Jairus- How about that race plane CPB?

[Jairus]

Sunday night and Jairus is shooting color on his FW190 Sport plane, drinking beer and listening to ROCK AND ROLL!!!

[1320wayne]

Here is my completed work. Not sure if this is where we are to post the finished item but here it is anyway.

Early in this thread someone posted a link for some photo-etched spinning props. I went ahead and copied the image, resized it and printed the image onto decal film and then transferred the decal to a tinted clear styrene cutout to represent the spinning prop.

I scratchbuilt a pylon out of styrene tubing and aluminum tubing. I could only find one or two images of what a pylon looked like but I was lucky enough to pull an image of the top of the pylon with the Reno name on it. Again, I copied the image, printed it onto decal film and then transferred two of the images to the top of the pylon after painting it white. I used red striping tape along the length of the pylon. I sacrificed an old award plaque for a base and added ballast and turf and created a post for the plane to be supported on.

Edited September 29, 2010 by 1320wayne

[Jairus]

Very nice Wayne!

Just post your pictures here for now. Eventually we want to have a voting thread started and either link the images or re-post them in that thread.

Funny that you would use an old plaque like that. I have done the same thing for other ... ah, uses such as that.

[highway]

Very nice Wayne!

X2

[1320wayne]

Wow, so much enthusiasm for this cbp when it first started only to have two people finish anything. Sure would have been nice to see more completed builds on this one.

Edited October 6, 2010 by 1320wayne

[jeffs396]

Wow, so much enthusiasm for this cbp when it first started only to have two people finish anything. Sure would have been nice to see more completed builds on this one.

I can only speak for myself Wayne, but I never lost enthusiasm for the build, it's just that between too many family commitments, working long hours, and the fact that it's rained here for the last 5 days straight (no excuses ). Paint booth #1 is outside! I got my metal exhaust pipes done, ready for paint

Your diorama looks great BTW!

[Jairus]

Mine is ready to shoot pictures of but yesterdays weather was not quite right. Today will be BEAUTIFUL so hoping to get some nice shots and post them.

[Jairus]

The year was 1945. The 27th of April to be exact, the sun was beginning to set once again over the French countryside. Benito Mussolini had been captured by Italian partisans that day and would be hung the very next. As the sun settled on the horizon a young pilot, Captain Hans Klose throttled back the engine on his shot up fighter in a vain attempt to conserve fuel. The pilot was now winging his way over the French countryside at near treetop level trying to make it back to base. He had accomplished two succesful sortie’s earlier that day defending the fatherland against the seemingly unceasing waves of American bombers, but now after the latest battle, found himself too far from home to return. His craft had received a number of well placed hits by the Americans and precious fuel was leaking fast from the machines wing tanks. Although his person was not wounded, the aircrafts magazines were empty and he knew he could not survive another dog fight while the lifeblood of the craft leaked to the winds. The pilot quickly arrived at the realization that the only way for personal survive was to set the damaged fighter down as close to Germany as possible. A glimmer of hope survived that he could walk, or better yet steal a car, and make his way home to Germany.

A smooth open field presented itself ahead the spinning propeller so Hans started his descent. The stricken FW 190A bounced only once on the hard packed grassy field before settling down to a smooth roll and taxied up next to a low outbuilding near what looked like a small farmhouse. Hans pulled the throttle back to idle and switched off the magnetos... hardly needing to do so as the engine had already begun sputtering.

He parked the plane as close to the out building as possible and away from the road and the farmhouse.

The pilot slid back the canopy, removed himself from the cockpit for the last time taking maps, a jacket, a pistol and a picture of his wife Petra who waited patiently back home. As Captain Klose began to walk away, he glanced back one more time admiring his still proud fighting machine as it stood ticking quietly in the late afternoon sunlight, the engine slowly cooling. While sparrows flitted from tree to tree, the war at once seemed far away regardless of the bombers contrails that laced the blue sky above.

Hans pulled a small flask from his kit, removed the cap, held it high in a salute to the proud machine and drunk deeply. The cap to the flask was replaced and he headed for the nearest country road, then turned north toward Germany and home. Silently hoping to avoid an errant French farmer's sharp pitchfork during the trek.

4 months later the U.S. Army arrived at the farm of Hervé Thomas with the express purpose of decommissioning the now abandon fighter. The guns were removed and a few pictures taken along with noting the aircrafts serial numbers for historical record.

Hervé considered the aircraft to be a nuisance at first… but his sheep liked sleeping in the shadow of the wings so he figured he could let it be for now.

Years passed while the tires rotted to the ground while mice lived in the fuselage. Farmer Thomas tossed a tarp over the cowl thinking that the powerful engine might be worth something someday while wondering why his cat seemed to be so interested in the grounded aircraft.

Every surviving Warbird on this planet. be it in private ownership or a museum somewhere, owes its life to many many people down the years. Each has a story to tell and the tiny number of surviving German Focke-Wolf fighters that remain can be counted on slightly more than one hand. However it could happen! The above story is fiction of course but as my story goes... the aircraft was eventually sold and shipped to America where it began an annual campaign at Reno Air Races.

You see, the German FW 190 contained a mighty BMW 14 cylinder turbo supercharged radial engine capable of producing between 1560 and 2000 bhp. Just imagine what it could do today with modern fuel management technology? The engine was originally built under license to Pratt & Whitney beginning in the 30's, the Germans made many innovative improvements culminating in a beautiful powerplant! A parallel universe if you will.

I unfortunately did not get the model finished before the weather changed so these pictures were taken outside under a very cloudy and overcast sky. The pictures were shot against a blue backdrop, which I then replaced with swiped pictures from Google Images. The electric motor for spinning the propeller worked great and can spin at over 10,000 rpm without the prop running on 13 volts. With the prop a bit slower… but even so the darned camera still managed to stop the prop. So I simply left the blades off and applied a touch of photoshop.

So sue me, at least its done before the deadline!

Edited October 8, 2010 by Jairus

[highway]

Very nice Jairus, and I liked the story to go with it.

[jeffs396]

Looks awesome Jairus!

[Jairus]

Thank you Matthew but I think you have me beat with this one. That is such a great picture that if you went in and could blur the prop blades you would fool everyone!

[highway]

Thank you Matthew but I think you have me beat with this one. That is such a great picture that if you went in and could blur the prop blades you would fool everyone!

Thanks very much, Jairus, that means a lot to me coming from a great artist like you. I just don't have photoshop!

[1320wayne]

Excellent work Jairus. The paint scheme looks killer. But I've got to say, that first picture is really baaaaaaaddd.

[1320wayne]

When are we going to put this one to rest?

[highway]

When are we going to put this one to rest?

What do you mean, Wayne, the final voting thread?

[Jairus]

Do we want to start a voting thread? The response was lukewarm to begin with and the number of voters will be pretty much just us three based on those who even opened the thread. I don't even think anyone would bother to vote... but I defer to you two guys.

[highway]

Do we want to start a voting thread? The response was lukewarm to begin with and the number of voters will be pretty much just us three based on those who even opened the thread. I don't even think anyone would bother to vote... but I defer to you two guys.

I would say at least give the vote thread a try, but it's up to you, Jairus.

[1320wayne]

Yeah, I guess it doesn't really matter about getting any votes. We all know that we had fun doing these builds and that's all that matters.

[Tony T]

I've been watching you guys get these done, and I say Bravo! Wonderful job!

This piqued my interest, but decided that I had too much on the go to give it a good go - besides, I didn't have a kit at hand. I've added it to my "one day" list of cool builds that are in my head!!

So, I vote for all three of you!!