Also not sure if you have these, but could be useful:
B-26 Close-ups including gear and flaps
http://www.master194.com/photo_avion/b-26/index.html
Legends in their own time page:
http://zenoswarbirdvideos.com/More_B-26_Stuff.html
List of B-26s by serial number and production block:
http://www.b26.com/img/misc/martin_b...ifications.pdf
Excellent photos! Just in timeOriginally Posted by Maty12
Thank you Sir :-)
Some progress here on the home front with all windows finalized, bombay doors cut in and animated.
Now to add the aft bombay doors.
No wonder there are so many pictures of B-26s after belly landings. I wonder what the emergency gear extension was like, but that is some complex retraction system...
http://www.primeportal.net/hangar/bi...-26_walk_4.htm
The other pages have lots of handy pictures as well
"To some the sky is the limit. To others it is home" anon.
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” -Albert Einstein
Rob, Yes, great find; very good ref pics. Thank you
Now that I have the basic empennage in place, I can try to sort how that rear gunner area is shaped, then finish the h-tail fairing to fuselage.
Hello Milton,
I got started in Flight Simulators with the help of a Marauder pilot.
I could not figure out why my computer could not run Combat Flight Simulator and he showed me his setup.
There is much more to the story in the thread describing my attempt at building a B-26.
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...rauder-Project
I also settled on a late B model as the subject even though my friend mostly flew a G model.
He does have a pretty well known photograph showing him in what I believe to be an early B model though.
The idea was to build pretty much a generic B-26 with the visual (with some license) of a late B model but with the straight line performance closer to that of the early B model. Performance of the later models was much less impressive.
Whose drawings are you using? I could never find ones that had all the details I was looking for.
Specifically, I was and am still looking for a Station diagram and the Erection and Maintenance Manual for any of the long wing versions.
Be careful about the Canopy Framing on the Pilots side. It varies a bit between models.
Another area to watch is the Fin and Rudder. I don't know if the documentation shows it, but I believe there were at least two different possibilities.
Another feature worth mentioning is that this bird had a symmetrical airfoil as one might find in an aerobatic aircraft.
This design feature in my opinion was a major mistake.
- Ivan.
Hello Ivan :-)
I am modeling to the drawings and specs for the B-26B-10 thru the B-26C45 / Marauder 2.
Drawings are by W.A. Wylam, but I have two other decent drawing sources for cross-reference, plus a pretty good dimensional drawing with key aerodynamic specs and a few station specs. None are original but have suffered copying, reductions, etc. They are generally accurate but contain many of the typical errors and side by side differences. One just learns to deal with that. Strangely his drawings says B-26D; can't find a single reference to that model variant. :-)
I am not aware of any available station drawings with distances stated (at least at freeware sources), and I have not yet seen an erection and maintenance manual. I do have very nice training and POH manuals with important interior details.
I have a list of all the mods made by model variant so I can distinguish where these changes impact my work. I will not have a model with the diagonal brace on the left wing window, at least in the current design. Gun and tail arrangements will be as with the B-55 / C-45 variants (I am aware of the fin and tail differences, and length changes as a result). Initial model will of course then be long wing/tall Vtail/longer nose gear and revised mains with larger 50" tires. With the C-45 onward, the aft bombay doors were welded shut and the area was used for ammo storage for the rear gunner(s). Since I am representing earlier aircraft as well with this model, they will be functional.
Also familiar with the wing NACA 0017.64 airfoil used and its properties (tip was 0010.64). This will be used in the flight model.
With all that said, a precise model is not what I am after. My goal is a good likeness to the variants being modeled with dimensions as close as possible per the drawings and cross-ref'd with the specs. Many drawings have lines that, when zoomed in, are 2-6" wide. Hardly something that can be used for precision when crafting window frames or window sizes. So, I want models that represent the aircraft well in looks and general overall shape/size fidelity. The flight model will hit the numbers; that's a must.
I am considering a short-winged model just because there were so many of them, but changing the fin, nacelles, wings, fuselage tail, gear, tire size along with a new flight model makes me moan. :-) The re-mapping I could handle; that's the easy part, relatively speaking.
BTW, did you ever finish your model?
