Blackfin Sailfish (My "X" Plane)

[Travis]

So I dusted off my creativity skills and I'm working on a new aircraft in 3DS Max. Currently I am working on the engine, but I'm having a minor issue.

Going by the images I've gleaned from the net, I'm using a double engine setup with 9 cylinders per engine (18 total, in case you can't do the math ). From a straight view of the front, it looks as I want it to right now, fig 1. However, from pretty much any other angle you can see the huge gaps and bare walls of the engine bell interior fig 2.

My real question is what would other designers put in there to either camouflage the bareness of it, or alternatively, what you would add to the interior to make it look less stark.

[mustangaroo]

Put fins on the jugs and a black background with some lines as in injector feeds. How you do that is up to you. You might find a redundant pattern that will work but then it might belong to someone else.

[pete]

Looking great!
What about a very dark grey with a sheen? Or just black like this - unless or until you come up with somethig else?



Don't give up on it!

[Speed of flight]

I am no 3D modeler, but good work indeed! Always excited to see the community hard at work makin our favorite past time more interesting, and adding to it.

For the radials, as the bottom image confirms, cooling was a difficult problem to solve, and thus the stagger of the twin rows. One should not be able to see past the second row. There is definitely stuff back there, but it was obscured. Only an open cowl setup would allow visual access. Otherwise, nope. Hard to work on, also.

[Travis]

I've dusted it off and gotten quite a bit more done to it, so here it is.






I'm pretty sure I'm building a 30s era racer, although it could just as easily be made into a fictional WWII fighter a la Crimson Skies. Maybe a version of each? Wouldn't be hard, model-wise.

Anyway, the gear is what has been troubling me. I can't decide if I want to make it retractable or fixed. For retractable gear, I would try to do something along the lines of the Gregor FDB-1, which was a pretty complex arrangement that retracted into the main body ahead of each wing. There's room for it, but I'm not sure about the mechanisms and such, as well as how much weight that would tend to add to an aircraft. If I set it as a fixed-gear aircraft, I was thinking along the lines of the GeeBee series, with twin booms extending from the wing struts. Anyone have an opinion?

[mustangaroo]

You might try a gull wing for the bottom and using corsair struts for prop clearance. Just a thought.

[Hawkeye07]

It looks like it's going to be blazing fast!! Can't wait to see the finished product!

May I suggest adding a second push rod tube to each cylinder and the other front attachments as in Pete's picture? This not only adds realism but helps hide the background.

[Fozzer]

It looks like it's going to be blazing fast!! Can't wait to see the finished product!

May I suggest adding a second push rod tube to each cylinder and the other front attachments as in Pete's picture? This not only adds realism but helps hide the background.

Trav... ...

Like Hawk says....

Add two push-rod tubes to each cylinder in a "V" formation; inlet and exhaust. One of the more noticeable things in the engine!
...actually, you could spend as much time realistically designing the engine alone, as the rest of the Aircraft!...

...think of all those cooling fins....rocker-boxes....spark plugs...and exhaust stubs!... ...!

There are some very accurate designs for Flight Sim radial engines in freeware and payware aircraft.

I wonder if there are some "already-made" radial engine designs out there, for you to use in your design?

Paul...I love engines!.... ...!

[Travis]

Aha, yes! I remember I had initially begun that, but never saved it. Thanks for the note fellas.

[Krispy1001]

Hi Travis!

Very nice design!!!!! I like it very much.

Kris

[Travis]

So here's the gear I came up with. Retractable, but I haven't cut any bay doors yet. They fold inward with the canted shaft acting as the gear compression. What ya think?

[Travis]

Aaaaannnndddd . . . . double post. But there are now gear bay doors! Next is the gear bays themselves, which should prove to be a bit more challenging than I originally intended, but whatever. And of course I'm racking up the mesh errors, but they'll get taken care of when I optimize and restructure before painting. Of course, I'll have to get my copy of Paint Shop Pro to work right in Windows 10, but that's a completely different ball of wax.

[Krispy1001]

Looks Good Travis!!!!

[Travis]

For those that use 3DS Max: is there a function to select polys on one object that are all on one side of another object? For instance, on the wing pylons in the images above, is it possible to select the polygons outside of the fuselage but NOT the ones that go into the fuselage itself?

[Travis]

Is there not an edit post button anymore?

So I figured out what I was trying to do, with the help of this tutorial (Modeling an Airplane) from the Autodesk Knowledge Desk. Keep in mind, the tutorial was written specifically for Max 2015. Most other versions will differ slightly from what you read there.