Shouting Into The Void: August 2019

Tuesday, 20 August 2019

Hawker Hart

To make a change from tanks and trucks and things, I've put together this model of a Hawker Hart light bomber in Blender.

I started this quite some time ago, but I really didn't have a handle on how to deal with smoothly curved shapes in Blender. I'm a bit better at it now, so I've finished it off.

The Hawker Hart was the RAF's best and most effective light bomber of the 1930s, being substantially faster than any of the biplane fighters in service at the time (such as the Bristol Bulldog, for example). It was so good that a single-seater fighter was developed using pretty much the same airframe, the Hawker Fury, and the first biplane fighter to break the 200 mph barrier (223 mph (359 km/h) at 16,500 ft (5,000 m).

Neither the Hart nor the Fury made it into WWII except in a very small way.

I thought that I had been modelling the Hart in 1/144 scale, which is the scale I've been using for all of my other 15mm wargaming aircraft. However, it turns out that it's actually 1:100 scale, which is the scale I use for all my ground vehicles and guns.

I think there's probably enough leeway in the thickness of the various members that I can resize it without too many problems, but I might have to bulk up the struts a bit. We shall see.

This print is 1:100, and it printed OK. Not spectacularly well, but OK. I tilted it forward on its nose at about 45°, so the wing supports were clustered along the leading edges. Unfortunately they also wrapped around the wing struts a bit, and I broke a couple of them trying to remove the supports.

I might try splitting the aeroplane right down the middle and printing it in two pieces; that has worked well for me in the past with aircraft models.

The 1/100 scale model is available printed by Shapeways at http://shpws.me/Rq8O for $US22.00 in their white nylon material, or $US25.00 in black.

If you have access to a 3d printer of your own, you can get the STLs at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/hawker-hart-light-bomber/

Wednesday, 14 August 2019

Nashorns Galore

Battlefront's offering,
assembled and painted many years ago

I've been taking advantage of Zachary Kavulich's prolific 3d modelling labour to print some mid- to late-war German tank destroyers.

The Nashorn (pronounced naas-horn), or Rhinoceros, was first called Hornisse, or Hornet. It mounted a honking great PaK 43 88mmL71 anti-tank gun in a fairly lightly armoured superstructure on a Pz.IV hull, and could penetrate the frontal armour of any Allied tank of the war up to 1,000 metres away.

I've printed it in two formats: first, as originally released by Zachary, as a single-piece model, and then in four pieces: hull, superstructure and gun, and left and right running gear.

The multi-part print required much less in the way of supports, gave me better definition in the tracks, made cleanup a lot easier, and dropped the print time from about 14 hours to about 10. Sure, it required post-printing assembly, but that was easy-peasy, and a small price to pay for overall better results.

Now, I don't actually have a pressing need for Nashorns, and I'm very unlikely to need three on the table at once even if and when I get around to wargaming the Italian campaign, but I don't see that as a valid reason not to have some.