R-34 scale model project isolated image pic.

This photo brings out the most detail of the overall model, and is pretty much a pictorial summary of the project.

Jim.

R-34 scale model project... Completely done and on display; April 21, 2014!!

I finally completed all work on the R-34 airship model, today, about 2 years and 3 months after I cut out the keels for the thing.I actually was not working on it steadily most of that time because of some bad health issues I had to deal with along the way. Now that the model is done, any subsequent pictures that are taken of the model will go in this final post of this subject. It is completed 5 years and 3 months ahead of the 100th anniversary of this historic vessel of the air's double trans Atlantic flight which took place in July of 1919.

In the above picture, you will notice the upward horizontal cant or dihedral angle of the horizontal fins on this model. This is correct, and not a mistake, as the actual ship had this feature. It provided extra aerodynamic lift for the tail as the ship was moving through the air to supplement the static lift of the hydrogen gas in the  gas cells in the ship. Picture below shows this feature in the actual ship.

 Above, what my model looks like in a Sepia tone style photo that looks like it was taken in 1919.

Same image in normal color with brightness and contrast adjusted.

Jim.

R-34 scale model project... Completed, but a few more minor steps to do yet.

Completed!! After two years of dealing with it, here is a first sneak peak picture of my R-34 model still sitting in it's work cradle right after I finished the color graphic paint work and decaling work. What looks like is black on the nose and tail, as well as the rudders, is actually a medium dark blue. I could not match the decals up to that detail. A minor glitch in my eyes. This first picture was taken in not very good light, and it makes this color differentiation look worse than it is.After I have the model top dull clear coated, I will get better pictures of it after it is hanging up. For now, you guys are seeing it first, right here in these pics, the results of my two year study and work on the model of this historic airship, which in my eyes is one of the most beautiful airships that was ever built. That is why I wanted a model of it.

These two pictures (immediately above) shows the model right after the final top clear coat was applied to the thing, today, April 20, 2014.

Completed R-34 cars before I installed them on the model last week, April 13th. The control car is 1-1/2" long. They are made completely out of hand shaped block balsa wood. The "radiators" are just tiny squares of acid free printer paper that I painted black. That holds for the windows and door openings as well.

(Above) A first portrait picture of the freshly completed and hung R-34 next to the same scale Shenandoah model in my hobby room/ mini airship museum. I will post more pictures of the completed model in it's own separate wrap up post in this blog, later. But for now, enjoy this picture of the two ships of Zachary Lansdowne, together.

Jim.

R-34 scale model project... Almost there, but not quite.

Here are some teaser pictures for now. Yesterday and today, I finished all the detail work to the cars, made and attached the propellers, and permanently glued the cars to the ship. Now that remains to be done is the rudder and elevator flap as well as nose and tail cone "Bullseye" red white and blue paint work, and the decals. After that it can be sealed and called done.

Jim.

R-34 scale model project...Refabricated the aft car!!

I had to start from scratch, today all over again , as far as the aft engine car goes. It seems that after I was done mocking up the model with all the cars in place, that something did not look right. Here, compared to the wing cars, the aft car was too small, so I had to totally make a new one for the model. The aft car on the R-34 is the same height and width as the wing cars, but since it has TWO engines front to back in it, driving one 17 foot diameter propeller, the car is about 25 percent longer than the single engine wing cars. So I made a new one in the appropriate bigger size. NOW the model looks balanced, and aesthetically correct. All the cars were then refitted, and the model was checked for overall alignment and proportion correctness of the cars, keeping on tweaking until I felt happy with how the model airship looks to me. The cars are now ready to have the woodgrain in them sealed, to get them ready to spray paint silver, and then top dull clear coat them before the window and door details are applied. Then and only then can they be attached to the hull permanently. I guess I should actually fabricate the four propellers, paint them and attach them to the cars before I glue the cars to the hull beforehand. That is where I'm at right now. Here are pictures of the model with the corrected aft car in place and all dryfitting of all the cars to the hull completed.

Jim.

R-34 scale model project... All cars completed!

As the title says, I finished fabricating the wing cars, today, completing the set needed for this ship. It took a while to dry fit them so that they hung half decently below the hull. I also permanently  placed the gondola locator pins in the hull in their appropriate places for positively locating the completed painted  and detailed cars later.That is what is next. details such as making the window, hatch, and  door decals after the grain is sealed and sanded, then painted. Here are the pictures showing the control car and all three engine cars in place. Model is really taking shape, now.

Jim.

