All I ever see is 11.6 M: Anyone knows of a perhaps more precise OAL?

The new Tamiya kit comes out at around 11.75 M: About six inches or 2.9 mm over. AM is 0.5 mm short or about one inch.

Gaston

Hi Gaston

4+ Publications state the length of the Type 3 as 11.65m, Crowood Aviation as 11.653m (no variant specified).

All the best

Rowan

Measure a photograph.

From directly front on ?

Oh well played sir.

Thanks Rowan!

Assuming the same 14 mm long Tamiya spinner for all, the fuselage w/o spinner should be 228.7 mm long from the lip of one the front spinner side intake to the tip of the tail. (Not including the spinner-overlapping top side lip)

This is how the kits fall (Re-measured: I made a mistake on the OAL of the Tamiya kit):

AM: 226.8 mm (1.9 mm short, or nearly 4 inches)

My modified (longer nosed) AM kit: 228.2 mm

Tamiya: 228.7 mm (Matches 11.65 M OAL)

Canopy to nose:

AM: 61 mm
Tamiya: 61 mm

2-seat cockpit opening length from front of windscreen:

AM: 52 mm
Tamiya: 53.5 mm

Gunner rear of opening to tip of tail:

AM: 113.5 mm
Tamiya: 113.9 mm

Gaston

Knowing those HUGE discrepancies are present, now makes my mind up about this kit.

It looks nothing like an Il-2 and we should all write to Tamiya and whoever owns the Accurate Miniatures moulds and ask them to take them off the market until such time as they get the dimensions spot on.

Perhaps it's a cleverly disguised Boeing 747 just leading us to believe it's actually a Russian WWII Il-2 so that the Japanese can conquer the west while we are all pre-occupied measuring photographs and checking the relevant historical data? Or maybe it's just another stupid preoccupation with ridiculious details which turn a fun "hobby" into some excuse for not having a social life. Just a theory.
Jim

On the other hand it is possible that Gaston enjoys his hobby through preoccupation and discussion of "ridiculous" details and precise measurements. I don't -but I'm not calling anyone stupid for enjoying the hobby the way they want. Just a theory...

Touche my friend

Oh, sorry for neglecting to say this and thus a clarifying redundant re-post, but I wasn't calling him "stupid", I never would, I was just refering to his obsession at times with measurements based on photographs rather than physical data. I've never even met him and do sincerely wish him and yourself well, take care :-)
Jim

Wow,
This is some sort of undead topic (it just can't be killed.)

Hi Frederick

Of course, just like any topic on Aeroscale, it can be killed - I just haven't pulled the trigger...

I'm still really looking forward to seeing the Tamiya kit. It'll be interesting to see what they've done about the wings' dihedral (as emerged in another thread) - and, of course, it's reassuring to know Gaston's confirmed the length matches the dimensions I quoted. I'll sleep a little easier for that.

All the best

Rowan

Tamiya did not do any dihedral mid-wing dihedral "break" on their kit, just like Accurate Miniatures. What they did do is replicate a barely visible shift in surface angle due to the kinked trailing edge, which means the rear half of the wing has a barely discernible "horizontal" shift in surface "taper" towards the trailing edge, but not a dihedral change (wing top is flat and unbroken). This rearwards "shift" effect does exist on the swept-wing Il-2M3, and give the false impression of being a dihedral change in some photos, because of the pronouced trailing edge "kink". This effect seems absent on straight-wing models.

The difference with the Accurate Miniatures kit in that regard is negligible, even on the swept-wing version, and would be barely visible even if the aircraft existed in an all-metal finish...

The Tamiya kit unfortunately has a significant tendency towards a too flat dihedral, but at least it is symmetrical and nothing as severe to fix as on the AM kit (unless part C-5 acts as a spar structure that fights force bending as severely as does the AM wing's own troublesome-and non-optional- wing spar)...


I just got the actual Il-2 windscreen dimensions(!), but the person at the museum misunderstood what I wanted for the width of the sliding canopy, and gave the length, so we'll still have to wait for that one. (Both kits are similarly slightly under one inch too long on the length of the pilot's sliding part)

Actual Il-2M3 windscreen: 14 inches high by 14.5 inches wide.