Before you get into the interior, I should mention what will probably be the best approach for that:
Milton, send Stan Piet at the Glenn L. Martin museum an e-mail. I did two months ago about the XB-33A and got an entire photo library of the wooden mock-up and blueprints that even showed the positioning of all interior equipment, as well as cross sections, and got to see the evolution from the first design to the last. I also asked about the PBM-5a and got a 19k pixel wide detailed drawing of the interior of the fuselage showing everything down to the actuators of the main landing gear to suspension travel to position of fuselage fire extinguishers, complete with a description of each item.
https://www.mdairmuseum.org/
All you have to do is fill out an online form and wait a few days (Or a few weeks, at most). Trust me, you won't regret it.
Thank you for the recommendation. Done. :-)
Yay! Dad was a Marauder pilot in the 344th BS, K9-X. He didn't talk much about the war but did tell a few stories and I learned a lot from reading Wings of Courage by Jack Stovall. I would tip the scale towards the earlier short wing model if only for the difficulty of flying it well but any model would be a most welcome and handsome addition. My avatar shows him flying somewhere along the Southern Route on their way to combat in England.
W10-64 Pro, 3GHz, 16GB Ram, AMD Radeon HD 5570
Wow! That's great to hear. I agree about the flying difficulty part; a lighter, faster aircraft would be fun to do with that flying challenge. I haven't said "no" to that. Just have to see how things shake out here.
Slow progress today with so many things going on with the fuselage. Trying to wrap all fuselage attached items before moving on. Still have a few more items on the list yet.
Attached is progress today results including the interior model started for checks. Always gets redone many times. :-)
Still unsure about my tall tail. Agrees with one drawing, not the other lesser two. Will resolve soon.
Bombardier's lower flat nose glass to be added, camera aperture windows in rear/aft BB doors, antennas, gun port in rear, and Htail fairing to fuselage. A few more hours and then on to the wings.
Hello Milton,
Sounds to me like you have plenty of material for the project.
Just a minor word of warning though: Wylam wasn't very consistent with his drawings.
I found out the hard way when I used his drawings to build my first P-40E. It just didn't look right.
When I found better references, I found that almost every labeled dimension on his drawing was wrong and the dimensions I scaled from the drawing proved that the drawing was inaccurate as well.
The need for the station diagram is because the drawings I have for the Marauder do not agree in a few details.
As with the vast majority of my projects, it hasn't reached the releasable stage.... yet.
I haven't worked on it in a couple years.
A small anecdote:
After the war in Europe ended, there were a lot of aircraft around and a lot of crew as well but not necessarily a lot for them to do.
My neighbor convinced his squadron commander to come along for an odd test flight:
They took one of the Marauders up and shut off BOTH engines to see how well it would fly as a glider!
- Ivan.
LOL Ivan; I have not seen an accurate or consistent drawing in the 14 years I have been modeling. If I waited for that, I would never get anything done.
Since 2011, I have released 35 aircraft, a Racing car, and HMS Bounty. IMO, we have to learn to deal with and use what we have. We are not design engineering here; we are modeling to available drawings and doing the best we can with what we have. We create likenesses; that's the best we can do.
If we stand around awaiting perfection; there will not be aircraft to fly in the sim. :-)
Sooo many cool schemes for this airplane... and some so weathered they are magnificent!
and there is that 'Midway' low level mission mentioned! LOL
It's shame that Army PR flacks sullied the memory of their genuine gallantry by falsely claiming that the Army sank the Japanese fleet without any real help from the Navy, a slander that will never die as long as copies exist of John Ford's abominable, shameful Army-backed pseudo-documentary, even though it's been well established that through the entire battle no Army plane put so much as a single bomb, torpedo or bullet on the Japanese fleet.
Hello Milton,
I actually have found LOTS of accurate and consistent drawings. Sometimes they don't look so good at first glance but the information is still there.
Most of the time, they don't line up with projects that I would like to work on but sometimes they do as in the case of the P-40E (not Wylam's drawing).
I guess our objectives are different. I am out to learn as much as I can about certain aeroplanes and how things work. Sometimes that translates into a releasable project. About half the time it does not.
