For Bob Parks and any other lovers of the Boeing B17

Surprised to see a Standard hanging in the ceiling. You are having way too much fun!

 

good eye. i built it for a flying buddy that was battling cancer. he was no longer able to build or fly difficult models. yet, he loved scale models. so, i built the J1 standard for him in randolph markings since that base is 3 hours from here. has a span of 120 inches, easy to see and fly. i surprised him with the model. we flew it till he passed. the family asked me to be the caretaker of the J1. it is flown once a year at an event in his honor. BomberfieldUSA is our club and he was the founder.

 

Fantastic work, Barry. Hopefully things are back to normal this fall for the fly in at Bomber Field. Would love to see that show.

Dave

 

we would love to have you join us at bomberfield this fall.

 

More and more rivets
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Wow! That looks great! Wing root section looks accurate as well as the horizontal. section. You've got the Vega nose dome that is better looking than the original Boeing nose. One thing that isn't well known about the upper nose loft. The frames ahead of the windshield are not circular, they were flattened with about a 6" drop to accommodate the vision requirements of the airplane drivers.

 

thx. We are doing our research and doing our best to be true to the real aircraft. The bonus for us is our unlimited access to a real one based here in Houston. The Texas Raider.

 

More detail.
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As a helpful suggestion that could cut some of the work time on details, take a look at the frame spacing on the fuselage. In the forward section from the nose dome aft, the frames are about 9.5 to 10 inches apart. Aft of the cab fairing (station 6) the frame pitch is generally 20 inches. The skin panels are riveted to the frame flanges at these points. There wouldn't be any circumferential rivet patterns in between the frames. Then the radial stringers would have rivet patterns. If you have a real B-17 to look at , you can get a count of how many stringers and their spacing. Something that might be fun when your model is in flight would be to rotate the ball turret to " guns down" while the gunner gets in and then bring the guns up to horizontal, ready for action.

 

Good grief the detail is AMAZING!!! I can’t wait to see this one in person!

cheers
Dave

 

i have almost the entire interior printed in 3d too.

 

A little interior work
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Dude... This is one of the coolest threads I have ever clicked on in my life!

My favorite object in the world is the b17! Absolutely love it.

Incredible to see what Bob has to say and hear his stories....I'm going to have to launch down a rabbit hole of his posts... Because wow. Incredible stories and knowledge.

To the original poster... Wow... Incredible work and passion and paitence. Seriously. What an awesome project with incredible detail.

Good for you for not rushing through. I could never do that... I would be in such a rush to finish it and fly it. Seriously incredible work!

 

I thought that I could mention that the sidewalls of the entire nose back to the bulkhead behind the pilots were covered by dark green quilted insulation blankets. There were three large oxy. tanks stacked behind the pilot and copilot's seats and two more stacked aft of those. None of the interior structure aft of that was painted with zinc chromate. It was bare aluminum. No sense in going to the trouble, weight, and expense to protective coat a piece of equipment that would only last a few hours of combat. Waist gun stanchions would be dark green. Pilot's seats and equipment in the flight deck would be dark green, made by a mixture of zinc chromate primer and black. Your G-Model would have a chin gun sight articulated from the right side floor and in front of the gunner's seat. I don't know how much you want to see through the windows of you plane but the upper turret would fill most of the space behind the pilots almost down to the floor since the gunner stood in the turret . The waist positions would have wooden ammo boxes aft and forward of the stanchions. The tail gunner's ammo box would be aft of his seat with the belt passing beside him aft to the guns..

 

I don't recall wooden board floors. I recall plywood in spot6s.

 

we have access to the texas raider and copied their floorboard. i'm sure it is nothing like the floorboards during the war.

 

I have gone through my stuff and my ol' head and there were no wooden floor boards in the airplane. Nose, flight deck aft to the bomb bay were aluminum. Radio compartment was aluminum, aft through the waist was a narrow aluminum walkway. It would be extremely dangerous to have any wooden boards that could fly around and splinter in action. The B-24 had corrugated aluminum floors. If I remember the forward sections of the B-17 had something like 32 oxygen tanks and bottles in it to keep the crew alive at 30,000 feet for 8 hours. Tough to do at -50F with flak and fighters.

 

i'm assuming it is something that has been added since the b17 gives public rides

 

I agree with you. I'm sure that there are photos of the actual wartime interior. Thinking of things that can be seen in you miniature B-17, the radio operator's chair was mounted on a single post facing forward, dark green. The radios were mounted on the bulkhead in front of him and, of course, they were black. His weapon was mounted behind him and aimed out the rear of the cab fairing. There are good photos around of the mount and swiveling arm.

 

I assembled the model in my shop for the first time. She barely fits. Span is roughly 17 feet. The next two weeks will be spent adding panel lines and rivets to the wings.
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How do you add panel lines and rivets? are they just little drops of glue or something?

 

Yes. One drop at a time. Over 400,000 total will be applied

 

Looks great. A whole lot of time invested.

 

400,000
Mine, although fewer in number [3800+/-] were also hand-driven copper.....
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Do you have a name/nose art selected?