Takom 1:35 scale AH-64D Apache Long Bow Attack Helicopter

[Builder 2010]

I had 3D printed some 1:24 pipe fittings for last years NASCAR car build and I was able to put one to use as the fuze terminator for the new metal antenna.

I then installed two ridiculous PE ribs that adorn the top of the fuze. I hate gluing this on a 0.005" edge. I used a combo of J-B Structural Cement and CA in that order. The J-B will hold a bit longer and more secure to the metal/styrene bond, and the CA helped hold it all in place until the J-B sets (which is sloooooowwww). The first one was a bit of a fuss.

The second one was much easier…. learning curve. If I had to do a third it would even be better.

I put the fuze asside so all this would cure solid and got to work on the GE engines. This kit suffers from part over-indulgence. There are parts with glue surfaces that are much less than 1mm sq. They are so fragile and untrusty worthy that I'm considering closing both engine bays and not worrying about it. For the Seahawk I used the ResKit engine and now I know why. Doing all the doodads in styrene is folly.

The first horror was this pipe array that HANGs on the side. One end glued into the engine proper, the valve body glues to a tiny appendage hanging from a pipe array that glues into two spots on the engine.

That hanging joint came apart three times.

Making matters worse is another pipe that's supposed to tie into the top of the valve body and glue to another pipe that's just hanging out there. Then came the accessory drive. Instead of molding all the various bits to the one side of the two-piece body, they made them all separate pieces. I lost one. And there's an oil-filter looking thing that's even attached in a more precarious way (if that's even possible). This piece fell off three times. I used Tamiya Cement. Then Bondic and then CA. None of it worked. Bondic, doesn't always adhere too well to styrene, and didn't in this case.

I've thought about replacing all the piping with metal and/or reinforcing these tiny joints with wire. Trouble is that the joint are so tiny that even drilling with a 0.010" drill weakens them further causing more breakage. The kit is over-engineered to drive up parts count. While it impresses, it doesn't make for a satisfying build.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Builder 2010]

I persisted with the engines and have had marginal success and will have at least one bay open. I also changed the assembly routine to more closely follow the instructions. It was easier to glue all the apparatus to the accessory drive when it was off the model than attached. This is also true for the grit separator. I tried to glue the separator drum onto the dirve without the manifold. With the second engine I glued the manifold to the separator and then will install this as an assembly. This provides two points of glue contact at each end and supports it while drying.

The compressor section has simulated bolt circles that are glued in in half-circle segments. One broke in cutting from sprue.

It complicated the gluing task, but I got it on. I also figured out the cutting sequence so it didn't happen again.

Cut the center lug first, then cut the ends. The removes the stress point and lets the ends flex under the flush cutter.

I lost another tiny piece for the accessory drive for engine #2. No one will notice, but it bugs me, that even with my parts catching drape attached to the work bench and clothes-pinned to my shirt, the darn things still get lost. Also, here's that part that has almost 0 glue surface. I don't know what Takom is thinking. It's not even possible to wire this piece on. Just not enough part to drill. I'm leaving it off. Also the little pipe extension on the part is already breaking off and I have done anything to it yet.

Speaking of breaking off... One of the styrene pipes already had an end broken in the sprue leading me to use .5mm solder without giving it a second thought.

Here's the first engine mostly complete. I have to decide when to pipe it some more.

Here's the second engine ready for final assembly.

There's a lot of piping that can be added. These images also show the major color variations on the various sections of the powerplant.

As a refreseher, here's what I did to the Seahawk's T700 Turbo-shaft engine using magnet wire and others. I'm don't think I'm going that far here. I have to get this model done by the end of the month.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Regardless of all your niggling build and glue problems, that is one very impressive engine and well worth all that effort.

 

[SaparotRob]

Incredible. Great stuff!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Builder 2010]

Maybe you guys could do me a favor. All of these posts are in the past, and I'm cutting and pasting them from another forum. It's not easy since this sit isn't recognizing the image link format and I'm getting download errors. To fix, I have find all the originals and input manually. And there's a lot of images. So maybe, just maybe, you could all jump here, and get caught up, and then I'll post here starting with my next work session. I don't mind posting, I just don't want it to be too labor intensive.

Takom 1/35 AH-64D Longbow Start-to-Finish Build

Got the sponsons installed. It’s a very challenging aspect of the build and lots of folks have written about it… including this author. It’s theoretically a snap fit, but to accomplish that you much manipulate many things at once. Before that I replaced one of the pitot tubes with an assembly of...

forums.kitmaker.net

If you all could that, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[Wurger]

https://i.postimg.cc/g0mY58MR/AH-6-D-PE-Heat-Shield-Supports.avif

OK. Instead of pictures you may paste the links copied from the second line without any img tags like above . It will be the active URL link to a pic. If somebody wants to watch it can click the link.

