GrassHopper part 2

Its been over a year since my last entry, I admit I am the world's most lousy blogger.

There has, in that time, been some progress on the GrassHopper. It took a year, but after having a permanent search for some Imex Jumbo Maxx Claw Dawgs on eBay I got lucky and a pair turned up which would ship to Australia. I swapped out the chevrons and now the rear tyres match the fronts and I think it looks a lot better. The rear wheels are also Imex Jumbo Maxx Diamonds. They have 14mm hexes and were the white nylon versions. I have dyed them red with red RIT liquid dye which I had purchased in the supermarket some years ago. Now, here in Australia, I can't seem to find it anywhere. The powdered stuff you get in little tins does not work at all well for this application.
I have a large old stainless steel pot full of the diluted dye. Every time I need to dye something I just put it on the stove and bring it to the boil and drop the white nylon parts in. I use a bent piece of wire to lift up the parts every couple of minutes to check the uptake of the colour. When the shade looks good, the parts are removed rinsed and dried. The pot is left to cool, the lid goes on and is returned to  the shed for the next time. I have had this dye liquid sitting in the pot for a couple of years with no apparent ill effects to its efficacy.

Imex Jumbo maxx Claw Dawg Rear Tyres.

 Also visible in the photos is the battery support platform, made from a scrap piece of 3mm aluminium which happened to be the right size, here temporarily supporting a couple of 2s lipos. Under the platform is mounted the transmission 2 speed actuating servo for the summit transmission.

Battery support platform and mini transmission servo.

 

The batteries will be housed inside a mock turbine engine thingy which uses as its base a molded styrene Clinique make up container with a matching lid. The lid will be made detachable to put the batteries in and out. The rear nozzles are from a couple of PVC plumbing pipe couplers. They were glued to a couple of pieces of PVC pipe cut at an angle and in turn glued to the container lid using PVC pipe cement. The container was not long enough to cover the entirety of the batteries so it has been extended with some 2mm styrene sheet and in the picture below some kit part detailing has begun. The batteries slide between two inner walls and push up tightly against a PE foam pad on a lip at the front when the lid is secured and cannot move around. You can also see two pieces of half PVC pipe glued into the end for reinforcement for the lid securing screws to thread into.

Battery compartment made from a Clinique make up container.

Test fitting of the PVC nozzles, the angle looked better than straight.

Battery leads exit fom the front.

Some Revell 1/25 truck engine parts in white, and 1/32 Mirage fighter parts in grey.

I still have to figure out a method for making the battery compartment removable, just in case I ever need to tear down the platform at any time. I have also changed the top links of the rear 4 link suspension. I am now using a couple of Traxxas hollow aluminium steering rods which are a bit longer then the original ones I had in there and they are mounted further inboard on the chassis to compensate. This improved the way the axle rotated on suspension compression. I also added a couple of locking links (steering links from a Jato) to the rear axle to adjust the toe-in angle and to stop any hub movement.

 

 I made a mock air scoop for the engine, out of wood covered in 1mm styrene sheet. The scoop section former was made from a short length of dowel cut in half and each side glued to a central block. A textured piece of evergreen siding was stuck to the front of the scoop, sanded flush and then it was wrapped in the 1mm styrene sheet, glued with super glue and clamped until set.

Not shown in these photos, the rounded corners were then coated with car filler and sanded. Then strips of 1mm styrene were inserted into the front of the air scoop using the lines on the evergreen as a guide to make vents. The scoop was then super glued to the top of the engine/battery compartment.

Nozzles point out and slightly up.

There is more detailing to do on the engine and a great deal of body work to go on the Tamiya fighter buggy body. I have built a mounting system for the body. The front secures to a small body post from a venom creeper which is mounted on a 6mm thick piece of PVC sheet, which is a brace between the two Jato shock towers. I had to make it in two pieces and then join it as it was difficult getting the bends done accurately at each end with the correct length between. The bends were done using  a heat gun, masking of the area not to be heated with some aluminium foil. the end is gripped in a vice up the the bend line, heated until soft and bent using a flat piece of wood trying to be as square as possible and ending at the right angle. This brace will also support the 1/10 Tamiya driver figure I also found on eBay. The rear body mount is a slotted piece of aluminium angle supported on two PVC posts attached to another piece of aluminium angle which is then screwed to two convenient screw receptacles on the body. I used proper plastic screws which I salvaged out of old radios, kitchen appliances and computer printers.
There is a button of turned aluminium on the battery support tray the slot slides under and which retains the body securely (not shown).

Tamiya 1/12 driver figure.

Much work has been done up the front in making steering servo support brackets out of 3mm aluminium and blocks of 10mm PVC. The rear chassis had to be lowered relative to the front modified Jato chassis to allow room for the rear most steering servo. Some 6mm spacers were made up and installed. This actually makes the chassis sit more level so it worked out well. A 3mm PVC plate was also installed to house the EVX speed control and the receiver. the EVX control in the photos was an older one that did not have lipo cutoff so I had added a Novak smart stop. I have since replaced that one with a newer one with built in lipo protection and the other one with the smart stop will go into a different model (more about that soon) where there is plenty of room for all the extra wiring.
 

Rear steering servo is a tight squeeze.

 

 

 

 

Front steering servo is mounted up side down.

Aluminium M3 threaded spacers support the servo plates.

