. It's functions are to serve as an opposite while casting the other half, and to generate blacks for Tom to work on. The real top half will then be cast from the completed blank from Tom.


The resulting blanks are shown below. Note that the trenches in the plasticine have now become ridges on the blanks, so that the blanks hold the shape for the locator trenches the final top half will need.


These blanks will now be mailed to Tom. The idea is that he'll scratch build the canopy framing and any other detail needed on the cockpit module directly onto one of these (the other is a spare - resin is cheap and fast, so why not), and mail the result back to me. I'll use that to make the real second half of the mould, and cast some copies in transparent resin. The resulting part will hit the mail yet again, so that Tom can use it to build an airplane.

[TomW]

I love it when a plan comes together (chomps on cigar) great progress Rob I'll be making a start on these as soon as they arrive. My plan is to use Evergreen strip and ultra thin plasticard to construct the framing, keeping the relief to approx 0.3mm so that the raised framework wont be too exaggerated once the clear resin is cast. I have been collecting plans and pictures all week so I have plenty of 3-view images to work from.

One thing that is noticeable is that there is two variations of cockpit canopy, the prototype and the production series. Providing I don't irretrievably damage one of the masters I could replicate both canopies. This would give the choice of modelling the prototype as she appears in the Monino Air Museum or one of the Tu-128 series machines (not the Tu-128M as that has a reshaped fin top although the canopy is the same....) I'll start with the production series as the shapes are simpler (no circles).

In the meantime I'll be getting to work later on the main fuselage of the Fiddler, there is a lot of plastic to clean up

Regards

Tom

[rob_van_riel]

Providing I don't irretrievably damage one of the masters I could replicate both canopies.

The worst that could happen is a delay as I cast and send new ones. I'll cast an extra one before shipping, so that you at least have the option of doing both variants with a spare. Like I said, resin is the cheaper part in all this, so an extra spare is no problem at all, and since the mail won't do anything until the collection on Monday evening, the delay for producing it is zero.

In the meantime I'll be getting to work later on the main fuselage of the Fiddler, there is a lot of plastic to clean up

You might also want to spend some time figuring out how to fit the cockpit bulge to the forward fuselage. I haven't cut out any parts on mine, but the fit seems very suspicious to me..

[TomW]

Seeing as all this work could be for nothing if the canopy doesn't fit I think that might be the better place to start , luckily the forward fuselage is separate to the main section for easier handling.

Regards

Tom

[SJPONeill]

Great to see this cross-media collaboration aka modellers helping each other out in this build. I may have the same kit in my stash so this maybe a nice little sideline for you, Rob...I am amazed at the quality of the moldings in your how-to thread...

[rob_van_riel]

I may have the same kit in my stash so this maybe a nice little sideline for you, Rob...

Sounds like I may have something to discuss with Tom if we actually get this to work

I am amazed at the quality of the moldings in your how-to thread...

Thanks. To be honest, I'm sometimes amazed at what the resin will let me get away with. I started out with metal, and metal would die laughing if I suggested it did some of the things resin seems to consider perfectly normal.

[rob_van_riel]

I've cast the second half of the mould, which is supposed to become part of the final mould. Somehow, I ran into trouble with the rubber here, as some bits around the edges don't seem to feel like curing completely. If this becomes problematic in the future, I may have to make a new one, but for the moment, sticky or not, it can serve.

I had some concerns about the feasability of filling the hollow half of the mould with resin, and then pressing down with the raised half. Since this is also what I had in mind for the Meteor salvage, a test was in order, and soon. So despite the fact that these mould halves would produce nothing of value, I used them for a try-out. Obviously, there was not quite enough resin in this case, but the technique is now validated.

[rob_van_riel]

The mould to make replacement AA-6 missiles for the donor kit for the AA-5 conversions seems to be doing it's job. One more cast, and then I can start chopping up one of the missiles that came with the MiG-31. With any luck, I'll have master for the AA-5s ready tomorrow, but certainly next weekend, and then those can go into production.

[Stuart]

Some more great resin work Rob!

[TomW]

That looks awesome Rob! the canopy masters arrived safely this morning so I'll make a start on the framing tomorrow afternoon after the F1. I have done a little work on the kit itself this week, mostly just marking out and removing the largest pieces, photo's this evening.

Regards

Tom

[TomW]

Photo's as promised , I've rough taped the main fuselage and wing sections together to give an impression of just how big an aircraft the Tu-128 is:










Next up is the sanding of all that plastic and producing the internal formers for the fuselage.

Regards

Tom