I had to remeasure the windscreens to get more precise measurements with my ruler, as the transparent upper corners are curves and I got the height of the AM windscreen slightly wrong in the previous post (I'll post pictures):

Tamiya windscreen vertical: 6.8 mm (Actual 7.4 mm: +8% to Tamiya) Accurate Miniatures: 7.6 mm (+3% to actual)

horizontal: Tamiya 7.4 mm (Actual 7.6 mm: +2.7% to Tamiya) Accurate Miniatures 7.8 mm (+3% to actual)

On the overall fuselage length I would consider 1% a maximum allowable error or even as too much, since on the Il-2 this would be nearing five inches... On smaller parts, 3% can be considered the maximum (it would be over a foot on the overall length of an Il-2!).

This (to my mind) confirms the Accurate Miniatures kit is indeed the winner on this very critical part of a model.

Before you assume these differences are really that small, consider the effects on the windscreen surface, which is after all what you actually see on the model...:

Nearly one inch and a half is missing on the Tamiya windscreen height. Combining the missing vertical (8%) and horizontal (2.7%) dimensions makes the Tamiya windshield 11% too small in surface... It's surprising to see how such small dimensional differences can be so visible on a small part... But it is the focal point of a model after all...

Gaston

New dimensions have arrived from the Il-2 at the FHC collection:

Pilot Sliding canopy base width, outside rail to outside rail: AM: 18.8 mm, Tamiya 18 mm (revised from 17 mm because the clear part flexes outward when fitted to fuselage: This 18 mm measurement is on the fuselage itself)

Actual Il-2, outside rail to outside rail: 19.1 mm. (36.25 inches)

Gaston

+8% here is actually +9% for the real windshield height vs Tamiya. The Tamiya vertical windscreen dimension are indeed 8% smaller than actual...

Gaston

Do those windscreen dimensions mean that this kit is NOT an Il-2?

From all I have seen of this kit and the supposedly unbuildable Accurate Miniatures kit, they still both look like Il-2s to me.

Now if they looked like a Boeing 747, then I'd be worried.......

Slavish attention to obtaining millimetre perfect accuracy isn't what the hobby is about.

Thank you Matt!! I was beginning to think I was the only one who relished this conversation about as much as I look forward to being strapped into a solid oak chair in wet shorts listening to a smelly old man with a speach impediment drag his long fingernails along the blackboard.

Jim

You really made me laugh!

Well guys, that's the way how Gaston enjoys the hobby. You (as me) can't agree with him, but you're not obliged to read and answer to his threads.

Anyway Gaston, joking aside, considering that you're so obsessed with dimensions and considering tath there are no kits which seem to be precise enough for you (...A Tamiya manager must have stolen your girlfriend...), why don't you take up with scratchbuilding projects? I've already heard about some modellers who was so frustrated with donor kits, that they started to build them on their own...

Some awesome results can be acheived...look here for exemple

http://www.rojasbazan.com/

cheers

I'm glad I made you laugh Mauro, afterall it is all for fun. Hey check out this link for a scratchbuilt kit. It is a very impressive build! Take care

Jim

Oops, here is the link
http://hsfeatures.com/features04/spitfiremkidg_1.htm

Yes, that's it!


Anyway....WOW!

What an awesome job! Thanks a million for the link

If I had enough time, skillness and most of all MONEY, I'd really to try to takle some similar projects!
I really envy the brave who cam make something like this:

http://www.idf-modelling.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1047

Anyway I think that this way, It would be hard for me even to complete only a model in 3 years...

So, don't blame Gaston ...He might be ready to became "One of the braves"

cheers and many thanks again

[quote]


Thanks for the link! They are very beautiful...

For scratchbuilding it is an argument often made (to me), but it is often less "sound" of a method than it would seem: There is the time factor, among other things, meaning more time is taken away from examining shapes from photos...

But there are also other issues that make scratchbuilding not such a useful idea (Stephan Giachimo's stunning 1/48th scale H8K Emily nothwidthstanding: As good in general outlines as anything I've seen, and in a fairly small scale on top of that, with the onerous "spar and rib" method: This is my favourite scratchbuilt model of all: http://www.seawings.co.uk/ModArt-Emily%201-48%20Stefan.htm. )

Many scratchbuilt models still have slight error in general outlines because the extra work involved means looking at it longer: When you look at something too long, you cannot see anymore what you are looking at, a well-known phenomenon for painters of portraits... That leads to mistakes just because the workload is too high...

