Ho347 conversion WIP (some progress 21/2/2017)

[Ballardian]

This has been on the to do pile for a while, a Dust Ho 347 - while I like the model generally, the inner nerd raged out at the skid landing gear & lumpy VTOL arrangement so I had decided to do something about it.... Now I know what that is.
 I made some more streamlined vectored thrust housings from milliput & plastic tube, & then started on the undercarriage. (Any plane modellers will have to forgive my landing gear, which clearly folds away into another dimension - but I was winging it rather than doing anything sensible, like having a plan)
 I needed to cut some holes in the plane & then line them with plasticard in order to give me somewher to put the gear itself, which was also made from plastic tubing of various sizes, paperclip wire, milliput & some old resin aftermarket 1/72 Hurricane wheels.
 Given the very large downward cant of the wings, the gear had to be quite stalk-y (I considered simply removing the wings where they joined the engines & fabricating some new ones  - but then realised I might have well bought a 1/48 Ho229 kit if I'd wanted engineering realism). So the wing tips will be getting some small outrigger gear to go with the general Harrier like vibe.
 Will post more pics as I go, all blindingly brilliant ideas for its progress gratefully considered.

[Wyrmalla]

Um, ah, maybe the landing gear telescopes in a bit? Yeah, that'll be it.

Aye, that's a weird looking kit. I take it that you're using it alongside Dust stuff, or with 1/56th instead? Either way its ...yeah, odd looking. Are you touching the rear fins behind the engines? You said you weren't going to give a go at the main wings, though the position of the bits behind the engines has always been a bother to me. I guess they're made of something strong as otherwise they'd be sheered clean off (...ah, unless someone can produce a real life example of something similar).

Going for just a grey scheme, or something different?

[Ballardian]

I know what you mean about the tailfins, but can't decide whether to remove them or not - without is definately more 229-y, but having such stumpy wings it looks a little lost without them - I'll just have to decide which bit of physics to put two fingers up to.
 It'll end up as a piece of scenery for Secrets (not a fan of aircraft rules in 28mm) so 1/56 - it doesn't look horribly overscale, being so small to begin with.
 As to colour, it'll probably end up a hard edged RLM74 (dark green) & RLM75 pattern, mottling over a RLM 76 (blue grey) lower sides & underside - a fairly common 262 & Ar234 pattern - though there's another days worth of conversion to do before I worth about that.

[Ballardian]

Got a little more of the conversion work done, messing about with the length of the landing gear & the fiddly outrigger wheels & their fairings (the latter made from yet more paperclip wire, brass tube & a couple of tailwheels from the same aftermarket set).
 I think I may be done with the actual conversion stage, I'm going to leave the tailfins, as I dont think it looks quite right without them. The wings are so truncated, (despite extending them a little, necessary to hide the point where the models original skids attached) unlike the large wingspan of an Ho229 at this scale, that it just doesn't look like there's enough control surface to function without them, despite the jetwash they'd be subjected to - so the tails will just have to be of the non-melty variety.
 I think it sits ok, quite tall, but then so was the 229 on its massive nosewheel. Hopefully I'll get some paint on it this weekend, so more pics then.