captain america

Hi guys! Sorry for not posting more frequently, I've been working on the molds, which are now done and casting has begun in full force. The only slight delay is caused by the waiting for the special tooling resin I need to do the vac-forming bucks, and I should have that by next Friday. In the meantime, I'll just be casting my tiny brains out. Also, I took some photos of the masters just before pouring the mold rubber. Honestly, due to the large number of tiny parts and multi-cavitied parts, this goes on record as being one of the most challenging kits I had to cast in recent memory. The first photo in the series is of the mold boxes awaiting the arrival of the mold rubber. Next, these are some of the first castings to come out of said molds. Everything came out great, save for a few voids that formed on the inside of the cockpits of the fwd fuselage (see pics 3 & 4.) Not the end of the world, but it means a little extra dremelling The rest of the parts came out looking very splendid indeed, and all the rivet detail has been faithfully captured. Now to start on the instructions!

There's no specific timeframe, I process orders on a first come, first served basis according to when payments are received. When the molds will no longer produce adequate castings, I simply stop. Many people have asked for models after production has ceased, which I simply don't have; that's why I encourage people to check the forum/thread regularly for availability status.

Hee haw everyone! Well the molds for the Commanchero are being poured, and I should start having some castings done by late next week. **ORDERING** Kit price: was supposed to be $120 apiece, but is now $105 US. **SHIPPING** $13.00 for up to 2 kits anywhere in north America $30.00 for up to 2 kits to any other country [corporation] on the planet I don't think anybody planned to order 3 kits at once, so I didn't check what the shipping would be; just PM me if that's the case and I'll tabulate it. **PAYMENT METHODS** Same ol' int'l postal money orders in US funds Paypal is ok too, but there is a $3.00 surcharge per kit to cover their fees. If you have any other questions, or you need my private payment info, just PM me! I will, as always, be updating the status of production regularly, so be sure to check back on a regular basis!

Folding? I think maybe you mean sagging? I will use either a brass or acrylic rod insert in the main propeller blades, so they will not sag over time.

Yeah, I know exactly how you feel. If anything, I wonder how well a real-world Commanchero (hereinafter Turbo Airwolf Junior LOL) would fare with its wheels (front to rear) spaced so far apart; I'd tend to think it would put a lot of unnecessary stress on the fuselage, but hey, I didn't design it, my job is just to make it look believeable

Next is a pic of the "special olympics" tail rotor. She will actually have four blades, nut the MI-24 I took them from only had three blades, so I had to searate them all, machine a new hub, and the fourth blade will be a duplicate casting. The next couple of pics are of the Commanchero next to the hull of a 1/72 Hind. The Commanchero is only slightly shorter in length, but has the same "presence" as its real-world commie counterpart. The landing gear bay doors were intentionally left ff for the pics, as they are 90% putty and therefore very suceptible to breaking. They will be molded in short order so as to make sure I can have some good, solid resin masters. An unfortunate side-effect of certain detailed parts is that the molding process does sometimes destroy them, so I have to make sure my molds are perfect so that they can provide me with usable masters. Anyhoo, that's what she looks like. I will be posting early next week with payment info, though I will give you all advance notice that there may be a bit of a delay due to the vac-forming of the canopies, but shouldn't be anything drastic. Enjoy the pics

Next, the standard beauty-shots of the whirly-bird with the cockpit details. I really didn't expect it to turn out quite this nice, but I'm glad it did. It truly is a fearsome looking chopper, especially from the front. There will be, of course, six of the underwing rocket pods included with the kit, though the rockets themselves will not be removeable due to their small size and the problems associated with casting them.Can very easily be remedied with a pin-vise if you want the empty look though.

