C-160 Transall

As approved by mr b, I quickly rushed out to HHQ today and bought the model kit. Once I was there, I panicked a bit because I thought someone else has boought it. Spent about almost two hours looking for 1/72 figures, holding the C-160 as I go scouting along the whole shop...

I was so excited, I forgot about some little details. Oh, and thanks to Mr. Low for a nice cup of Koi Ais.


When I reached home, I saw the problem immediately. It is huge! My work table can barely have enough space to work on. Too late to back out now, since I bought the kit.


The box said, the length of the C-160 model is 45cm while the wingspan is 55.5cm! To show you the tremendous problem I am going to face, I have placed an International Unit for Internet Scale measurement next to the model kit; ie the Coke can.


This is the result after two hours of searching.



I think I will have to modify a lot to make them look 'normal'. Never done this before either. The whole box contains one sprue and for this case, there are generous amounts of pilots for me.



The model is packed in three bags. The parts look simple though but I will need to study the assembly sheet to see which parts I can 'curi' out because for my idea in mind, I need to plane to be as light as possible.


As you can see, the body of the plane is very long.


The reason why I chose this model was because of the vast amount of cargo space inside. Originally, I wanted to place about 68 German Paratroopers in there but after searching for the Internet, there are no reference pictures or model figure kits available. If you look at the middle left, the big rectangle is the cargo floor, which got me hooked in the first place.


The C-160 is a twin prop but I wonder why they have a third propeller. Since this is a quick glance, and I am still in shock, I will think about this later.

My plan for the C-160?
A low level fly-by with all the lighting and spinning propellers, of course. The only concern now is, that its too big and I might have bitten off more than I can chew. So the chances of FFK is very high for this since there is less than two months for me to learn about painting, model base making and also, testing of the electronics.

Looks like a very detailed kit there. If you pull off the low level fly by, it's going to look excellent!

Great stuff you got there mate!

Few word of caution, just beware of the joint between fuselage and wing root area. Plenty of putty and sanding. Also, you need to strengthen it with plastic rod or metal rod from inside joining both sides. Another area is the plastic canopy to the main body, and its a tail sitter.

Other than that, brave on bro.

Pakcik' S

Wow, great choice.

Hope you can get it done in time, will be impressive to see.

ehh i thought the universal scale is a cig. lighter made famous by senor Landyshah

anyway.. you plan will be a sight to see during the GB.. 2 months.. sure can one...
will be eyeing this space for more updates...



kuman

First step is the lighting plan. I found this earlier from the Internet, which shows the plane's lighting and also its AAR refueling probe. I am going to use the information in Page 3: C-160 Transall Lighting\

So tempted to show the the C-160 come in, cut off the engines, glide a bit before starting the propellers again... then I don't have to motorise the propellers
[HD] Two transport aircraft Transall C-160 common low pass in Hamburg Fuhlsbuettel

This time, I think I will have the landing gears down too, to show its using them to increase drag.

The only problem now is to find more information on the cockpit lighting and also, the cargo. Need to know where the lights are placed. Based on some videos, its white when dropping non-human cargoes and red when there are paratroopers. Not sure if this is true.

Was poring over the instruction sheets for the past two days and its very intimidating. While looking for reference photos, I chanced upon a very detailed C-160 from ARC Forums. I like his use of aluminum foil for the cargo bay walls. But I am not sure if the Mr. Surfacer for metal is required.
Revell C-160 by Eric F



I decided to give myself a warm up by dry-fitting the cockpit area.

You need to click on this for the picture
Then when I saw his, the staircase has been modified. I am not sure why, so I decided to scour the Internet...


And found this photo, where on the leftmost door, the staircase is actually hollow!


Which is a good excuse to try out this circular saw I got from ICW last year


Its actually a photo-etch part and this is actually the first time I cut a PE part...


Tested the saw on a sprue uisng low speed. High speed will not only deforms the plastic, the heat generated from the friction between the saw and the plastic would created melted plastic which will get your saw stuck or worse, slips from the model. You then will either have a cut in your hand or a scratched model. Anyway, the cut is very clean.


One hour later, with the combination of the circular saw, scalpel and sanding, I got the stairs cut out. This time, I controlled myself and the job was OK, apart from the visible 'accidental' nicks and over shaving/cutting. Then I realised, because I am going to set the C-160 as flying, the cutting of the stairs is unecessary.

