A GOTHA

[krow113]

And rolling forward I lashed some paint on the rack, and got some undercarriage rigging started:

Here I'm using some mini clothes pegs to set up a 'pull' on the lines , this helps me to guide them and line up the turnbuckles:

Getting the work feeling back , went in and strapped up the bombs. I was going to test fit but I think I'll leave them in place a s they are nice and snug:

[Kaireckstadt]

On 12/21/2020 at 7:43 AM, krow113 said:

And rolling forward I lashed some paint on the rack, and got some undercarriage rigging started:

Here I'm using some mini clothes pegs to set up a 'pull' on the lines , this helps me to guide them and line up the turnbuckles:

Getting the work feeling back , went in and strapped up the bombs. I was going to test fit but I think I'll leave them in place a s they are nice and snug:

That looks great! Will be a gorgeous model when finished! 

[GazzaS]

More great progress, Steve!

[krow113]

Thanks you guys!

Fully shagged from looking after last minute customers all day.

The hulking menace of A Gotha ,  pronounced  ;  "GUHOO -TAH"  in the most gutteral voice you can manage , if thats not possible ask a German to pronounce it for you , is creeping my back big time these past few days .

I'll be waking in the morning and immersing , business closed , phone ignored !

I'll leave you with A Gotha trivia tidbit;

 The Royal house of Windsor was once the royal house of Gotha.

However the raids on London and the realization the public's opinionated  eye was starting to look askance at the Royal House they changed the name to Windsor.

One more fact that beefs up the Gotha's reputation as one of the most influential types ever built.

Where we will be starting :

[DocRob]

Are you sure about the dark colour of the bombs. I haven't done any research, but found some pics of a Gotha G.V in night Lozenge with a light colour (looks like grey) for the bombs.

Cheers Rob

[krow113]

Thanks Rob.

Bombs are documented in 3 colors.

Starting the day woith a quick test assy:

Tight WNW fit. Reason being the fitment of the bombs and rack. I thought the bomb tails may foul the rear of the fuse , not the case:

Bomb rack detailing can now be finished a set aside with the plethora of pre assy assy's .

Its been 10 years since the release of this kit . Gathering reference materials and personal research has gone on for that time period. I got the kit as soon as I saw it and began this pathway. Not a lot of material to look over , compared to others , but going over the material over and over gleaning as much as possible not only of obvious details , but trying to visualize the not so obvious details has me confident the choices I have made are ok. Pretty much everything has been decided on as far as color goes.

[GazzaS]

Steve,

    your patience and research has helped to make your Gotha awesome.

And...  for use people who don;t know about German bombs, what are the three documented colors, please?

 

Gaz

[krow113]

Thanks GAz.

The colors are ;

blues ,

green/greys,

blacks.

I'm not qualified to give exact colors as there are no exact colors to give.

The bombs and bomb racks are one of the components there are a lot of ref pics of.

Loaded/unloaded racks , fused and unfused bombs are easily detailed{

 One detail I noticed around 2013 was that there are some fused and unfused bombs in pics. There is a very good drawing of the fuse in the RR book. There is also one pic that , to my eye , has a plug of some sort in the nose of the bombs pictured. This is ,to my eye , is clearly one of the first FOD 's. I thought these would be made of wood , so I punched out some plastic card to represent them :

There are the fuse' too , they were cut off the bombs previously.

If you look in the rear cradles you an see the thinned pva wicked in to help secure the bombs. This assy will have some paint and a double drybrush session. That will do for the bomb rack assy , it will get actuation mechanisms attached after it has been secured to the fuse/wing asst to come.

A note on the loadout.

These are 300 kg bombs , there is no precedent of ref pics or written description of this loadout. It is entirely of my own fabrication. And as  total goof on another forum put it ; 'You can fabricate anything you want" it does apply to a certain extent. However the extent was/is not to "play the big shot" (another goofs quote) or claim any inside knowledge of the Gotha in any way, nor is it intended to insult anyone.

