4' (AKA 5 foot) Falcon build

[Duncanator]

My take on the HO Brick 101. I've only seen a couple of photos of this mythical stuff and I'm sure the vacuformed plastic wasn't this perfectly uniform, but like I said, until I find this particular unicorn out in the wild, this will have to make due.

View attachment 1801644

If you are still looking for the brick pattern, here is a link to one of the many pages of brick textured sheet from the Plastruct website:

PLAIN & PATTERNED SHEETS

International Supplier of Architectural, Educational and Hobby Model Parts.

www.plastruct.com

Their website is awful, but they have page after page of vacuformed textured styrene sheet in many scales. It is most likely where it was originally sourced from by the OG model builders. We had tons of the stuff around the modelshop when I was there in the 90's and 00's.

Below are a few brick styles that seemed close to what you want, but there are many others if these dont work.

91601 (PS-87) maybe 1/87 scale? HO?
91604 (PS-90) smaller
91606 (PS-92) even smaller
91611 (PS-97) also smaller

 

[RealDaveWinter]

The real Brick wasn't Plastruct, it was from a train specific company called Holgate and Reynolds. eagle1 has shipped me some of the real brick so I'm just waiting on that. Hopefully soon because it's the last bit of the puzzle for the docking rings.

 

[jcoffman99]

Perfect right off the printer. Thanks!

 

[RealDaveWinter]

Excellent.

 

[RealDaveWinter]

Slow progress on this build over the past couple of weeks. When I started assembling the FDM 3D printed frame, I discovered that some of the parts didn't print symmetrically. I couldn't figure out what had happened until I realized that, at some point over the past couple of months, the Z axis frame (that the print head goes up and down on), became out of square. So as the print got taller, the print head was shifting ever slightly forward. This caused all the prints I'd done over the past month-ish to be slightly lopsided. So I've had to re-square the print frame and reprint several parts. This isn't a thing that can happen with resin printers, so it never occurred to me to check my FDM printer once in a while.

Anyway, beyond that, I've started working on the cockpit cone and this is my take on the forward window panel. It's a bit of a tricky shape.

I based the outer dimension on the Bandai kit, then used aspect ratio corrected photos of the filming model to give me the inner dimensions. I also checked those with the Bandai kit and feel I arrived at a happy medium. I think it looks pretty close but I may still tweak it as I go.

The damage around the lower portion, I'd considered modelling into the part, but I decided to do it with a Dremel once the part is printed.

If someone wants to have a play with it, I've attached the stl.

 

[joberg]

Looking very good and you're right when saying that this piece is quite tricky to get

 

[RealDaveWinter]

I don't suppose anyone has done drawings or a layout plan for the cockpit interior of the filming model? I can see a few LED's and there are some kit parts as well as what looks like manufactured parts. But I'm wondering if anyone has any more details than what you can see in the photos. If there's some long lost photo of the model without the cockpit cone on it.

 

[David3]

'Millennium Falcon Notes' has some good reference of the original including a photo without the nose cone.
The Five Foot Falcon’s Strange Cockpit

Sean ( t2sides ) has some great reference of his cockpit replica from here (& keep scrolling)

 

[RealDaveWinter]

Great!. Thanks, that's exactly what I was after.

 

[RealDaveWinter]

Is this is the correct Hyuga?

 

[jcoffman99]

This one.

 

[RealDaveWinter]

Are they not the same? Just a different box?

 

[Studio Kitbash]

They are same, but different box... BUT sometimes (for what reasons I can't explain) the newer boxing does NOT have the little tiny black sprue of super tiny parts that go on the radar dish. But sometimes it does! So in my experience it's hit or miss, and if you're buying off an Ebayer, ask for up-close pictures the tiny bagged black sprue before bidding.

 

[swgeek]

Oh great! Now I have to run out and check my kit.

 

[Studio Kitbash]

It's also (duh) entirely possible that I bought mine off an Ebayer who was an RPFer and fellow 5-foot Falcon builder who didn't disclose that he had already "harvested" that sprue from the kit I purchased. Not that any of YOU would do that, of course!

But anytime I read a listing that says something nebulous like, "Appears to be complete" my radar goes off and I interpret it to mean "Hey, don't blame me, I've got plausible deniability!" so I ask for topside and backside photos of each and every sprue.

Meanwhile if anyone wants a basement full of mistaken purchases, I know a guy... ; )

 

[RealDaveWinter]

I've already experienced that very thing. Purchased an 'appears complete' Fujimi M36 Jackson that was suspiciously missing exactly the parts I needed.

Unless it's still sealed, I also tend to avoid listings that show me 25 high resolution photos of the box from every angle, yet only one, blurry photo taken from 10 feet away, of the parts inside.

 

[Searun]

A good check list on minimizing e-bay risk helps, as does the “getting stung” lessons learned. Still a crap shoot.

Thanks for taking the time to explanation and discuss kit part differences ,however, based on experiences 5 ft. Falcon builds. Nice to know these minor details even if they all are not accommodated.

 

[RealDaveWinter]

Any suggestions on bending plastic tube without kinks? I know how to do aluminum (for aircraft fluid lines), but I can't seem to find a pipe bender with a small enough radius for .156 (and smaller) plastic tube. I have tried to find plastic rod in large diameters but evergreen only makes tubes in the larger sizes.

I've tried holding it over a soldering iron to heat it up, but no joy, I still get kinks in it. I've also tried to fill the tube with a smaller rod, but that doesn't work very well either, and it assumes I have a rod that fits into the tube.

 

[joberg]

Any suggestions on bending plastic tube without kinks? I know how to do aluminum (for aircraft fluid lines), but I can't seem to find a pipe bender with a small enough radius for .156 (and smaller) plastic tube. I have tried to find plastic rod in large diameters but evergreen only makes tubes in the larger sizes.

I've tried holding it over a soldering iron to heat it up, but no joy, I still get kinks in it. I've also tried to fill the tube with a smaller rod, but that doesn't work very well either, and it assumes I have a rod that fits into the tube.

I usually take the tube over the edge of my work table (straight edge, not curved) and use a hair dryer on high temp. I prefer the hair dryer method; it heats up the plastic slower than a heat gun...so no kinks

 

[RealDaveWinter]

Thanks. Yeah I've tried a hair dryer, I still get kinks. I bent that as slowly as I could while juggling the part and the hair dryer.