 

[Gnomey]

Lovely work so far!

 

[Builder 2010]

Sporadic work sesssions before the 4th. I did get to test fit the engines into their housings and continued building up the engine shrouds. I have to paint things before going further.

The instructions don't tell you if it's better to glue these two parts together before or after attaching them to the shroud base. Because of the critical nature of the fit, being a long edge with no tabs/pins, I chose to glue them now. Glad I did as it's much easier to fit them on the shroud base when they're together. The joint is basically invisible.

I also glued the opening portion of the shroud that serves as a work platform. It was a challenging joint with very little surface area. I let them dry for days and they're nice and secure. The prototype photos shows aluminum-faced batting in the square spaces n the door that is probably heat insulation. I'm going to simulate that with Bare Metal Foil (after painting zinc-chromate green on all the rest of the insides.) There's another frail "telescoping" support pole that connects these two parts. I may make it out of metal since it looks very prone to breakage.

I test fit the shrouds (before gluing the doors) to the fuze. They needed a little relieving on their rectangular pins to they weren't a press fit. Press fits are bad when you're gluing delicate assemblies.

The engines engage the slots at the bottom. Before they go in, besides paint, there are a couple of unseen details that go in under the engines. Shrounds are not glued in.

There are also two, frail plastic bars that tie the exhaust coolers together, one on top and one on the bottom. The gluing surface to the tiny bit of styrene that's sticking up was way too small for a good joint. Before gluing I had to pull the three manifolds together and CA them so they were touching. Otherwise, the bars would not align to their pins. I then used Tamiya cement and followed up with med CA. The long one, engages in a hole in the fuze. The short one looks like its end glues to the upper shroud assembly.

You can see where this bar engages the fuze. Nothing glued... all test fit.

With both engines fit it looks very busy.

I have another "commission" project for my wife's cousin. Found out recently that he was a flight chief on a P2V-5 Lockheed Neptune during the Cold War. I found a Hasegawa kit on eBay and will build it to his plane's id.

Decals were very, very old and yellow so all need to be redrawn and reprinted. Not being able to print white, and using white-background decal paper, means that white lettering either has to be individually hand cut and placed, or I have to match the glossy sea blue background and have the lettering connected with the background color. I've done this before with decent success. it just takes a lot of fiddling with colors on CorelDraw to get a match with inkjet ink. I make color swatch sheets to do it. Last time it took 14 test colors to get it close. If I use Vallejo Gloss Sea Blue, I already have a match for that color. I don't like Vallejo since it takes so long to dry. I'm thinking about using Mission Models colors. Not sure I'm going to post this model.

Here are two pictures of his actual plane. His plane was the one that tested the nuclear depth charge in the early 60s. Historic!

It DID NOT have the top gun turret.

The Neptune was one of the first Piston/jet craft made along with the B-36. The piston engines were the amazing Wright R-3350-30W. I'm sure all you guys know about about this, but I love writing about it. These were the final evolution of radial engines with turbo-compounding. Instead of using exhaust to drive a supercharger (turbocharging, the three turbines were geared directly to the crankshaft through a fluid coupling. They created an additional 500 horsepower. There's a cutaway version of this engine at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia that really impressed me as a kid. I had no idea how special that arrangement was. The three exhaust stacks spaced around the nacelle equally (180º) is one of the ways to identify this engine. The engine produced 3,700 hp with the same fuel consumption as the ubiquitous R2800.

This engine was also found in the Lockheed Constellation, the DC 7, and the Globemaster 1 cargo plane. The B-29s had the 3350s (along with the A1 Skyraider) but they weren't the turbo-compound model. 3350s were also one of the first engines to have direct injection into the combustion chambers to rectify the fuel imbalance problems. There's a nice docuementary on this engine. It was a monster to perfect an there were 8,000 engineering changes before it finally proved itself. And it did! They make over 8,000 of them.

Being a flight engineer on these piston/jet planes must have been wild. They used the jets for take off, and had shutters that closed them off during cruise so they wouldn't windmill.

Okay... enough digression. Every one who celebrates have a safe and happy 4th of July Holiday.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Good work so far!

 

[Builder 2010]

With the P2V Neptune and the 5" Secondary Battery delivered, it's back to the Apache. I painted the engines today. I also have a new Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra. This printer is light years beyond my first generation Elegoo Mars, just five years ago. It even has an AI camera that records the print. I no longer have to run down to the workshop to check on progress. It can even do a times lapse photo series. It's 60% larger than my Mars 3 and 40% faster. It's 6 times faster than my Mars Classic.

I chose not to fully pipe the engines, but did enough to make it a little more complex.

