1:72 Lioré & Olivier LeO 451

Capt. Vick said:

Damn, never knew it had tires like that

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Check the books, amigo!
But don't "quote" my tires - they are oversimplified.

nice work, like how the Tyres worked out.

Some more small changes:
Part V: THE TAIL FINS
The Heller/Smer kit comes with 2 sets of tail fins: early and late:

Late are on top, early are below. IMHO the early type is better done and the late type is like molded by a different manufacturer: there are no engraved lines at all, even where the joints between movable parts are. I personally like the old style fins better with some of their cumbersome elements - they remind me of a boat rudder:

The late style fin is more streamlined and oval in shape:

As mentioned earlier my model will represent one of those LeOs used during the Syria campaign, June-July 1941. The original a/c had the late oval tail fin.

I rescribed the fins, using this drawing:


The 4 circles and one rectangle are access covers made out of aluminum foil. The respective openings of the original a/c can be seen on the next photo:

The fins after priming (white primer):

And here is the complete empennage not yet glued:

I will probably paint it in yellow before even attaching it to the fuselage.
Cheers!

Nice. Never thought of foil for plates

fubar57 said:

Nice. Never thought of foil for plates

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I'm using the self adhesive foil for air-ducts which has paper backing. Cutting different shapes is very easy, the thickness is almost in scale for a model and mistakes are easily reparable (you just do a new part). In some of the earlier posts I've shown those foil "caps" on the wings (post # 40) and empennage (post # 35).
There is another good side of those foiled details as well: after painting the model, when you go over it with steel wool (#000) the edges of those plates and caps start to shine and very realistically represent metal edges.

Excellent detective work, Yves. Well researched and the finished result of your efforts is thus far worth it.

I stock some of that aluminum foil as well. Useful stuff.

Looks good so far!

Time for another chapter of the model "revamping".
PART VI: MAIN LANDING GEAR
If you look at the photos of 2 different LeO 451 below you might see one particular difference:

The landing gears look different!
And from a different angle:

The first type has a smaller, half-circular arch and a second mirrored arch shows above; the second type has a higher oval arch and probably a flat top.
In the beginning of this thread (see Post #4) Wurger (Thank you, Wojtek!) added a link to a video on YouTube, showing clearly the 2 types of the main landing gear. I extracted the parts with the undercarriage only - see as attachment after this post. Here are stills from the movie:
Small arch:

Big arch:

One can see that the first type solid metal frame is flat in its sideview and the second one is slightly tapered.
Lets check the model part:

Aha, it's kind of a "big arch", has a tapered profile and is completely solid in the upper area. Compared with the two types of landing gear it looks like this:

I drew some help lines to show the top of the solid "plate" (it's hinged there and folds up - check the movie) and the top of the big arch. So again we have a mish-mash of elements used for the plastic model.
A photo of the a/c I'm using as a prototype shows (of course!) a man standing in front of the landing gear, but some details are still visible:

The top of the arch compared to the top of the tire identifies with a great probability a small arch (red arrow) and the profile of the solid plate seems to be continuous (yellow arrow).
Here's another photo of the same a/c - the profile of the undercarriage is straight:

So I decided for the SMALL ARCH.
Here is a drawing of the uber-complicated folding mechanism of this type of landing gear:

The solid plate with 2 circular cutouts, position 20, is called DOUBLE YOKE (the lower "small arch" is in fact the LOWER YOKE). To make everything a bit more readable and to see the parts I'll be scratch-building, here is the same drawing but colorized:

Yellow: double yoke. The existing plastic part is to be shortened and modified. Position 22 (called "vertical part of upper yoke") to be added.
Green: forward undercarriage legs and pivot - non existent, scratch.
Blue: diagonal supports for the forward legs - non existent, scratch.
Red: Landing gear retraction links - non existent, scratch.
After a few days (!) of testing and failing the tests, the modified landing gear legs are done:

BTW the complete landing gear is designed to be attached to the lower part of the wing BEFORE closing it!

This means the whole fiddly structure must be there during finishing and painting (not to mention sanding and filling). No way, Jose!
I cut the top part of the double yoke+struts (the pivot) and made a new one from a plastic tubing and a toothpick. This part only will be glued from above as per instructions, but the landing gear will be added from below, after the model is painted and finished.

The wide strips of plastic card, top and bottom, offer enough area for gluing and holding the part in place.
Next comes the complete gear with all the supporting struts.
Cheers!

Very nice

Nice work so far!

great job

Lot of love going into this build.

Crimea_River said:

Lot of love going into this build.

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You can call it "From Canada with Love".

And here is the finished landing gear. This is probably the most complicated assembly for the model, consisting of ...I don't know how many...18 parts in total. The whole plane with wings, empennage, fuselage and engines has less parts.

There is an aftermarket landing gear for the later LeO 45 models (453, 455) in 1/72 made by a company called Renaissance:

It is the "big arch" type and slightly differs in detail from the one I've chosen.
Using the (colorized) scheme of the landing gear I posted earlier, this is what I have now (incl. the wheels):


Complete gear was painted with the underwing colour: GRIS BLEU CLAIR (light blue grey) + home made "dirty wash". The white areas on the top are the contact surfaces where the gear will be attached from below to the respective ones in the wheel well. This is the main difference between my details and the standard/aftermarket ones.
And a comparison between the out of the box detail and the modified one:

Next are the WHEEL WELLS.
Cheers!

Awesome

FAR OUT! That looks like the stuff people send photographs in and ask "what plane did this come from?"

SaparotRob said:

FAR OUT! That looks like the stuff people send photographs in and ask "what plane did this come from?"

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Oh, c'mon!
I'm stylizing so many details here. It's nevertheless in 1/72 and I can't see what I'm doing sometimes. Only the photo-zoom saves me (or kills me) at the end.
And now for something different (as they say in the TV-shows).
PART VII - WHEEL WELLS
I don't have photos of the wheel wells to show for comparison. In the best case there are just glimpses (as in the movie I already quoted). The complex landing gear is busy enough once installed and will cover everything in the wells. The kit offers you this:

Left - top of wing, right - bottom of wing. With one word: NOTHING, but 6 notches for the gear.
I started with the top part - some ribs and a hydraulic line of a sort (made out of a paperclip with plastic cover):

The bottom part holds in fact the bigger part of the well and needed more work with all the walls etc.:

The two rods are the attachment points for the gear. I give the model-designer kudos for the idea to make these notches different in height. The 2 "axles" I added are sloped and not horizontal. This is because the wing has a dihedral - clever! At the end the gear will be vertical to the ground, not to the wing.
And here are the 2 halves together:

I'll paint everything in the well in the underside colour GRIS BLEU CLAIR (that's the real colour of the wheel wells; not green, not dark grey, not silver and certainly not chamoise). Some "dirty wash" will help to better hide inaccuracies and gaps. And after attaching the landing gear, one will see only shadows.
More to come....
Cheers!