ATR-72 in Arkia (Israel) livery 1:72

[Boris]

Hello all
There are two great designers, Hermercraft (Edwin Rodriguez) and CityCraft (Mario Solorzano)
They both design beautiful aircraft models and share them for free.
They joined together to design the ATR-42 and ATR-72 models.
They published them as white models, w/o any livery and builders around the world repaint them.
This is my attempt. I repainted the ATR-72 into Israeli Arkia livery. This airline together with EL-AL and Israir are the main airlines in Israel.
The model is designed exceptionally well. Only two things bother me. One is the main landing gear cowling is very demanding design.It is very intricate to form it and glue this part to the fuselage.

Second thing is that the gluing tabs in the front parts should be glued to a smaller part and inserted into larger part. This is not comfortable for me. So I made my own tabs. Probably it's only for me.
For now the build is quite eazy.
Parts fit is perfect.
Instructions are made as video on YouTube which is good.

So, thanks for design, Edwin and Mario

 

[mijob]

You are off for a great start, looking forward to see how your plane turns out.

 

[Boris]

You are off for a great start, looking forward to see how your plane turns out.

Thanks a lot
It is a very good design, like all the 120+ models by Hermercraft and I don't know how many models by CityCraft

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

You are off to a great start. I am looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

 

[zathros]

Good-looking jets are hard to make. You're off to a great start!

 

[Boris]

It's a turbo prop, but I get what you mean
It is a really interesting model
Wait till I get to engines. Small and no formers. It's going to be challenging

 

[zathros]

Turboprop, a jet engine with a prop attached. These are nice looking jets. Better to make detailed landing gear, or have the model with gear retracted, mounted on a wire stand. IMHO

 

[Boris]

I will do the landing gear version.

 

[Boris]

Hello and a Happy New Year to you all.

Finished the fuselage and the vertical tail.
This design requires cutting the slot for the tail, inserting the tail and then attaching last fuselage parts, gluing the former onside the part. This method can potentially lead to former protruding on the fuselage parts. Need to be very careful.
The last fuselage parts, A21 seems to be a bit too small, but nothing unbearable

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

You are making great progress on this project!

 

[zathros]

Good-looking fuselage!

 

[Boris]

Next should be the wing mount cowling or main gear cowling. The latter is very intricate to form and mount. So, I will do the wing mount cowling next

 

[zathros]

Landing gear can really make or break an airliner model. If the part is modeled incorrectly, it may be worth researching the actual one. These high wing airliners are one of my favorite kind. Found a couple of interesting pics, including the towing dolly.

 

[Boris]

Well, obviously, in 1:72 scale some simplifications must be made.
Let's not forget that the main strut of the main landing gear is about 1.5 mm in diameter. The model design is not 100% fit to the real one, but it seems to be pretty close approximation. If it will look too simple, I will consider improvisation.
Unlike the An-24 where landing gear is long and highly seen, this plane has its gear almost hidden in the cowling. This is additional consideration. Why overdoing something if it isn't seen.

 

[micahrogers]

I try to balance between lots of detail, and what can be easily seen. I was never a "Because I know it's there" kind of modeler.

 

[mijob]

I always say less is more. But sometimes......

 

[zathros]

Since you are making it with gear down, this gives you the opportunity to make separate parts into a single parts, and use lines to differentiate them.

 

[Boris]

Hello all.
Since I've dropped the fuselage twice, I decided do make the stand, provided by the designers. Nothing difficult here.

Next, is the wing base cowling on top of the fuselage. Oh, boy, this part drive me nuts. The rear parts had to be formed by rounding to a very small diameter in order to be glued. It took me more than 10 attempts to glue the part together. Only to recognize that I crumpled the paper....
Two more prints, some more construction attempts and the cowling looks acceptable..

 

[Boris]

Hello all.
It's the time for the very intricate part - the main gear cowling. The part has no formers beside the main gear well and it should be build and formed and only then mounted on the fuselage. The mounting process is also pretty difficult since the part is quite large hence wiggling on its place. The mounting process requires to press on the cowling while the glue is catching. That alone could cause protrusion of the glue tabs AKA ribs. This is a French and Italian designed plane, so the parts are very beautiful but it's a mess building it. Could designers make another design? Probably, but it would still be quite intricate. I think I managed quite ok, despite some protrusion of the landing gear well's central rib.
After finishing this part I made the horizontal tail. That was really straight forward and quite simple.
Next will be the wing, which internal structure I also made.
Another parts that scare me are the engines... No formers with pretty intricate shape....

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

This is really coming together nicely!