One of the things which somewhat alleviates having to stay in a lot at the moment, is the fact that I do, of necessity, still have to go out on the farm to look after my horsey. Because there are a lot of fields there with nobody about and since I have to be there anyway to look after Snorky, I figured it would be okay to test out one of my many projects.

Here is Snorky:

And here is one of her stable friends, Bob the Unicorn:

And here is the project in question:

A 1/92nd scale R/C Flying Fortress, which has a wingspan of just 340 mm. The model started out as one of those cheap EPP backyard flyers, with gyro-stabilisation and two channel radio control (throttle for altitude control and differential thrust for steering). Although as it comes it has a terrible paint job, which I think was supposed to be a Fortress from the 477 BG despite the fuselage being white and some rather naff detailing including an oversized and incorrectly positioned undercarriage. However, if you look past that, as I did, it is actually a reasonably well proportioned model of a B-17. Thus I figured it could be the basis of a quite nice flying model with some tweaks and modifications, so I bought one with the intention of doing that, for the princely sum of £31.81. Of course you have to be careful with weight and such when adding details to flying models, but since the model started out at only 55 grams and does have twin motors (the outboard propellers are dummies but they do rotate in the airflow when it flies so it looks like it has four engines running when airborne), I figured it probably had a decent power to weight ratio.

Since the molding of the EPP was a bit rough with a lot of flash, the first thing I've done is trim that all off with a scalpel. I figured this would make it a bit more aerodynamically efficient anyway, as well as improving the looks. With that done, it was time to see if the paint I proposed using would be okay to apply to the material without weakening it since quite a lot of paints can melt foam. So that's thinned down Humbrol Metal Coat on it, which has yet to be properly detailed with weathering and such. I will eventually be painting it to represent an aircraft from the 401st BG, since I like their red markings over the bare metal, as such, I didn't bother overpainting the yellow on the tailplane it originally had. I also temporarily added all the windows with thinned black, and would have left it at that if the first test flight had shown it to be getting too heavy, but since it seems to fly alright with plenty of power to spare, I will improve these a bit along with a lot of other improvements.

Before really going to town on detailing, I wanted to be sure the thing had enough power to spare, so this morning after I'd finished looking after Snorky, I did a bit of a test flight. Since the fields are pretty grassy, there is no need for an undercarriage, it can easily be hand launched and the long grass makes landing it very gentle. When I flew it, it turned out to have more than enough power although it is a bit tail-heavy in terms of overall balance. Now there are two things I could do about that; either adjust the tailplane incidence a bit to prevent it wanting to go into a climb, or add some weight to the nose. Initially I had figured I'd keep the thing as it came, i.e it is modeled without a Bendix chin turret, so essentially is a B-17F, however, I figure if I add a chin turret, that will give the nose a bit more weight and it will hopefully be less inclined to nose up at low power settings. At present it can fly very slowly if you come off the throttles, so there is a bit of leeway for extra weight, which means I can add all the other gun positions to it as well.

The picture of it I have posted here is as it is now, right after that test flight, so there's still a lot to be done to make it look really decent. But now I know it flies okay, I can go to town on detailing it.

Anyway being at the farm this morning and doing things equestrian and avian, it got me thinking about flying and horses, so I was recalling the history of the famous discussion amongst horse owners way back in the 1800s, as to whether horses actually 'flew' when they galloped, i.e. do all four feet leave the ground at any point? How the answer to this question was determined in the late 1800s is an interesting tale with enough twists to make a pretty good movie, so I figured I'd relate it here...

It wasn't until 1878 that this argument was settled, when pioneering photographer Eadward Muybridge set up a series of 12 cameras with electromagnetic shutter triggers and tripwires which a galloping horse could break, to sequentially fire the cameras as the horse went past. The racehorses which did this and finally settled the argument, were called Occidental and Sallie Gardner, and were owned by the former Governor of California, Leland Stanford, who is famous for having founded Stanford University. Stanford is located where the original Horse in Motion photographs were taken. Amongst the pioneering stuff Muybridge also did, was to create a mobile darkroom in a lightweight horse-drawn carriage, which he called 'Helios, the flying studio'.

Photographer Eadward Muybridge was a very colourful character, but a bit weird and and as it turned out, he didn't only shoot pictures. In 1871, when he was 41, he had married 21 year-old divorcee Flora Shallcross (what could possibly go wrong?). Muybridge was often away from home on photographic adventures and so rather unsurprisingly, his young wife started flirting with other guys whilst he was away, chiefly with a family friend named Harry Larkins. Muybridge got wind of this and tried to stop it, at first being surprisingly reasonable about the matter, however, his wife's affair with Larkins persisted. Muybridge and his wife had a child in 1874, however, Muybridge found a picture of their child with the word 'Harry' written on the back of it, suggesting that their child was possibly not his own. The child's nurse also then gave Muybridge some love letters which Harry and Flora had been exchanging. Muybridge went to find Harry and when he did so, said: 'Here's the reply to that letter you sent my wife' and shot and killed Harry.

