FMA I Ae 38 "Naranjero" - Argentinian Flying Wing Cargo Plane - El Barón Rojo 1/72nd 3d-printed kit

 

 

Stranger things

My older son -himself a modeler- had the kindness* of gifting me a kit of a very beautiful, but ill-fated Argentinean cargo plane designed by Reimar Horten, of flying wings fame.

This four-engine, large-span wooden monster was built in Argentina with inadequate materials, primitive technology, and worst of all deficient power plants, thus condemning the project to failure from the start. It did fly, but never fulfilled its promise.

*Or was he surreptitiously punishing me for some parenthood mistakes, given the nature of the kit?

Strangely enough, there is another kit of the Naranjero, reputedly -given the horrid nature of the molds- made in Mordor by Unicraft. I saw it and run away like hell as fast as I could.

We are here, with this Argentinian "El Barón Rojo" (The Red Baron) kit, I believe slightly better off, but not completely off the hook. This is yet another example of 3D printing not reaching at all the basic quality of an injected kit, and falling quite below the minimum standards of surface and detail we now expect form even the simplest kit. Good for a very simple replica, but not for the more serious modeler. Although perhaps with some potential as a starting point? 

All boils down to the 3D-printer definition, which in this case is low-def. A printer with a much smaller nozzle, at greater definition and good software could have achieved a better result. 

Still, the 3D-printing kit industry may provide you with some things others won't, hence their place in the Modeling Universe. But you will have to make a LOT of concessions and allowances, and/or replace a number of parts, do quite a bit of scratchbuilding, and be prepared for surfaces more suitable to serve as sanding tools, given their roughness and abundance of ridges. My recent experience with a "VFR" kit discouraged my from building any crude 3D-printed kit, as the product is definitively lacking in all departments.

Still, I thought I would present to you this kit from a valiant manufacturer of Argentina, surely made with love and the best of intentions, whatever the kit shortcomings may be.

Would I build it? maybe, not sure at the moment. I have a plan, but in any case a long list of projects is in the pipeline as we speak that need completion.

I would need to replace the canopy with a vacuum-formed part made from a wood carved plug, the props, the landing gear, and all small details, and find a way to give those surfaces a realistic smooth finish. A lot of work. One good thing: the parts are molded hollowed, thus the main components are surprisingly light, unlike the solid extra-heavy bricks some resin manufacturers regale us with, that end up drooping, sagging, and destroying landing gears.A bonus would be to open the cargo bay and deploy the door (since the parts are all hollowed as explained). Thing is, the printed resin is very hard to cut and sand.

There is plenty of material on the Net about this plane, so I won't be parroting here what you can easily find by yourself.

Just a sample:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FMA_I.Ae_38

The shortcomings of low-res 3D-printing are evident in some of the parts:

All these may need replacement:

20 minutes with coarse wet and dry sanding paper mounted on a block under running water didn't do anything really significant to the very hard surface of the parts. In fact, the parts act themselves as a sanding tool, degrading the sanding paper, sanding stick and sanding block. Little excrescences that usually you nudge away with a couple touches of the X-acto or single-edge razor blade, required quite a bit of force to be dislodged:

Anything curved/diagonally situated gets the awful 3D-printing layering. Again, 5 minutes of sanding did nothing relevant:

Once more the layering:

And not even the mother of this prop blade would put it on a model!

 As I wanted to see if I could open the clamshell cargo doors at the fuselage end, I tried a thin saw I normally use in resin at the edge of an aileron, again coming to the conclusion that the material used to print the kit is too hard and unfriendly.

Unfortunately, what could have been a very challenging, but ultimately doable project, is starting to appear as a useless effort that after an inordinate amount of hours would just render a mediocre, toy-like model. I think that the modeling hours that your lifespan would grant you are better spent on a project that could reward you with a good replica. The ratio here between time and effort involved versus results, presents itself as absolutely miserable.

So we keep waiting for a good kit of the Naranjero, as the Unicraft kit leaves a lot to be desired, and yet another attempt in the form a "Los Huarpes" kit release of old doesn't seem to be any better either.

Still, some brave soul may attempt this one, perhaps slathering the surfaces with car body putty and then sanding. Not for me, I am afraid.

After a long hiatus preparation of the parts resumed, which is not at all guarantee that construction will go ahead, due to the severe limitations of the kit.

The body parts have material removed form their gluing contact surfaces:

Holes are drilled so all parts (rendered as closed chambers by the 3D-impression) would be communicated:

I tried to separate the clamshell cargo doors, but the material is incredibly hard, plus unfortunately the way the impression was reinforced from behind precluded this operation, as the maker did not contemplate separation of those doors:

The wheel wells are rendered too shallow, not sure why, like a bad kit or a toy:

As explained before, all minor parts have to be replaced, as they are not usuable:

The nose LG leg, rendered too simplistically (it's a very complex assembly) and again marred by coarse printing

Using rotary tools, the space is opened

The idea being creating a wheel well "box" added from the interior:

 The material is inconveniently hard (an Xacto does nothing to it, the hard surface WILL SAND the sanding stick instead of all the way around), but very light, which is a great advantage in such massive model.