There is no point in standing around waiting when one can actively look for the data; I figure I have easily 10 times as many references for the Marauder now as I did when I first started the project a few years ago. Sooner or later assuming I live that long, the drive to work on this project again will hit again.
- Ivan.
Ivan,
Yes, we all work differently and have different hangups. Poor drawings with accurate data doesn't help much because they do not tell me if that window frame post is 2" or 2.5" wide. The lines are 1-3" wide when scaled up to aircraft size.
I look for ways to get the project moving and get it done, not reasons to put it on hold. That is, action, not words completes the project. Get the wing span, length, and overall shapes correct, get the "face" right, and no one really cares if the cockpit is 2" too far forward or rearward if they want to fly it in the sim. With that said, I am not sloppy in my work; I am damned particular but not to the point of being frozen in my tracks. Keep it moving; find solutions, and enjoy your work.
The Marauder is hands down the best looking bomber of WW2 (the B-32 being a close second). There's just something about the round fuselage, clean lines and tricycle gear...
It even had a "what if" derivative!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin...Super_Marauder
May I suggest a civilian version?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...5_edited-2.jpg
Hello Milton,
I would never call your work sloppy. I think your work is really excellent and even though I don't fly the same simulators, I look at your models to see how things SHOULD look. (Been looking a bit at your A-20 Havoc recently.)
My comment about objectives was that there are many people who read and research and do not build for simulators at all. Some people build in plastic, some are interested in history and such. My own objective is not really to build for the simulators even though I do it at times; My objective is to fill gaps in my knowledge and sometimes that takes me here and sometimes it takes me to IPMS meetings.
You are right about people not ever noticing errors. It looks like an aeroplane is about as far as most people get. I see many errors in posted screenshots but seldom comment unless I believe it is an easy error to correct.
You did not understand what I meant by quality of drawings. I would never use a drawing in which a line width scales up to 2 inches or so. If I can't get a large enough scale drawing, I keep looking until I find one or go to photographs. The drawings I use have lines typically no more than about 5 pixels wide when scaled up or down to my working scale of 0.01 foot to the pixel.
What I meant by accurate information is that even if a drawing is fuzzy or has artifacts from the reproduction process, sometimes the objects are still precisely located so that dimensions can be scaled from them reliably.
The idea is that if the major objects are located properly, the smaller features won't be too far off. In some drawings, I have found that the artist could not even put each engine the same distance from the aircraft centerline. In those cases, regardless of the line quality, I don't use the drawing.
Sincere Apologies for Hijacking your thread.
- Ivan.
Hi Bjoern :-)
Great to see you chime in.
I cannot disagree; she is a "looker". Some of my favorite shots and painting attached.
LOL Yes, I saw that Super Marauder ... kind of a "bridge too far" for me though. :-)
Civilian version I guess is possible without too much effort by me but we'll see how it plays out.
Thanks
Just starting out with my first Gmax project, I can relate about the 3 views. I found one that looked great at first and as I delved into it, the best I could do with it is just use it as a general guide while I redraw it in a layered format. But I am making progress with it. It won't be 100% accurate, but will work for my purposes. And I've learned a lot more about the aircraft in the process which is kind of the whole point of it to me. Learning new things. And if my little project comes out half as good as Milton's work, I'll be one happy camper.
Let Being Helpful Be More Important Than Being Right.
Here's the "Wings" episode for the B-26 (others are in the related videos):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XjVpb3L8UE
If the regular version already was a flying coffin, the four-turner would have been a deathwish with wings.
Don't worry, it was just a sugestion anyway. No hard feelings if there's no time or motivation for it.Civilian version I guess is possible without too much effort by me but we'll see how it plays out.
I'm curious how this one plays out and how much community love it'll get.
Two P&W R-2800 radials and can be tricky to fly? It doesn't get much better than that for me.
Let Being Helpful Be More Important Than Being Right.
Bushi,Sooo many cool schemes for this airplane... and some so weathered they are magnificent!
and there is that 'Midway' low level mission mentioned! LOL
I prefer the weathered "in the field" look as well. Thanks for sharing the pics.
Ahhh, finally completed the fuselage and all attached parts. Now on to the wings.
Members who have read this thread: 2
Posting Permissions
FS 2004
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks