Hi James – no CD yet, but the post is very slow around here at the moment, will drop you a pm as soon as it arrives.

Relieved to hear that it all looks about right, you get to a point with these things when you’ve spent so long looking at them that you can’t see the obvious defects – the only way around this is to get someone else to look them over or leave them for a week or so and come back with fresh eyes.

Not sure what you mean about the gunsight as the reflector gunsight is there just doesn’t show up very well in the gloom – or do you mean the actual crosshairs lit up in the reflector? In which case yes I should get around to them at some point. I’ll need to take another look at the doors, there could be several reasons why they don’t appear through the glass in this pic, most likely is the refractive index of the perspex material I have assigned to the panels is too high and thus the light is distorted so the doors appear to be missing, or it could be that the number of reflection or transparency levels is set too low in my render settings and the rays are not getting through. Will have to look at that. Still waiting for the copy of the Air Minstry turret manual to arrive from Hendon so will probably find some significant errors and ommissions in the turret model once that arrives.

I’ve still got a fair bit of work to do in the cockpit – basic instruments, harness, pilot, airgunner – parasuit etc. I won’t be bothering with the landing gear as all the illos I have planned will be flying.

cheers alex

The book ‘Turret Fighters Defiant and Roc’ has just arrived, really very good. For some reason I had got it into my head that it would be a very wordy and small paperback size book, but it’s nice and big and full of pictures – including tons of pix that I haven’t seen anywhere else. Particularly chuffed with an excellent pic of the turret under construction which shows loads of fiddly bits that I couldn’t see in any other pic.

That’s my weekend sorted 🙂

alex

Thanks James, PM on the way. I’m sure they’ll come in handy.
Yes, I’ve got the Pat MaCaffry cutaway which is very good and cleared up a lot of questions for me, although it’s frustratingly vague in the fairing area.

Will stick to N1671 and my frame grabs from the training film for rivetting layout.

Thanks BSG-75 I have the book on order, just waiting for it to arrive, hoping it’ll give me some details of specific encounters that I can then try to illustrate using the model.

Thanks James. Sorry for the poor grammar, I need new reading glasses and currently unable to use my favourite keyboard so finding it quite difficult to type on this one. Too blind/lazy to proof anything these days. Difficult to believe that I was once a roving reporter and later a magazine journalist, many years ago 🙂

Thanks for the insight into the fairing, I suspected that bit was just a flimsy bit of bent metal, good to know I can put some dents into it (dents are fun).

I suspect that I’m just being a bit too ‘anoraky’ about getting the details right and I could get away with having a lot of dirt on these perspex panels to obscure the interior. The intention was to make the turret the focus of the finished illustrations so I was aware that the areas closest to the turret ought to be as detailed as possible in case they stick out, although at least one of the illos will be a night shot so I’m probably being over cautious.

I also must’ve been having too much fun in ’88 as it’s a total blank, I know where I was supposed to be (my second year of Art College in London) but can’t really recall anything about it, likewise 91 and 93/4 are hazy at best. Happy days – I think.

cheers
alex

Cheers for that Mike – I found that half the problem is finding out what these missing bits are called so that you can ask what they look like 🙂 Have found some evidence of the soup can solenoid and think I’m on the right track, have been busy building the rest of the turret in the meantime, nearly got it right, as soon as its in a state to do a decent render I’ll post some more progress pix. One thing I’ve realised is that a lot of the gun details will be hidden or distorted behind the glass and panels of the turret so I’m less paranoid about getting the guns 100% as I was at the start

cheers

Browning 303s modelling WIP

Had a bit of a lull this weekend so thought I’d make a start modelling the Boutlon Paul type A turret. Decided to start with the guns, after spending a whole day looking at a ton of photos of Browning 303s I realised that just about every image was slightly different, even those images that I could be pretty confident where correctly labelled as 303 British air pattern it was still more like a spot the difference competition. Here are a few renders of the model so far. Obviously once the rest of the turret is modelled very little of these guns will be visible, but I thought I may as well make them as detailed as possible as they may well come in handy for other projects. Any obvious errors in these models please let me know before I go too far, always better to fix thnigs at this early stage rather than further down the line.

The reference I have for the ammunition feed is a few screen grabs I made from the air ministry film, operating the Boulton Paul turret. It’s obvious that the ammo is fed through some sort of chute with what look like toothed spindles that grip between the bullets but it’s too indistinct to make out any details. I have so far not been able to find any better reference of this system. Anyone got any photos or drawings that better show what is going on here? Also I have no idea what happens to the spent ammo and links, assume there is another chute that carries them away but can’t see what it is.

I realise that there is some sort of pneumatic trigger that fixes to the gun. I have seen photos of it elsewhere on this site but would really like to see how it is attached to the gun. In the film footage it looks like they might attach to the sideplate rather than the bottom of the gun. Can anyone enlighten me?

BTW Does anyone recall if there was ever one of the comics like Air Ace Picture Library, War Picture Library, etc, that featured the Boulton Paul Defiant? They are often a very good source of inspiration for dynamic compositions and camera angles and often show surpising little details.

Edit:
Ok found one already Commando No 572 (and reprinted as 1604) Upside Down Ace.
Bidding for one on ebay right now (think I may have become an ebay addict)

Edit: on second thoughts I have removed the image as I don’t want to infringe DC Thompson copyright

Sorry James had already committed to buy the book from ebay when I saw your message. Not shy per se, just acutely aware that I’m pretty dense when it comes to all things aircrafty and therefore slightly overwhelmed by the depth of knowledge displayed by everyone else here and wanted to make sure I had a better idea of what specific reference would be most helpful to me before reaching out to an author. When I do an illustration job I always try to read up as much on the subject as time will allow before getting my reference together and so approach this ‘non job’ in the same way.

Sorry that last bit was confused, was just wondering if the scale drawings in the book ‘1/48th scale plans set 1’ were effectively the same as the ones in the mushorom 6117 BPD book, in which case no point in getting hold of both. Sorry I tend to use the word pix for both photos and drawings.

cheers
alex