...And as promised, here are the 99% finished master patterns of the Commanchero. Kindly take notice that dainty components like rocket pods, wings, etc. Have all been temporarily glued with hot glue. They will fit together infinitely better when proper glue is used. The first couple pics are of the "Macross Universe" style iron bomb (thee will be 2 in the kit) and the pylon that fits inside the ventral weapons bay. The 3rd and 4th pics are of the ventral bay itself--one open with the bomb/pylon, the other closed. I invisioned this weapons bay to be truly multi-functional. I just happened to choose to outfit it with two iron bombs, but I could also forsee it being able to accomodate a magazine-style container with a automatic loading mechanism to supply rockets to the port-side launcher, though I elected not to use the latter option at this particular time. Oh. You will notice that there are four small "circle-type" shapes on the underside of the engine housings. I added these so that there could be future "upgrades" to the Commanchero... Like optional armored external fuel tanks for long range missons

If you think that was convincing, have a look at her with full rivets & panels I'll have a full update of the masters tomorrow, but I'll just give this one sneek peek for tonight.

Whoever is intent on making Inbit toys, I can only wish them the best. I myself had polled to see what interest would be like on a Gurab model, and for the life of me I couldn't get the numbers to make it work. Hopefully thse guys will have more success.

Next, the standard side view. The rotor does,as mentioned previously, borrow its blades from a 1/72 Hind, though pretty much everything else is made from scratch. Next is a rear view. The engine exhaust nozzles and tail rotor gearbox housing are done, I simply didn't bother to attach them for the pic. Third, cockpit shots with my temporary 1/72 crew cheif. I made the instrument panel shrouds lage and thick, as though perhaps they might themselves be armored so as to provide the drivers some measure of extra AAA protection. The instrument panels are closer to the VF-1 in terms of being essentially glass cockpit displays, with few (if any) analog gauges. I still have to add the control column assembly and other details, but the whole thing is progressing nicely. I should have the whole gunship finished, riveted & armor-plated by Friday or Saturday, and a pictorial update will follow. Stay tuned!

Next, we have a full frontal and 3/4 bird's eye view. In the final update, I will take pics of the Commanchero next to the bare fuselage of a Hind, just to show you how huge this baby is. The weapons pods have been both widened and rounded to better match some of the line-art. The third pic shows (left to right) the rocket pod assembly, the rotor-mounted cereal bowl (top-left,) the main landing struts and wheels, and the tail-mounted landing tyre (top-right)all of which are in various stages of completion.

November 4th update. I'm happy to say that I'm finally in the last strech of the project; most of the components have now been sculpted, and only little details need to be refined.While it may not show, there have actually been a multitude f corrections on the main parts to get them to look just the way I want them, as well as the canopies, which are not quite as bulbous, most noteably the one for the front cockpit. The first 3 pics are, as you can clearly see, beauty shots. Due either to my own ineptitude or the compression created by the lens, I can't seem to get the angle shown in the line-art quite right.

As mentioned above, clear resin canopies can be a real b*tch to make. I have experimented with many different types of resins, and aside from the fact that if you don't get a perfectly consistent thickness throughout the canopy, the cockpit will appear distorted through it, there are many problems with resin consistency and hardness when cured. Basically, I want the end result to be the best it can be, and it's very hard to beat vac-formed lexan for clarity. As for them being difficult to cut, I think that I can help solve that issue by providing a resin "buck" that can be used to trace, trim and support the canopy while cutting; a template essentially, that I can include in the kit. I'm a smartass with an answer for everything. Almost.

The bubbling of the front canopy is actually deliberate; the lineart does indeed make the front canopy slope down in a much more conservative way. I took some creative liberty in that area so as to avoid making the foreward fuselage look too "hefty." Plus I figured it would give the pilot better aft visibility... I guess I'm the only one who thinks the buble canopies look cool

Which tends to conflict somewhat with what look like nicely bubbled canopies here: http://www.new-un-spacy.com/sdfmacross/com...chero-front.gif I have reduced the bubbliness either way, just to make vac-forming them a bit less of a chore. I actually think I will let the canopies retain a certain bubble shape though; purely for the sake of realism and the fact that it does aid the pilot/gunner's feild of vision on real aircraft. As for the rotors, I have modified MI-24 rotor blades to fit. I don't trust the anime still shot of the chopper from the top, as the animators themselves seemed to have taken a few liberties, making the attachment points stick-out from what I interpret to be two "dinner plate" type fixtures atop which the upside down cereal bowl-sensor sits... Gotta love my grasp of technical terms eh?? If you look at the art in Perfect Memory, you'll see that the main structure of the blades continues right up to (and possibly inside) the shroud-like dinner plates, which is more in line with what I have done.