AEG GIV's were documented to carry 2- 300 kg bombs , so I thought A Gotha could carry them.

 

 

[GazzaS]

Nice!

[krow113]

Thanks GAz.

 Bombs and rack finished with wood plugs and double dry brush (DSGrey followed by chrome silver):

[Jeff]

wow, those look really cool.... love the worn look....

[krow113]

Thanks Jeff.

Deathhead work begins and is ongoing:

Put that last one in because its PRETTY F#$%^&*IN' COOL!!!!!!!!!!

And a policy of removing masks as soon as possible confirms the artwork is centered in the nose:

Def a good start and I can proceed with this

[GazzaS]

Great looking Totenkopf!

Bombs look great, too!

[krow113]

1 minute ago, GazzaS said:

Great looking Totenkopf!

Bombs look great, too!

Thanks Gaz!

Pretty stoked, my Ioline even cut the tiny teeth:

[krow113]

Thanks and thanks for looking in.

Whining about lack of reference pics for Gotha bombers gets old quick.

But does have the exceptional effect of a researcher literally devouring and absorbing as much as possible from the available pics.

Case in point these 2 pics:

I would think they were taken at the same time.

There is so much detail to be gleaned from these 2 pics its astounding !

They are of a G III , and are well known and have been shown tons of times on the internet.

I'm going over and over these as I work through the deathhead. An interesting observation is the guage visible though the first window. And the one on the front strut .

This is my night  , tonight ,  these two pics.

Edit;

The 'guage' on the front fuse strut appears , upon intense scrutiny , to be the pilots rear view mirror.

Still no info on the gauge peeking out from the front side window. Would not surprise me if it was a secondary speed or altitude related gauge , maybe for checking other  gauge's or instrumentation's accuracy.

 

 

[Jeff]

Steve............. excuse my blind ignorance, on this particular bird, but was the Death Head on all Squadron aircraft or just on the one particular bird? So the question is , is this the aircraft you are building?

[krow113]

5 hours ago, Jeff said:

Steve............. excuse my blind ignorance, on this particular bird, but was the Death Head on all Squadron aircraft or just on the one particular bird? So the question is , is this the aircraft you are building?

Jeff please go here:

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235016614-a-gotha/

and read the build philosophy.

Not all Gotha's had a dhead and these are pics of one that does have it. Its a G III so no ;  I do not see the value in making a G IV into a G III . Many G III's were converted into G IV's so this dhead fuse could have been upgraded to a G IV and NO-ONE can say other wise.

I take the lack of resources and the fact that there are less than 10 Gotha's with enough reference material to build them completely accurately as part of my decision to create an amalgum of Gotha's into one bomber.

All of my "fabrications" , extrapolations , and common sense deductions will be outlined at the finish of the build. Viewers will be able to extract the material they dont like or agree with and hopefully appreciate the work involved.

A few rivit counters were all over this on Des' WW1 forum ,when it was worth going there , and Des himself was very interested in my work and basically told them to grow the F up. Interesting to see the highest view count for a single model on that forum for my work and have the dirty trick played on me by the prat owner happen. Too bad.

A Gotha has gone farther than even I suspected it would , as near constant perusal and diligent examination of ref materials for component detail has gone forward.

I have woken up several times in bed with my ref notes surrounding me and a pic in my near-lifeless hand as I really do immerse in research. The instruction booklet is in tatters as well .Mr Rimmells book as fared little better as has my copy of Gotha! .

I recently purchased publishing equipment and along with a M/C model book I have begun thinking about a book for A Gotha. Hopefully I can make those happen.

Thanks and I'm hoping this will keep the accuracy clowns quiet.

