B-52 Work In Progress -wing carry-through structure
I made little progress today.
I spent much of the day rebuilding an old model in order to harvest sufficient dark grey bricks for the B-52. I also spent some time refining the design for the wing carry-through structure. Because they are swept back at an angle that does not correspond to any wedge plates LEGO make, I decided to mount the whole wings at an angle relative to the fuselage. The angle I chose is the sweep-back angle of the wing trailing edge. This will make fitting wing flaps a lot easier. The leading edge will be set at the proper angle using 3x12 wedge plates attached to the front of the already angled structure.
To mount the wings at the right angle, I decided to use the Pythagorean triple: 8, 15, 17. A right-angled triangle with sides 8 and 15 will have a diagonal of 17 (because 8^2+15^2=17^2). In the brick I actually use two triangles on either side with sides 4, 7.5 and 8.5 studs long, indicated in red, because that way each wing will be attached to three hinge-points that don't lie on a straight line. The advantage of using such triangles rather than some other method of mounting things at funny angles is that they will make it very easy to mount things on the wings that align nicely with the fuselage such as engine pods, weapons pylons and external fuel tanks.
Obviously the whole structure will be beefed up with more plates, but the basic structure that I have here is already very sturdy.
B-52 Work In Progress -wing carry-through structure
I made little progress today.
I spent much of the day rebuilding an old model in order to harvest sufficient dark grey bricks for the B-52. I also spent some time refining the design for the wing carry-through structure. Because they are swept back at an angle that does not correspond to any wedge plates LEGO make, I decided to mount the whole wings at an angle relative to the fuselage. The angle I chose is the sweep-back angle of the wing trailing edge. This will make fitting wing flaps a lot easier. The leading edge will be set at the proper angle using 3x12 wedge plates attached to the front of the already angled structure.
To mount the wings at the right angle, I decided to use the Pythagorean triple: 8, 15, 17. A right-angled triangle with sides 8 and 15 will have a diagonal of 17 (because 8^2+15^2=17^2). In the brick I actually use two triangles on either side with sides 4, 7.5 and 8.5 studs long, indicated in red, because that way each wing will be attached to three hinge-points that don't lie on a straight line. The advantage of using such triangles rather than some other method of mounting things at funny angles is that they will make it very easy to mount things on the wings that align nicely with the fuselage such as engine pods, weapons pylons and external fuel tanks.
Obviously the whole structure will be beefed up with more plates, but the basic structure that I have here is already very sturdy.