Three more pics. Oh, I also narrowed the center fuselage an extra 1mm since the last update. In spite of that, the fuselage doesn't look flimsy at all; quite an impressive sight actually...

Ask... And ye shall receive! My foremost apologies for the delayed update; had some emmergency matters that needed my attention. As a result, this'll only be a partial update since I wasn't able to do as much work on the Commanchero as I would have liked. Anyhoo, here are some pics of the chopper as it looked last Friday; a little bit of refining was done to get the shapes looking more like their line-art counterpart. I retained the "bubble canopy" look seen in the frontal view, though this may be rather problematic to vac-for... Anyone interested in doing the canopies as a subcontractor?

Based on the HOBBY JAPAN scanned pics, the plastic prototype, at least in its current stage, has one big fat fatal flaw: The chest missile bay covers do not pivot up and backward nearly far enough with their hinge design; the missiles in the top 2 rows will blast right through and destroy the covers when they are fired! Stoopid Wave engineers!

In all likelyhood, it will be a bit less than $120; I always try to start from a worst-case scenario and whenever possible, charge less. Int'l money orders are fine, but as per my usual procedure, ordering info will likely be posted here or sent privately by PM. I'm hoping to be ready to pour molds in 2-3 weeks, so hve funds handy around the 1st week of November.

+1

Hi Carl. Sure, I don't mind tackling different types of vehicles, so long as the demand is there. One of the ones I want to tackle at some point is the Cat's Eye plane, which I don't think acheived its full potential in the hands of Tanmen, but there will likely be at least one big, phat Zentradi kit before that

Update continued. Pic 7: here we see more milling. This time for the aft fuselage. For what it's worth, the composite material that makes up the modeling board is very hard on my toold, which will need to be sharpened shortly. Pic 8: the round shapes seen in pic 5 have now all been glued together and placed on the lathe. Owing to the fact that the part in question is long and spindly, the dead center was used to keep the part stable as it's being cut. Pic 9 & 10: This is what I have to show after about 2+ days of work. The parts are still quite crude, but it's now starting to look like a helicopter. As per my usual methods, I should have another update about this time next week, so stay tuned

Update continued. Pic 4. Speaking of milling machine, here we can see it in action, as I'm refining the foreward fuselage part. There is also, despite me not photographing it, lots of work done with a Dremel and sanding blocks/files to a given component. Pic 5: here I'm using some scrap modelling moard that came off the lathe, and combined them with other scraps I had laying around. The first two pieces from the left will be combined to form the Commanchero's tail boom, while the part on the right wil be used to create the weapons pods. Pic 6: Finally, after several hours, the main fuselage is starting to take shape. There are a few small milling mistakes that will have to be fixed with putty before proceeding, but no big deal.

Guess what? Time for a build progress report! As per my previous projects, this one started by sitting with books to study lineart, followed by approximately a day and a half in front of the computer in order to draft diagrams based on that lineart. Once those are rendered to the point where I feel comfortable, I print them out and get onto the fun stuff. Fun stuff generally consists of getting all my materials together, which you can see in the 1st pic below: the usual suspects are there, as well as the unsung workhorse in my arsenal: my coffee cup. 2nd pic: the diagrams I made and printed are now cut and placed onto slabs of modelling board for cutting. THis is a simple, but very effective way of keeping track of the most important dimensions on a part. 3rd pic: depending on the shape in question, I will either start trimming it on the bandsaw, as seen in this photo, or sometimes directly on the milling machine.