[Jeff]

Holy, I had no idea about all that..... crazy to think after all these years there is so little information.... makes for interesting and lively conversation and fun to research, I'm sure there is something out there somewhere to clear all of it up.............. gain excuse my ignorance, but have you tried the German museums, and archives ? I'm sue you have, but still hard to get past that fact that this was an iconic bomber, that little info survived..... oh ... duh, I guess a World War with mega bombing and fires didn't help  ( I ran into that with my research for my lost Grand father ) , again though, still an intriguing subject,  and open to interpretation and speculation, that is part of what makes this hobby so much fun....  thanks for that Steve, again , I had no idea.... Happy New Year from the snowy Kootenays, Bud....

[krow113]

9 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Holy, I had no idea about all that..... crazy to think after all these years there is so little information.... makes for interesting and lively conversation and fun to research, I'm sure there is something out there somewhere to clear all of it up.............. gain excuse my ignorance, but have you tried the German museums, and archives ? I'm sue you have, but still hard to get past that fact that this was an iconic bomber, that little info survived..... oh ... duh, I guess a World War with mega bombing and fires didn't help  ( I ran into that with my research for my lost Grand father ) , again though, still an intriguing subject,  and open to interpretation and speculation, that is part of what makes this hobby so much fun....  thanks for that Steve, again , I had no idea.... Happy New Year from the snowy Kootenays, Bud....

No worry's Jeff , thanks for asking.

The best thing is the RC's really risk a mental health breakdown, we've all seen these in forums past , as there are no details to go with.

Bertyl (Umlaufmoter) helped immeasurably in the engine department with museum pics . And  a note on that , there is a survey done of the engines from a downed G V by the English that gives rebuild specs for the engine, which are all of the dimensions from the engine along with enough pics to render the engines almost completely.

So there is another Gotha conundrum ; mega details on singular parts like the engine , and none on other components as there re no surviving examples.

I still have found ZERO ref pics or description of the instrument panel layout that WNW used for the Gotha G IV. So I might not have as much info as they did , but then again I dont have more money than god!

[GazzaS]

Well...  FWIW I agree with you.  In the absence of documentation, anything is possible.  Sometimes I wonder how much of WNW's work was the same kind of extrapolation.

 

Sorry to hear that some of the peeps over at the WWI place were such dickheads.  I'm usually only there when actually building a WWI model.

 

It's your model, enjoy it.

 

Gaz

[krow113]

1 hour ago, GazzaS said:

Well...  FWIW I agree with you.  In the absence of documentation, anything is possible.  Sometimes I wonder how much of WNW's work was the same kind of extrapolation.

 

Sorry to hear that some of the peeps over at the WWI place were such dickheads.  I'm usually only there when actually building a WWI model.

 

It's your model, enjoy it.

 

Gaz

Gaz;

I do think that with the absence of documentation some things are possible.

I dont wonder about WNW's extrapolation and here is an excellent example why:

Specifically the interior bomb racks. As stated many times before , suppliers would fabricate specific items and sell them to aircraft manufacturers. Bomb racks were one of those.

Gotha G IV  kits come with rudimentary interior racks and a single vague pic of the rack.

AEG G IV kits come with better racks and an excellent pic of Canada's AEG example.

The racks are basically the same.

WNW chose not to combine the two , sticking with pics that are proven to be from the 2 aircraft and using those in the separate instructions.

Pretty cool to me , showing skillful avoidance techniques.

I always thought it would be a cool place to work.

[krow113]

Moving through the work.

Not exactly sure the exact order of color.

Complicated masking to say the least:

Worth it:

You decide:

Still only half done. Looks like the lower jaw profiles need some fixin' , this has occured due to the mask file created in a flat plane and the nose being anything but. Mask file will be adjusted to suit real time application.

I'll seal it up with 50/50 clear mix and contemplate the tiny details to go.

 

[GazzaS]

 

That's tres cool!  Whoever did the original skull really had some artistic ability.

[harv]

All I can say is WOW !.......harv 

[Jeff]

Steve............ you are nailing this, outstanding !!!!  the shape is dead on .............. this is really cool....