Then there is the materials: It is often too complicated for the scratchbuilder to sand away to an exact shape, given the thinness of the material used to recreate a properly "hollow" looking aircraft: If the material is not thin, then it becomes hard to do convincing hollow areas from a solid shape... In other words, no margin of error to catch-up on mistakes: Once it is wrong, it will stay wrong: See the P-38's metal windshield in the Roja Bazan link.

For this problem a plastic kit offers the best of both worlds: A hollowed-out staring point, but often with thick enough plastic to sand away shapes, or at least thick enough support putty without bending or crumbling under sanding (Hasegawa kits are an exception though: the plastic is often too thin and brittle, like an eggshell)...

Another problem when you are working from scratch is that you HAVE to use drawings, because you can't work from directly from photographs: The reason for that is that photographs have no scale... A kit at least offers a scale to start from...

So basically working from scratch implies doing your own drawings (as absolutely no drawings are in any way reliable: Arthur Bentley's Fiat G-55-derived Spitfires anyone?), then scaling the drawings to several major dimensions for the correct scale, like OAL, and working from there.

Doing the drawings amounts to scratchbuilding before you scratchbuild... I should know: The drawings in this link are all my drawings (minus the P-47 which is just modified) and they were not easy to do, and still have some mild outline errors, even though they are just rough 1/144 scale outlines:

http://barbuzz.net/publicftp/client/gaston/binder1.pdf

The problem is the drawing cannot replicate the 3 dimensional object, so you still have to use photos. I don't really see any advantage to scratchbuilding, unless there is no subject starting point at all.

The most important reason why I will never fully scratchbuild is the issue of symmetry: I suspect many beautiful-looking scratchbuilt models are full of slight symmetry issues, no matter how careful the builder is...

Kit toolmakers, on the other hand, typically have precise, purpose-designed, measuring tools, and, most importantly, fabrication tools that cut metal in predictable mirror-equivalent shapes with a high degree of precision: This makes their workload infinitely smaller than the herculean task of ensuring symmetry on a scratchbuilt subject full of COMPOUND CURVES: Almost all mainstream models since the 1970s (especially the better ones like Otaki or Nichimo for instance), are usually perfectly symmetrical in all compound curves, and thus elliminate what would likely be 90% of the work for a scratchbuilder to create to a similar standard...

The only major, mainstream, exception that I know of is the Monogram B-29 fuselage, and to a lesser extent their B-24, and sometimes a few of their kit's wings like the B-26's left wing, hopelessly kinked: This is very UNtypical of plastic model kits generally, but Monogram sometimes seemed to cut corners on the "mirror tooling check", unlike most other mainstream manufactures, no matter how awful the basic kit...:






None of the above is due to individual kit warping. Neither is the B-26's left wing below:



All the boxing of these kits of these have these exact same flaws.

I gave up on the B-26, but the B-29's numerous fuselage symmetry errors took 4 years and about 5 different attempts on 6 to 8 fuselages to fix: This is pretty much what would happen if I were to scratchbuild a model, and that makes me think if issues of symmetry are 90% of the work on a finished model, then it is just as well to leave to people with the proper tools to do this mundane task (and hoping that, unlike psychedelic-era Monogram, they make no exceptions in their use, instead of using "The Force")...

In short, symmetry alone is why scratchbuilding is a worse idea than it seems... I have a feeling the B-29's pattern-maker fancied himself a scratchbuilder: Hopefully he found more gainful employment elsewhere (and learned what Frise ailerons were in the process)...

Gaston

Well Gaston, I really respect your point of view, but anyway...







Can you make something similar with a Hasegawa kit?

Cheers

I suggest that you withdraw that fabrication immediately, since Arthur Bentley has never done any Spitfire drawings, in fact he's working on his first-ever set right now.
There is no Fiat G.55, in this country, either, while there are any number of Spitfires, so I can assure anyone, who might be taken in by M. Marty's downright lie, that Arthur is looking at (and checking) the real thing, Supermarine's original drawings, and National Archive material; he will not just be looking at photographs.
Edgar