R-34 scale model project...Dry fitting control car to the hull.

Here are the latest progress photos. I just got done dry fitting the completed control car assembly to the hull. I need to apply sanding sealer to it, then ever so lightly sand it before I can paint and detail it. I just installed all the hull mounting struts and the two ladder tubes to the car, yesterday. But next, I have to make the other three cars. The aft car, and the two wing cars. I will do them next before I seal and sand them all before I paint them and permanently glue them to the hull. the way this model looks, now, except for the color, I could make this thing into the L-49, if I wanted to, instead of the R-34. the ships look so similar.

With the rudder and elevator flaps dry fitted to the fins, as well as the control car, the final profile of the dirigible is starting to emerge.

These last pictures I just now added, shows the newly fabricated aft engine car assembly dry fitted into place on the hull of the model. The only major pieces left to make are the two mid ship's wing engine cars. Those will be next. I also fitted what I call the "ram air tubes on the sides of the cars that I think were a combination for the cooling of the engines, and what not. The aft car has two of these, one on each side of the gondola, as it has two engines in it that drove the one propeller in that car.

Jim.

USS Shenandoah scale model project completed 5 years ago this year.

This coming March will mark the fifth anniversary of my completion of this scratch built model of the U S Navy's first home built rigid airship Shenandoah which was completed in 1923 but was destroyed in a thunderstorm on September 3, 1925, with the loss of 14 of the 25 lives on board. The  21-1/2 inch long model is 1/388th scale. It is made of balsawood and covered with doped tissue paper. The actual airship was 682 feet long.

The model is aging very well without problems, as this is a new photo that I took of the thing, today.

Jim.

Airship Modeler Gone Again.

Just a brief note to let everyone know that the Airship modeler forum, once again has vanished as of today, March 14, 2013. I will remove this post when (if) it returns.

Jim.

R-34 scale model project...continued from Airship Modeler

In the hopes that some of the people that used to be members of what I must declare a dead forum, "Airship Modeler", and they still have this blog address, I am going to continue my "HMA R-34" project right here on my blog, once I start to work on the model again.

And now a brief synopsis of this dirigible, for people who never saw my posts about it on Airship Modeler.

HMA R-34 was a British rigid airship built in the style of a captured World War I Zeppelin type airship, built originally to bomb Germany, but it was built too late, as the war ended before the 640 foot airship could enter service. It was  completed in 1918, after the war ended. In 1919, after the airship had been fully flight tested, it was decided to attempt to make the first non stop trans oceanic flight by any aircraft across the Atlantic, by first flying to North America, then back again, after a layover in I believe New York. It was able to accomplish this by July of that year, to the jubilation of most of the free world. One of the observers on that flight was the future  commander of the airship "U.S.S. Shenandoah",  Zachary Lansdowne.

In honor of this ship's accomplishment, I decided in 2009, after I completed my Shenandoah model, to build the R-34 in this same scale, to hopefully have it completed in time for this ship's 100th anniversary of its historic flight in 2019.

The model is still not complete, but I will post earlier progress pictures of the framing out of the hull, and the covering of it, thereof. The top image shows the plan that I am working from to build the thing. The image below, here, is a photo of the ship after it landed in New York after the East to West crossing, before the layover, and refueling, and restocking to fly back.

Click on the "Jim's Junk!" title at the top of this post to see the newest and subsequent installments of this model's construction progress. Or you can also click on the "Home" button on the bottom of this post to take you there.

Jim.

Airship U.S.S. Shenandoah, (ZR-1): A Brief History and scale model

 One of the more unique hobbies that I am involved in only has maybe on the entire planet around 2000 enthusiats. I build from scratch, scale models of lighter than air ships, more specifically the huge rigid  dirigibles that flew from 1900 to 1938. These huge aircraft were usually at least 420' to over 800' in length. They are not ships from some sc-fi action movies. These ships actually ruled the skies during the earlier parts of the 20th century. These airships had more than their fair shares of accidents due to ignorance, of weather conditions, and just plain stupidity on how these ships work. When most people think of these "zeppelins", they  get images of the "Hindenburg", ship designation LZ-129. Nobody knows what really caused it. But I do know this, if it would had been filled with helium, as Hugo Eckener, successor of inventor and founder, Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin Company, had the ship designed, it never would have exploded.

But that is only one chapter (the final one) in the rigid airship story.