But then, perhaps there is a consolation when I light the cargo bay, the stairs might be shown too. Right now, I still have not seen any pictures of the C-160's cargo bay lit.

Great start Mr. Engineer, got plenty of false starts with this kit because I cannot stand the instructions...
Now I want to light it too.... If it wasn't difficult enough already!
Looking forward to what you can do with this beautiful plane.

Thanks. I was searching for lighting today and I found this. Very nice but I cannot do this for I have something else planned. Its a bit off topic but I like the concepts.

C-130 animated Cargo doors

C-130 Operation Credible Sport

Went out today and got a tube of putty from HHQ. All of a sudden, all putties are all gone except for the UV versions which I am not going to try yet.


This will be my second time trying the putty. The last time was in the late 90's and I did not get the chance to even sand/scrape/fix it. Tonight I want to bring that to full circle.


This is a good reason to go to MacDonalds. I used to collect these stirrers because of some kit-bash idea long ago. Now, its going to be used for another purpose. In less than three minutes, the spilled putty dried on its surface. This was because I poked the tube and some of the putty came out. Must be the temperature difference between Malaysia and Japan. Its white in colour, which I do not mind because the C-160's plastic is grey. And its also the last one in HHQ


So I applied the putty on the stairwell in the hopes to cover some scratches/dents and also the pilots 'table'.


This is what I did with the Daiso sandpaper (its brittle and easy to crack when I bend it), 3M double-sided tape and the MacDonalds stirrer.
"Bangun Pagi, gosok gigi..."
The end result looks OK to me. Then again, there is no paint for me to tell if its perfect or not.


As I was test fitting the walls of the cargo bay (my favourite part of the model), there was a problem with the two side walls as the sprue pins for both parts 'touches' the alignment tabs. Nearly cut my thumb when I trued to remove the bulge.


OK, this is going to be very fiddly and challenging to me. Just like the U-2549 Submarine I was doing months ago (Stopped because I lost one of the 'ceiling' parts whe starting to solder the LEDs ). Note the four rectangular holes. At first, I thought they were cavities for lighting but I was wrong. It's for the (moveable?) ladders. So, this is going to be a challenge for me since I can foresee a problem with aligning all parts together (cargo bay walls/floors/ceiling/exterior plane parts. etc) once I finish the cargo bay 'decorations'.

Warning: The following link is to a to biiiiig picture...
http://data3.primeportal.net/hangar/hans-h...ay_19_of_76.jpg
From this C-160 walkaround picture, the lighting is going to be a big challenge for me since its not easy to replicate fluorescent lights in 1/72. I am following this site as well as the ARC Forum. But at the end of the day, the amount of details will be up to me since I am not a modeling expert. My main aim is to light up the plane, especially the cargo bay.

I was still racking my head on the cargo Bay lighting and because if I were to use some SMD LEDs (surface mount) which small enough for the cargo bay but might not be bright enough.


So, I can imagine that it will cast a lot of shadows and behaves like a spot light instead of flooding the whole area.

Thanks to rayloke from ICW, I got some fiber-optic strands to experiment with. Although the wings of the C-160 is hollow, I wanted to try and use the smallest opening for the lights so that they can be as in the 1/72 scale. And the fibre-optics fits. However, the problem is that the lights might not be as bright as I wanted it to be...


Above are the two fibre-optic strands, which is about 0.7mm. I have enlarged the two strands on the bottom right. The left strand was terminated with a normal cutter and then sanded. You can see a small crack on the bottom of the strand's surface. The right strand was also done the same way but this time, 2mm of its side walls were sanded.


This is the effect when I used a 3mm red LED with clear lens. The one with diffused lens was not as bright since its main purpose is to diffuse and spread the light. So, this is the effect of the clear lens. Do not be fooled into thinking that this is very bright since Digital Cameras have this problem of making LED lights brighter than it really should. In real life, its very dim. But the fibre-optic on the right is bright because of its sanded walls.


I then used a laser pointer and the result is now more acceptable, especially on the fibre-optic (right) that had sanded walls. Unfortunately, there are no white Lasers and the green ones are still too expensive.

And so, I think, I will have to use SMD LEDs again, and have the lens formed with Humbrol's ClearFix. It will not look accurate but at least, it will be bright enough like a real plane.

After getting some response from other Forums, I have decided more or less on the lighting. I can say that I will forego the fibre-optic method and use LEDs instead for the exterior lights.


The ramp's 'opening' and 'closing' is just my notes and for the model, I am not going to animate it. This is because ol' butterfingers like me is going to botch it up and also, burn the motors too.


For the cargo bay, I am currently thinking about using more SMD LEDs here. The advantage is that they are very small (1mm x 1.5mm) and might be able to help spread the light a little but at the cost of diminished brightness since the height from the light to the floor is about 3cm. And if I were to follow Eric F's build where he uses aluminum foil to simulate the fabric walls, I could wing it with some 2x5x7mm LEDs instead. But at that very same height, these LEDs create spots.


After examining the plane with more detail, I think I am going of placing the whole circuit board inside the hollow part of the wings. With the double walls of the cargo bay, I can use the space between to get the wires to where I want them.


The space is about 2.4mm x 4.1mm give or take and I think, if I design the PCB to be more compact, I think I can do this. The PCB you're looking at is the prototype lighting system for the Viper spaceships.

So, after some replies from another Forum, my plans have now changed to two modes, irregardless of the ramp coming down or up (except I will still animate the three spot lights to show the ramp is 'down':

1. Day flight
- Lighting in the cockpit will be white (the two thunderstorm lights & stairwell remains unchanged)
- Lighting in the cargo bay will be white
Note: When 'night' changes to 'day' I assume these white lights in the cargo bay are really fluorescent so, with enough ports on the chip, I will make a few lights flicker before coming on.

2. Night Flight
- Lighting in cockpit will change to red (the two thunderstorm lights & stairwell remains unchanged)
- Lighting in the cargo bay will fade in to red.
Note: When the 'day' changes to 'night', I will try to fade in the red for that bulb effect.

3. Cockpit Instrument Panels.
OK, when I woke up, this morning, I got a bright idea. I am going to experiment with using Positive Film as light template for lighting up the decals. I've been using Positive Films when I needed people to create prototype PCB boards for me. Last night, while I was looking at the instrument decals, other than the dials and displays, the rest of the decal seems to be transparent so that you can paint the plastic pieces that medium grey colour. My idea is to hollow out the plastic panel, then do the following sequence, but I was warned that acrylic and decals will not stick properly to the clear acetate:

-Transparent acetate with the Decal and Medium Grey paint
-Positive Film mask
-Plastic

This is what I did today:


I paid a girl to scan the decal and she scanned it partially. Luckily, most of the instrument panels were there except for the small one which is located to the rear of the cockpit so I had to improvise. Bear in mind, this is not an 'exact' thing as the scanned decal was not aligned properly and I traced the shapes as best as I could. Don't worry about the pink colour as I changed them so that I do not get confused with the original decals halfway.


Once everything looks OK (I did some artist impressions on most of them...), I am going to get them printed as positive film this week.

4. Propellers
The advantage of living here is that I love to come to these area where there are a lot of electronic shops. I can get most of the parts that I wanted. Erm, before you guys click on this link, the picture is very big. Its the picture of the motors available. I chose the one second but last on the bottom right.


And below, is just a rough idea for the spinning propeller. Earlier, in another project, my friend used rubber foam strips (not those expanding solid foams) and he mentioned the results were not good. So, he is going to use epoxy putty instead. What I am afraid is that the vibrations of the motors might jeopardise the structural integrity of the wings. But, well, I have run out of ideas on this.


5. Lastly, with regards to the 6 blue lights on top of the wings, I think I will use the fibre optics instead to direct them to shine to the rear. I will see how they are placed this week.

mr engineer indeed......really nice seeing everything coming together.......

was planning to motorize my bob g/b entry.....but now might just have to wait and see.....as so many cool things can be done......but limited by time and skill....on my part......

hope to see this done up for the g/b

rgds
mr b

I hope so too. Seriously, with less than 2 months to get it up, I am literally running and on my toes so to speak. So far, these are the easy parts.

I have yet to master an airbrush and a good friend just loaned one to me today.