Heinkel He P.1078B (Luft46)

[eric_son]

For my next design, I'm taking a shot at asymmetry.....well....just the mild kind. Not the Blohm und Voss kind.

I picked the HE P.1078B.

I initially tried to model the fuselage using the Spline/Catmull-Clark patch but it turned out looking like it was made out of clay. So I ditched that one and went back to the tried and tested method of starting with a cylinder, then shape it up by cutting segments then resizing each segment as I see fit. I did the same for the "pods" (pilot + weapons).

However, I found that the Spline/Catmull-Clark patch works very well for making the wings!

Anyway, I finished making the basic shapes that make up the aircraft. I'll stop here for now:

Next, I'll use the Boolean ops to piece them together.

 

[eric_son]

A little progress....

Engine intake was done by extruding the front stub of the fuselage outwards, then pushing it back in. I also made some minor vertex alignments to all the objects. This will make the boolean operations produce a "cleaner" output.

Oh, I also threw in the wheels. Pretty cool this asymmetry. Notice that the front wheel will be stored in the left pod, which will also house the 30mm guns. The right pod will be the cockpit.

 

[cgutzmer]

looking great! keep the updates coming

 

[Gerald43]

Keep up the economy then and you have constructed all the Luft 46 models sign1

I Like your Luft 46 Models :thumb:

 

[eric_son]

Thanks!

Gerald -- Yes! I'd really like to construct all the Luft46 designs.

I spent most of last night cutting apart the model in preparation for unfolding.
This is when I hit a problem with the landing gears.

To create the wheel wells, I 'raised' the landing gears in order to get an estimate on how much space I will carve out of the fuselage:

Darn! Notice that rear and frong wheels collide with each other. I'll either have to shorten the landing gear struts or scale down the entire landing gear assembly.

Anyway, here's how it looks like so far, sans the wheel wells:

 

[eric_son]

Solved the landing gear problem by resizing the wheels by a small amount.

Here's how it looks so far:

​

I think I better do an unfold + test build at this point before adding more details. I don't even know whether or not this will build well on paper. sign1

 

[eric_son]

Pretty much done with the Pepakura unfold.
Ended up with enough pieces to fill three sheets:

Time to print and break out the cutter, glue, and cutting pad!

 

[eric_son]

Slow progress.

Because of a borked wing design ( I didn't use formers ), the wings looked like they were made of tissue paper.

I had to start over and make some formers.

Here's what I ended up with:

The formers:

The results:

Hmm... from the picture, the wing dihedral seems out of alignment. But they're aligned.

That's all for now....

 

[eric_son]

Thanks!

I decided to do one last part before going to bed.

The fuselage...

Here's a shot of the exhaust. There's a slight fit problem here. I think I cut the glue tabs in too deep.

Now to dry fit the fuselage with the wing that I previously completed...

Fits nicely!

That's it.... gotta catch some zzzzz's.

 

[eric_son]

Now I move on to assembling the weapons pod (left pod).

Here's a picture of the assembled pod.
I chose the left pod first because I wanted to see how the two wheel wells fit together. The rear wheel well fit good enough. Unfortunately, the front wheel well was very difficult to install. I had to cut off some glue tabs to make it fit... just barely.

Here's how the inside looks like with the wheel well assembly in place. No need for fuselage formers there. There's enough clutter inside to provide structural stiffness.

Dry fitting in progress....

Dry fitting done!

Here's how it looks like with the center fuselage dry fitted as well.

 

[eric_son]

A little progress...

Done with the pilot pod! I also glued the main components togther to form the aircraft.

Here are some pictures:

All that's left are the landing gears and the gear covers.

 

[eric_son]

Prototype done!

I have finally completed the first prototype... build #001.

I guess the next step now would be to do the camo.
Time to hit Meta's UV Editor and fire up Inkscape!

 

[Gerald43]

Super! Since You've made a lot again effortlessly!:thumb:

 

[eric_son]

Danke, mein Freund.

 

[eric_son]

All done!

I was very busy these past few weeks.... I barely had enough time to work on this. But I'm proud to say I'm DONE!

Here are some shots:

I still need to make the instructions for assembling this. Once I finish making the instructions, I'll put the diagrams up for download.

Cheers!

Eric

 

[Gerald43]

Super!!

jawdropjawdropjawdropjawdropjawdropjawdropjawdropjawdrop

 

[xrysaetos]

Excellent job!

 

[xrysaetos]

Any thoughts of building yet some more models of Luft46 such as the BV215, for example?

 

[eric_son]

Thanks for compliments.

RE: BV215
Ahmm... you must be reading my mind.

Although I'm not contemplating the BV215, I am seriously considering working on its little brother -- the BV P.212.02.

Once I finish with the instructions for the Heinkel, and uploaded to the files section, I'll start working on the 212.

 

[eric_son]

Diagrams uploaded!

The diagrams have been uploaded, and is now waiting for Moderator approval.
Once it's approved, you should be able to access it fromt "Military -> Aviation -> WWII" area of the download section.

Cheers!

Eric