Unfortunately the kit maker missed the very prominent airscoops under the wing. As the plane used air-cooled radial engines, it has to have means of refrigeration via air duct. The kit also misses the prominent cut outs on the engine fairings on the upper wing:

 The kit provides neither cockpit nor the space for it, just the flat surface of the wing. Needless to say that canopy has to go (see close up at the beginning of the thread to have a scare):

The space for the cockpit is opened:

In order to make a vacuformed clear replacement from that too coarse canopy, it is filled with Milliput and sanded smooth. It'll primed and any faults puttied and sanded smooth:

Fortunately substitute wheels were found to replace the kit's too coarsely printed. The nose wheel in some photos looks to be at least of the the same size of the main ones, while in others looks smaller (a change because of some issue?), but never as small as depicted in the kit, so a bigger one was selected. The nose LG mechanism is way too simplified and will need complete construction from scratch:

Working now on providing a cockpit and nose well interior to the model:

Gathering parts from the spares bin and making others:

It looks as if I would be able to use a LG leg from the spares, modifying it:

And to think I didn't even start to really build anything, just completing a "kit"...sigh...

A new canopy is vacuformed from the master created by filling and sanding the coarse kit's part:

Some of the main sections are epoxied together. The fit is fair. The surfaces will need a large amount of mechanical sander, so I ordered a hand-held circular one of small size to be able to control it better:

The nose wheel well box is also fabricated:

The two boxes (well and cockpit) are back to back

The decision is either to cut the wheels in half and just glue them over, or to make the cut-outs for them. Not sure why these various boxes were not printed-in, but I am not familiar with 3D-printing, so may be there was a technical impediment:

I have commented already on the very frustrating hardness of the material, which makes hiding the too prominent, coarse printing ridges a very difficult task. I bought a small disc sander to see how if it can remove at least some of the ridges:

After a few minutes some changes are noticed (comparison). It will take a few hours to obtain a surface that can later by heavily primed and sanded in order to apply paint:

I decided to carve the lodgings for the wheels:

This is going to be a big model. Comper Swift Gipsy for comparison. It could have been loaded in the "Naranjero" cargo bay, or even almost land on its wings:

And yet, in spite of the size and bulk, it's surprisingly light, beating a resin kit by miles. One of the few points in favor of this kit.

Details to have in mind. The designer missed quite a bit. The problem wit the prop axis can't be corrected. Bummer. In photos the trailing edge appears mainly sharp, in spite of the cut-outs to clear the props. The kit just removed the chunks, leaving truncated sections on the TE. Poor research once again mars a kit:

I don't see these blunt-ending sections on the TE in the photos, but there are not many showing those areas in detail:
 

The parts are taped together to find out it we had a tail-sitter. It is not, but since the vertical stabilizers and props still need to added in the aft part of the model, I added a 10 gram weight in the nose just in case:

 Parts that are not to good standards (that is ALL the smaller parts and ancillaries) are replaced:

As I hollowed the fuselage to accept the wheels, something had to be done inside so the four main wheels will seat evenly. A sort of bridge was created to add from inside -before adding the nose section- to provide an even "floor" for the four wheels:

 

Bridges glued, and then the nose glued to the rest of the fuselage:

One more step and the airframe will be assembled...minus a myriad other parts and many problems to solve on this kit...sigh...

 Dry-fit:

Dry-fit:

Not much of a progress, but here it is as today:

Today yet another sanding session with this too roughly printed so-called kit. In the many hours I already spent sanding and sanding again the too hard material in a semi-fruitless attempt to diminish the horrid surface printing furrows -and replacing very bad kit parts- I could have built three models. I am not throwing this "kit" to the trash can because it was a gift from my older son, but it truly deserves the trash can if you aspire to even a modicum of accuracy and production standards from your purchase:

Again some of the parts replaced, and the master created to vac a decent canopy:

 The underpowered engines suffered from chronic overheating, thus vents were provided. I am carving them at this stage:

The holes for the prop axle extensions are drilled:

A first coat of primer from a can (as it delivers a thicker coat) is applied. Much to do:

Sanding the primer and filling the huge and deep trenches that would be Matchbox's envy:

Yet more putty (grey this time) is applied to those exaggerated grooves and the surface further smoothed. The material is super-hard and the printing definition extremely coarse as I commented before:

The manufacturer completely missed the intakes on the wing lower surface. These had inside a fan of which just the spinner is seen in photos. Although not 100% accurate (the "kit" itself is not either in many regards) they are simulated using fuel tanks and ordinance discarded from civil conversions. Their lips followed the wing spar angle:

 One more coat of primer that revealed yet more work to do. Michael Ende's "The Neverending Story". 

For the four pusher two-blade props, white metal ones are repurposed by detaching the blades and re-contouring them to match photos, as the "kit" items are utterly unusable. New hubs will be made. Yet another session ensues of puttying and sanding the main parts:

The parts that should make for air intakes and the fan spinners under the wings are epoxied in place. There were prominent exhausts behind them ending on a partial vane that will also need fabricating. This is an approximation to reality, as the kit itself lacks accuracy in some regards:

The rather hefty hubs of these props are simulated with styrene tube:

A glimmer of hope:

Four lengths of aluminium tube are reamed at one end to thin their walls. A triangular gusset at their backs connected them to the wing, most likely to avoid oscillation of the long tubes. Dry fit:

To be continued...