Muybridge was arrested and went willingly with the police, and he was subsequently tried for murder. Whilst he was in prison awaiting that trial, he was reportedly very popular with all the other prisoners, since he was at the time quite famous for his photographic work. In spite of his oddness and actions which led him to being jailed, he does appear to have been quite a nice bloke too. At one point when in prison awaiting trial, he squared up against some tough guy inmate who was picking on a Chinese prisoner and firmly told the man: 'No man of any country whose misfortunes shall bring him here, shall be abused in my presence!' which is a pretty forward-thinking attitude for 1871.

At the murder trial, his lawyer tried to claim that a head injury which Muybridge had sustained some years earlier in a coach crash, had affected him mentally and it seems this might have had some truth to it, so it probably would have worked as a defence had Muybridge not repeatedly admitted that his actions were entirely pre-meditated and deliberate. Bizarrely, this actually led to his acquittal, the jury stating that it was justifiable homicide, based on the act having been entirely understandable human nature and something which they themselves probably would have done too! Because of this, it is still occasionally used as a reference  'test case' in legal and psychological studies, even today. Ironically, later photographs of the son Muybridge believed to have not been his own, when he was an adult, show him to strongly resemble Muybridge, so the kid almost certainly was his own after all, although there can be no doubt about the affair, but whether you or I would agree with the conclusion the jury came to is another matter.

I think pretty much everyone has seen those horse galloping photographs at some point, so the guy's fame continues, but Muybridge's legacy also lives on in a well known and much-copied visual effect of recent years, seen in the movie The Matrix, which uses the same principles of Muybridge's slow motion technique to create its 'bullet time' effect.

 

Edited May 2, 20206 yr by Chock

Aah horses. I do miss my horses. Best days of my life were spent on the back of a horse. 😍

Edited May 2, 20206 yr by Ron Attwood
Swapped an i for an o. Thank you Biggles

20 minutes ago, Ron Attwood said:

Aah horses. I do miss my horses. Best days of my life were spent in the back of a horse.

On the back of a horse?

44 minutes ago, Ron Attwood said:

Aah horses. I do miss my horses. Best days of my life were spent on the back of a horse. 😍

Some not so 'best' also.

I'd been to the pub and afterwards went to the horse to sort her out. I know, I'll go for a ride, it being a lovely afternoon. All went well until I decided to cross this small river.

She started down the bank very nicely but when she put her foot in the water she decided it wasn't for her.

You know how a horse can turn round on it's own axis in the blink of an eye?

I picked myself up out of the water and clambered up the bank where she was waiting, looking at me like I was an imbecile. Not wrong was she?

The ride back to the stables was a soggy one.

5 hours ago, Chock said:

And here is one of her stable friends, Bob the Unicorn...

Alan: Sorry. Hate to tell you this, but Unicorn's aren't real... 

Unless you're referring to the fact that Bob's ear looks a little like a unicorn's horn from that angle?

Or, You're asking this leprechaun; he hates unicorns..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9auOCbH5Ns4

Hope the horses weren't scared of the B-17 - you know what they can be like. They hear a crisp packet rustling in the breeze a hundred yards away and that's it.. RUN AWAY!!

WHAT did i just watch!?!?? 😂

weebl is brilliant. 

On 5/2/2020 at 11:01 AM, MaDDogz said:

WHAT did i just watch!?!?? 😂

No kidding ! What the bleep was that ?

Still needs work, including some weathering and detailing, plus the addition of the Bendix chin turret to throw some weight forward, but it is coming along nicely:

 

Those two dorsal cannons - they look more like 20 or 30mm cannons rather than .50 cals  that would have upset the Luftwaffe a bit!

Sorry, I shouldn't be so critical - you're making a cheap, functional model look great!  Carry on that man!

Re those guns on the dorsal turret. Yup, they are the ridiculously oversized ones it comes with and I'm sure the purists will be pleased to note they are scheduled to be cut off and replaced with the cocktail sticks that I'm also going to use to make all the other guns. As it stands they are way too long of course and well oversize in terms of diameter. 

Whilst obviously trying to make the thing look pretty, the main aim is to make it look okay in the air (and it really does look good in the air), so detailing and painting is with a view to that rather than making it look beautiful on a shelf, but the modeler in me makes it difficult to ignore such glaring errors. As you say, if the Fortress had been armed with those kind of guns all over it, the Luftwaffe probably wouldn't have got near the things!

Edited May 4, 20206 yr by Chock

Well, since the 17 had upwards of 12 50"s in some models, and you are using cocktail sticks, I hope you are not drinking all of them at one sitting to speed up the completion of the model.

Top turret guns removed, still need to drill holes to mount the replacements but all the other gun positions apart from the yet to be added chin turret are in there. Added a bit of discolouration streaking back from the engines and wing vents, added the de-icing boots on the tailplane and gave it some squadron code letters:

Chin turret under construction: