Hello all:
For those who have visited my "Stealing the Stuka" thread in the stories forum or my "Stuka Musings" thread in the ideas and inspiration forum, you'll know that one of my long term goals has been to smooth out a Stuka and yet still keep the Stuka lineage clearly visible.
I tried it several years ago, but it didn't work out so well. Now, I'm ready to try again. Yesterday, I bought an Academy 1/72 Stuka. I chose the Academy kit as the nose is molded separately from the fuselage, this will make modifications to the nose much easier when it comes to representing a different engine installation.
Today I did a little dry fitting and found that what I thought would be one of the bigger challenges, locating a suitable canopy, is going to be dead easy. The canopy of a Fouga Magister is just a bit longer than a Stuka's, but spot on for width and crew spacing. It's also good for a 50s or 60s look:
On the initial trial fit, the piece that sits just ahead of the cockpit created a not so good mounting angle:
But, with that part removed, the sit is much better and it shouldn't take too much work to build the area up to mate with the windscreen:
In this pic, you can see how well the Magister canopy covers the width and length of the Stuka Cockpit. I really couldn't have asked for better:
The Academy Stuka also has quite a nice cockpit that should be very easy to modify to look like something from the 50s or 60s.
Later today, I'm going to try to find some 1/72 drawings of aircraft powered by the Rolls Royce Dart or Turbomeca Aztazou to get some idea of how much nose reshaping might be required.
I don't promise a quick build, it will take as long as it needs to to be right.
All comments are quite welcome.