Flying Boat Tracker & Land-based Sunderland - An Idea

[Old Wombat]

I now have three 1/48 Italeri S-2E/G Trackers in my stash, which is one more than is required for my plans for them.

Well, today I was sitting out with my stash looking at it trying to improve my mojo, which has taken a bit of a tumble lately (not the desire to build, just the impetus when I sit down to do so), when I glanced at the 1/72 Airfix Sunderland III & had a thought.

I got the fuselage halves out of both boxes & sized them up. Lo & behold, the planing hull of the Sunderland fits almost perfectly under the fuselage of the Tracker & a Plan has come together!

The Plan is simple; swap the lower parts of the fuselages, the floats & the landing gear.

There will, of course be more to it: where to fit the Tracker landing gear to the Sunderland & how; proper mating of the fuselage sections; possible interior for the Tracker; etc.

The Tracker will remain 1/48 & the Sunderland will remain 1/72 (the Tracker wheels are going to be HUGE in 1/72 but, probably, appropriately so).


Thoughts?

[ericr]

go ! go ! go !
 

[finsrin]

For Sunderland landplane could use strutted landing gear akin to Ford Trimotor or Bristol Superfreighter.
Rummaging thru a stash allows you to discover nifty swaps like this.  Is way most of my kitbashes got started.

[Old Wombat]

Thanks, guys! :)

My major concerns are about keeping the Tracker door, & the Sunderland nose turret, windows & door on the parent aircraft.

What do I do with the Tracker's radome? Does it go onto the Sunderland or do I work out a way to keep it on the Tracker? (The MAD boom is staying.)

The beaching gear wheels of the Sunderland are too small to take the impact of landing, so the Tracker wheels will be used but how do I attach them? Because they're going to be big, although not as big, perhaps, as I first thought.

If I put them on struts they're going to be really draggy but folding them into the fuselage will take up lots of internal space & mean a gear configuration similar to that of the PBY Catalina.

[Jeffry Fontaine]

@Old Wombat: Guy, you caught it, now you get to clean it :)

The door on the tracker might not need to be where it is now located.  It might be better to take your door and make a new location on the opposite side behind the trailing edge of the wing.  The current door could be reduced in size to just a hatch-size in dimensions and that would make more sense as you now have no bombay to contend with so access in and exit from the aircraft might be more logical with that door positioned further aft in a more traditional location. 

Your Tracker radar feature is no longer practical as you have to contend with a flying boat hull so maybe the Sunderland will benefit from having that feature added to it as an upgrade over the old school Yagi antenna arrays or the H2S bulges under the wings.  Or just lose it entirely and save it for your next armored vehicle project that will need a Ground Surveillance Radar feature added to it. 

The Revell-Monogram PBY-5 has beching gear that is suitable for the Tracker Flying Boat if you can find someone that has these excess to their needs to donate the parts to you. 

As far as main landing gear for your Sunderland go, the Tracker wheels would be about the right size, just look at the B-24 and B-17 wheels and compare what you have with the dimensions on those for example. 

[Old Wombat]

Thanks for the input, Jeff! :)

Every little bit helps clarify the insanity.

[jcf]

Basically you're talking about an aircraft of approximately the size of the Grumman G-73 Mallard:
http://theflyingboatforum.forumlaunch.net/viewtopic.php?t=108

http://theflyingboatforum.forumlaunch.net/viewforum.php?f=34



I'd use the Mallard as a guideline for laying out your Stoof-on-a-Shoe. 

If prop to water clearance is an issue then angling the inner wing sections up ala the Martiner Mariner
could be a solution, although Grumman would more likely have just moved the nacelle up.

BTW my first ever flight was on a Mallard, from Ocean Falls down to Vancouver, B.C. in 1965.  :)

[Old Wombat]

Thanks, Jon! :)

Another option is to move the wing up to a high-shoulder position, rather than the actual low-shoulder (gives a bit more internal space, too).

[KiwiZac]

Stoof-on-a-Shoe. 

I love it!

[jcf]

Just for giggles Mallard and S2F station drawings overlaid, lined up Sta.108 and Sta. 362 and wing top surface.



You can see that the top line of both center to aft fuselages lineup fairly closely, it also shows how much the Stoof
bulges forward, which makes its wing look like it's lower on the fuselage than it is in reality.

Like pretty much all shoulder-winged monoplane flying boats from the Shorts S.23 C-Class forward the Mallard fuselage
is relatively deep for its width, this proportion was found to improve hydrodynamics without to negative an effect on
aerodynamics.

[kitnut617]

My Amphibian Sunderland will be like this