 During the 1920's, the US Navy was looking at rigid airships to use as long range recognisance aircraft of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Since airplanes in those days had such short ranges, the thought of using the large rigid airships as recognancance lookouts, and flying aircraft carriers, to be able to launch and retrieve airplanes while in flight, was considered.

In 1924, Germany was ordered to pay war reparations to the allied countries they fought against in WWI. During the war, they perfected and used their rigid airships, built by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company, for long range bombing runs over France, and Britian, as well as some other countries. When the war was over, the remaining ships were divied up amongst  the allied countries. After they were all handed over, they were still one short. So the Zeppelin company was commissioned to build one more ship, the "LZ-126".  Eckener,  himself captained the ship across the Atlantic, and delivered it to the head of the US Navy himself.(Let it be known that later on in the 1930's that Eckener had a DEEP hatred for the Nazi party and everything it stood for, but that is another very complicated story that led up to the ultimate end for these types of aircraft, notably, the destruction of the LZ 129 "Hindenburg" on May 6,1937.)

 Back to the LZ 126. After the Navy took control of this ship, it was drained of it's hydrogen lifting gas, and filled with non explosive helium. It was designated the ZR-3, the USS "Los Angeles". She was about 660' long and 91' in diameter at the widest part of her hull.

the Navy used this ship as an experimental platform to see how practical it would be to launch and retrieve airplanes in flight while on long range  missions. The Navy had this ship they were using at the time, as well as an earlier ship, that they had comissioned and built themselves at Lakehurst Navel Air Station in 1923, the USS "Shenandoah", the ZR-1. This first US made rigid airship pioneered the use of helium in it as opposed of explosive hydrogen for it's lifting gas. This first airship was used more as a publicity  recruiting tool to get young men to enlist in the Navy Air Corps, as I believe it was originally called. The US Air Force was not in existence yet.

 The "Shenandoah" was a graceful, majestic ship, if there ever was one. At 682' long, and 79' in diameter at the widest part of her duralumin framework hull, at the time, she was the largest dirigible in the world. (Ultimately, in 1936, the Hindenburg was and is still the largest aircraft that ever flew, at 804' long, and a max hull diameter of 135'!!. That's almost 3 football fields in length.)

In order to meet a very strenuous publicity schedule in 1925, the "Shenandoah" was taken out in weather it should never had been. With  little weather detection technology, and the ignorance of the higher up Navy brass insisting on pushing the "Shenandoah", against the ship's captain's objections,  on this city to city publicity tour schedule, the ship was ripped apart in a thunderstorm  near Ava, Ohio, in the early morning of September 3, 1925. 14 of the crew were killed. The ship's complement was 40 (officers and men). But the ship proved one thing. If the ship would have been filled with hydrogen,the loss of lives would have been much greater.  The ship was torn into 3 main pieces in a very violent updraft in the center of the storm, and after this happened, the remaining crewmen still on board,"free ballooned" valving helium for a more or less controlled descent,  the different hull sections to the ground. The bow landed 10 miles away from the stern. The control car ripped from the ship and plummeted to the ground, killing everyone that was in it, including the ship's captain, Lieutenant Commander Zachary Lansdowne.

 The stories of these great "ships of the sky" is a very romantic one full of tragedy, and triumphs, and a fascinating part of aviation history. These ships make today's modern 200' long blimps look like toys by comparison. And you can't get inside the envelope of a blimp like you were able to get up inside the framed hulls of these huge ships for in flight maintenance work.

In November of 2008, I decided that I wanted to build a scale model of the ZR-1 "Shenandoah". Since model kits of most of these ships do not exist for most part, I decided to build one from scratch. I bought a one page paper plan from a guy on eBay, "Plans and Things". After extensive internet and book research, I built the thing using the balsa wood bulkhead "ring and keel" method, and 1/16" X  1/16" balsa longitudal stringers to complete the outside shape of the frame. I covered it with tissue paper, then sealed it with flying model aircraft dope, then after I carved and shaped the control,and engine cars, as well as the fins, I spray painted  the whole model silver. I made my own decals for the thing to finish the model off. I kept track of the work time I put in the model. It took a period over 5 months, with 99 hours of actual labor build time to complete in March of 2009. This was the first scratch built model airship I had built since 1973. Yes, they are that complex to build. I have 7  surviving scratch built model airships I did like this. This one came out the best. A LOT of work, though.

Images of my model are interspaced  with photos of the actual dirigible. The top image, image #5, and image #7 are images of my model that I reworked using cut and paste,Windows Paint, and Paint.net.

The model is 1/388 scale,  about 22" long.

Jim.