I will be increasing my work on this model over the next few weeks. In October, I'll be going to the National Archives to review the Battelship New Jersey engineering drawings to gather detailed information about the engine room project.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Great set of engines.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Excellent work so far!

 

[Builder 2010]

Well dear followers, I finally am getting back to work on the Apache. I had several things that took priority including things all of you responded like the 5" turret, the book on 3D printing and the Neptune. Now I'm back, and I'm not really happy. The kit is "Over-parted". While I like a lot of parts, some of those with this kits are a} to small to mess with, and b} are in places where they're not seen, or are so fragile that there's no way to put it together via the instructions. Case in point all the antennas and things sticking out of the bottom. I'm leaving all of that, plus all the hand grabs until almost the end since I will surely break most of them off during construction.

I got both engines and all their housing installed. Prior to installation I painted the inner surfaces primer yellow which seems to be the color on the real bird. There's a faux stainless steel heat shield that covers over the hot sections of the engines, but as happens when a model is put aside for an extended period, I only found one of them. Ergo, I'm leaving them off. Those square spaces on the door are covered with insulating foil which I'm going to attempt to do with Bare Metal adhesive foil. May not work.

The door hinge area is very fragile and one fell off during handling. I got it back on with CA, but it needed a better engineered attachment if they intended on having them open.

The wheels are 4-part assemblies. You have a choice of weight flattened or fully inflated tires. I chose weighted. I paint the hubs and tomorrow will do the tires. I also assembled the tail wheel, but didn't do any paint yet.

Tail piece was next. Simple glue job, but important part since the tail plane actuator and rear landing gear mount to it.

I glued the tailplane together first, but it has to captivate two pins that represnet the tailplane's hinge point. The instructions sort of show that pieces going together over the pins, but it's ambiguous (to me), so to get the tail on I had to spread the not-so-quite-dry glue joint, slip it over the pins and re-glue. It's okay and moves. Moving is not really important since the actuating mechanism is a solid piece. The tail wheel mount has many parts and seems very Fragile too. I worry about that. I may leave that off until the rest of the masking and painting is done. Just stripping masking tape can exert enough force to break delicate assemblies.

And of course, there are antennas as molded-on parts that are breaking off before I get out of the starting gate. I will probably replace with guitar strings to make it sturdier.

I'm not the steadiest nor the most careful of model builders, and now that I'm less than a year from being 80, no one expects me to be, so I think a kit like this is about my limit for hi-parts-count plastic kits. I admire guys that can get kits like this together without all the work-arounds that encounter.

More work will happen tomorrow.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Builder 2010]

That was yesterday's work. Forgot to push the "go" button. Here's today's post:

This kit is going to make up into a gorgeous, but very delicate structures that are going to challenge me to get it successfully to my friend back in the Philly area. I got the wheels painted, the tail wheel gear built and installed and started working on the complicated and delicate tail rotor. I find the Apache interesting with the two sets of tail rotor blades being assymentrical to one another. Anyone have any comments on why they did this?

The bird needed to be upside down so I cobbled together a very quick (and dirty) foam stand that would protect the delicate main rotor head from damage.

Also shown in the above is the tail plane actuator that connects between the fin and the tail piece on the ship. The junction between the piston rod and the fin block was so thin and weak that it was half off during the sprue separation. I added a small ring of Bondic around it to reinforce it a bit. I then applied liquid cement to the fin's hinge area which strengthened it some more. It's still delicate.

The tail gear is a multi-part affair which some very fine ones that should be metal or 3D printed resin instead of styrene, but you use what you're given.

Here are some subassemblies for the tail gear.

The wheel yoke had another very thin section that broke during assembly. Since it's not made to rotate, I was able to glue it all togehter.

The gear assembled to the fuselage reasonably well, but one of those very fine-section rods was having trouble staying glued. Didn't want to over-glue since it was so small it could simply melt away. I reinforced with some Bondic, but that cracked as I was manipulating it into position on the ship.

When I first glued the gear in, I forgot to install the shock strut. I tried installing it with the rest attached to the ship, but wasn't going well. I pulled it off, added the strut and reinstalled on the ship. All's well that ends well. I really don't understand what the fin-shaped appendage actually is… and ideas?

The first parts of the tail rotar are the hub and the actuating links that go into the tail housing. They're litte as evidenced by the scale of the #11 blade.

You have to captivate the plunger and mount between the wings and then glue this to the rotor hub. The alignment pins are very small and it required very little cement to glue together.

I glued it to the ship and found that the angle of the yoke is not perpendicular so it's best to glue this before the glue is fully hard on the subassembly. You also have to be able to move the links into alignment… another reason to not have them glued solid before attaching to ship.

Rotor work continues tomorrow.

 

[Wurger]