Author Topic: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods  (Read 6855 times)

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« on: February 04, 2012, 06:18:33 AM »
I had some excess nose parts from a couple of the 1/48th scale Revell Bf-110 kits and kept wondering what I could do with them and before I forget, thank you to Ron Fulce (sotoolslinger) for sending me that Bf-110 kit which got me to looking for another one just to pull this off. 

I finally found my Muse this morning and went about turning the nose pieces into a pair of gun pods.  The nose on the standard Bf-110 has a pair of machine gun barrels mounted at the top and a pair 20mm cannon blast ports on the bottom.  The night fighter version does away with the two machine guns so the common denominator between them is the 20mm cannons blast ports which are large enough to pass for a rocket launcher tube if you let your imagination get away from you. 

Mating the two nose pieces together resulted in an odd looking shape that has a rather pronounced hump in the center.  I did some serious sanding to get rid of most of the raised surface features on the pods and the end result as seen in the attached images taken with the camera feature on my Droid-X will give you an idea of what they look like.  Not sure if these will qualify as a model but hey, I have picked up plastic, used some glue and sanded the bejeesus out of the things and I am pleased with how they turned out. 

As to scale of these gun-n-rocket pods?  48th works for me but they could also be used on a 1/32nd or 1/35th scale helicopter if you can figure out how to hang them to point in the right direction
:)


***the thumbnail images look better than the full size image ;)

***Image number four was taken with my Nikon Digital SLR on a short tripod. 
« Last Edit: February 04, 2012, 07:03:16 AM by Jeffry Fontaine »
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Re: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2012, 07:06:01 AM »
Different.  Now put it under the centre-section of a zwilling something and you are on a role!
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Offline Brian da Basher

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Re: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2012, 07:38:46 AM »
That's some great thinking there, Mr Fontaine!

Those cool pods look like they could actually be little armed space ships. I could totally see them hanging off the stub wings of a Cobra.

It really makes my day to see you building, JJ!

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Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2012, 09:02:38 AM »
Every once in a while you have to glue something together instead of just checking to see if it will fit or work on a project ;)

Sticking a couple of nose parts together is easy enough.  With that huge supply of P-61 Black Widow parts just acquired from Terry Dean there are enough radomes (P-61A and P-61B) to create at least a good "Baker's half-dozen" (~7X) pod shapes based on the things.  Did that once before several (25 years) ago just to see what it would look like and it turns a pair of P-61 radomes into a very interesting yet portly looking pod of some kind.  Would be ideal for a countermeasures pod under a WW2 or Korean War era aircraft or maybe a wingtip pod serving the same purpose. 
« Last Edit: February 04, 2012, 09:15:20 AM by Jeffry Fontaine »
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Offline sotoolslinger

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Re: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2012, 10:22:23 AM »
Dang :o Them are so freakin cool I kinda want them back ;) ;D :-* Good job bubba :icon_meditation: Nice to see you doing PSR C:-)

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2012, 10:29:13 AM »
Dang :o Them are so freakin cool I kinda want them back ;) ;D :-* Good job bubba :icon_meditation: Nice to see you doing PSR C:-)

I could send them to Frank and let you make arrangements to take custody of them through him ;)
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Offline sotoolslinger

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Re: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2012, 10:55:46 AM »
Aww heck then it would be 2 folk who started a project they'll never get to :-[ If Frank don't take em away from us ;D

Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2012, 01:32:50 PM »
Aww heck then it would be 2 folk who started a project they'll never get to :-[ If Frank don't take em away from us ;D

Considering how cheap that Bf-110 kit is at places like Michael's you could always go down and pick up a pair of kits for parts ;) 

I finally let the pods sit for a spell to make sure the glue had dried sufficiently.  I was a bit hasty in sanding on them earlier and found one of the pods was busting apart at the glue join so I had to dabble some more liquid cement on the exterior to seal it back up and that got a bit messy.  Now that the pods have dried/cured the sanding went a bit easier and I am satisfied with the shape at this point. 

My next short-term project will be to start assembling the P-61 Black Widow radomes into some kind of ersatz ECM pods.  Wondering now what aircraft subject could benefit from such a contraption.  B-17?  B-24?  B-29?  Certainly some potential for something mounted under a wing or two. 

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Re: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« Reply #8 on: February 05, 2012, 02:17:11 AM »
[Wondering now what aircraft subject could benefit from such a contraption.  B-17?  B-24?  B-29?  Certainly some potential for something mounted under a wing or two.

Actually the idea of an EP-61 is appealing in it's own right!
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Offline Weaver

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Re: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« Reply #9 on: February 05, 2012, 06:32:33 PM »
Nice one, and very credible too: FN make a variety of pods with 0.50 cals and rockets in them. They're mainly for weapons training flights (only 4-6 RPs in each one) but as a means of arming a small aircraft, they're still good.
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Offline jcf

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Re: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« Reply #10 on: February 07, 2012, 06:44:23 AM »
Hang it off the belly via struts, like the gun-pod of the SAAB J-21R:

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Offline Jeffry Fontaine

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Re: Fictional Gun and Rocket Pods
« Reply #11 on: February 07, 2012, 07:49:24 AM »
Hang it off the belly via struts, like the gun-pod of the SAAB J-21R:



Jon, thanks for the suggestion with supporting image.  I had not really considered individual struts for such a thing but that may be the only way to "get 'er done" is by going that route.  While I never did give much thought as to what aircraft (fixed or rotary wing) these pods would go to, seems that might have been something that should not have been overlooked.  However, I was more interested in seeing what would come of mating the two pieces together which I think came out looking rather convincing. 

The rocket rack located on the left side of the image has the same kind of support strut attachments and that looks rather interesting. 
« Last Edit: February 07, 2012, 07:51:23 AM by Jeffry Fontaine »
"Every day we hear about new studies 'revealing' what should have been obvious to sentient beings for generations; 'Research shows wolverines don't like to be teased" -- Jonah Goldberg