The servos I am using are Turnigy 959's built into a billet aluminium case, purchased from Hobby King. They are not the greatest servos by any means but they are extremely strong and relatively cheap if somewhat jittery. They will more than adequately do the job in this application. One odd problem that surfaced is that the EVX esc would not turn on if the small transmission servo was connected to the receiver, its a a Traxxas servo designed to work with this esc. It would work happily if I turned on the esc and then plugged in the servo. To get round this in testing I added a temporary switch so that I can switch in the servo after switching on the esc. It's possible that I need to add an external BEC. The Turnigy servos pull more amps than the Traxxas steering servos used in the models that sport the EVX so they might be pulling it down enough so it wont switch on. I will have to investigate further. Worst case scenario is I have to make my temp switch permanent and remember the start sequence.

Transmission servo switch.

 

The next task is to extend the body work at the front to cover all the exposed guts. The Tamiya fighter buggy body doesn't have any canopy glass either and I want to add some. I am going to have to make a close fitting inside former to attempt to mould some heated thin acrylic. Its going to be tricky so I'm still thinking about how to tackle that one.

Until next time...

Unfinished Old Spaceship model Part 2

This model was started around the same time as the "Sony" model. It is so close to being finished I don't know why I didn't just complete it. I think it was because I couldn't think how to resolve the front command section that I just sort of abandoned it. I find I often had difficulty coming up with a suitable front section for my spaceship models, changing them a number of times on various models, I'm not sure why. This round shaped front section was a stand from an Airbus plastic kit with a plastic tablespoon measure glued on top. The section behind that was part of the front from one of the earliest models I made, which again I didn't end up liking. It is actually solid carved Jelutong wood, a once very popular pattern making rainforest timber. It was actually the front of this model before I decided to hack the very front extremity off and add the rounded shape now attached.

The engine Bells are two more of the same ribbed acrylic cups with two plastic tap handles glued on as nozzles.

The ribbed central section sides were a cheap Styrene plastic lampshade. Behind those are two halves of a plastic blender cut on the bandsaw.

Underside.

Topside.

The shape below the command section is a 1/25 scale Le Mans racing car kit.

Below you can quite easily make out the Blender jug shape on its side.

"the Blender"

Inside the plastic tap handle nozzles are a couple of Short Sunderland kit engine cowlings.

I have some new ideas about finishing this... one day.
The model length is 930mm

The story of this model continues here

Old Spaceship model Part3 (Sony Spaceship)

This model was made in the late 90's. It was again made from a disparate collection of shapes.
There is a central spine made of some PVC conduit, with everything strung along it.
The  rounded front command module was part of a bedside lamp housing, with some added volume at the bottom. The next module (with the X shape) was built out of two protective plastic covers from some small Sony bookshelf speakers.

The next module along was built from two Sony di-sub video printer cartridges. Sony really contributed a lot to this model.

The engine housing was scratch built from styrene sheet. the engine nozzles were more wheels from a micronaut toy.

Model railway bits and pieces are a good source of detail parts. Note the nicely molded AEG transformer part from some HO scale wagon.

The cone shapes object that connects the engine housing was a baby's plastic clown shaped toy. It's had evergreen strips added but you can still make out the hand shapes in the thumbs up position. I probably should have cut those off, but as is usual with these things if you don't know what the object was in the first place you probably don't notice it. A prominent piece of the Hasegawa 1/72 Morser Karl sitting on top of the engine housing.

This model was finished in white automotive primer, with various panels in grey and red oxide primer. The usual weathering method of "Poo Juice" and dry brushed white student acrylic as previously described ( see old-spaceship-model-part-1).
Model length 850mm.

Here's a shot of the three of them together.

Excepting the Foss model, most of my spaceships end up around the same length, around 900mm. I'm not sure why that is, it's probably for me a comfortable size to work on and not too big that it needs heavy engineering to support. Not too small either, as I don't like working on small models, too fiddly.

As it happens the original star destroyer from Star wars was 3ft or around 900mm and that is what got me started on this whole obsession in the first place.

Old Spaceship model Part 2

This is  the oldest model I still have. It was made in 1985 or 1986. I was working as an industrial model maker as briefly described in my previous post, and was much more confident in trying out some new techniques. It is heavily inspired by some concept work that Chris Foss did for an unfilmed version of Dune seen in the book 21st century Foss. It was mainly the striated colours that I appropriated for my own shaped spacecraft but most people recognise the Fossian influence. In fact it was this model along with another spaceship I no longer have, that I took in a suitcase with me across the country to Sydney, at the end of 1986, in  an attempt to get work in special effects. The attempt I might add was successful.

The model was shaped out of a block of green polyurethane foam and then skinned with glass cloth and polyester resin. After lots and lots of sanding and primer and spray putty and more sanding, more primer more spray putty, more sanding... you get the idea..I ended up with a reasonably smooth shape. Model kit parts were sparingly applied. Recessed sections were superglued into holes cut into the skin. The engine nozzles were some smaller scale pvc pile guides as described in the previous post, with added strips.

You can see some damage from having been dropped.  To be expected after all these years and having had small children when the model was displayed on a shelf.

The interior nozzles were parts from a Micronaut toy from the late seventies.

The attitude thrusters were the wheels from a micronaut toy.

The patterning was done by spraying the model red and then freehand painting liquid mask on the bits I wanted to stay red, then spraying blue.
Very faintly seen in the photographs are panel colouring variations. It took forever to apply hundreds of tiny masking tape rectangles which were then over sprayed by a light dusting of white to produce the lighter shaded panels. It should have been a heavier application as it is barely visible. A few random small decals were applied along with lots of the kerning marks from rub on letraset sheets to represent windows.
The model is 650 millimetres long.