WIP: F-14 B/D
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More MLG pics - hopefully this will work ok.
same as SEG’s but a slightly different angle
Saw this one though and it looks like the hydraulic piston here is compressed, but in the mesh it looks extended. Maybe that’s an issue? Idk, still can’t really wrap my brain around how this massive thing gets so flat.
Yeah that piston has very little travel check this video:
http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-detail-gearmain.htm
That can all be corrected later on. For now I just wanna get all the parts in line. In case you’re talking about a piston other than the one attached to the support beams please let me know
Thanks you guys! I have all these shots but modelled the gear based on the Grumman blueprint BUT most of those parts are not visible behind the doors and other parts…
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@SEG:
Unfortunately, lower part just extends and rotates thus doesn’t affect the geometry of the upper part’s movement.
Correct
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Echoing on yesterday’s discussion this video is quite interesting and I use it for reference:
Note how the problem I describe above is manifesting here. The guy solved it in that he left the upper beam attached to the lower one and at half time you can see how the upper one folds and thereby ‘disconnects’ from its pivot point on the main fuselage. Looks like he’s having the beams track to eachother without deforming which is how I did it as well. The rotation is beautifully done in this example.
This is an interesting solution but I plan to modify the model in such a way that it folds AND stays in place. Parenting the upper beam to the main strut while leaving it in global space makes sense and with the right proportion should work in terms of folding. More to come…
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Yep. The guy simply erased the problem by ignoring the upper beam
If you look sharply IRL, the beam of the upper strut is not on the same axis than the ones on the lower strut. That is to say there are two different rotation’s axis acting in two times :- Lower beams > folding the two struts
- Upper beam > rotating at the end of the sequence (once struts are folded) to follow the gear’s global rotation.
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Yea exactly, you can see the ball bearing on one of your pictures. The cool thing is when the geometry works without cutting into eachother the rigging should take care of the rotation by locking the lower beam’s rotation to the local y axis, parenting it to the main strut and then leaving the upper one without lock and simply set the base of the rotation (on all axis) to the global pivot point on the fuselage. That way when they track eachother the rotation of the main strut will force the rotation of the upper beam.
I know that the main strut rotates 95 degrees inward. So really the only question is the length of the beams and the angle they have when extended. I’ve already figured out the pivot point locations.
For now I’ll ignore the inward rotation and simply deal with the main axis, once that works I can test clearance for the rotation.
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… just saying before you cry about wasted time again…
Check the post (which you later quoted). He said that he WANTED to cry. Not that he DID cry.
WANTING to lick Donald Trump’s gonads and LICKING Donald Trump’s gonads are NOT the same thing.
Ara’
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WANTING to lick Donald Trump’s gonads and LICKING Donald Trump’s gonads are NOT the same thing.’
Well thank you for THAT mental image, I will sleep well tonight :rolleyes:
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Argh, Gorn, coming here for a rare BMS visit to see such an…analogy lol. Great job on the Tomcat, Stingray!
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Thanks guys…update coming today. MLG is killing me but I’m making some progress. In the meantime had to share this pic:
https://c5.staticflickr.com/6/5786/29833855364_3e28fbbc89_b.jpg
really looking forward to your update for this pretty woman!! can you tell a story, bout this pic?
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This is Bullet 201 (an F-14A Tomcat from the VF-2) moved to the Western Museum of Flight.
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… had to share this pic:
https://c5.staticflickr.com/6/5786/29833855364_3e28fbbc89_b.jpg
Come one …
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Well that’s one big white blob not nearly as hard to find as a Cat being towed around town :).
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Hey buddy ! You still alive ?
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He is immortal.
He cannot die.
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Saint Tomcat bless Stingray 6-2
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Hey buddy ! You still alive ?
Ara said it best - immortality, Baby. Plus lots of booze in the wee hours - jk.
Work and my other project been killing me lately so progress is slow. I managed to collapse the entire MLG including rotation and so on without rigging it to see how and more importantly IF it fits. Needless to say it doesn’t :D.
However, it’s not as bad as it looks. The nose gear fits just fine. On a more serious note, the glovebox has to be thickened a bit to the bottomside so the wheel fits. I don’t plan on changing the general shape of the fuselage as it took 100s of hours to put it into this shape and it resembles RL 99.9% so any misalignment is down to the MLG and I don’t plan on remodeling any part of the engine pods/lower fuselage. That being said the gear sits at a neat 90deg at the moment and in reality it tilts to almost 100deg and the wheel slightly inward to 95 so that will save some space.
Rigging this will be a bitch and shortcuts won’t work, I realized that when I manually rotated the whole thing. In RL there is less than half an inch between the wheel and the forward inner landing gear door during retraction so that’s gonna be interesting.
Apart from that it fits nicely in terms of length, width and wheel diameter:
See how far the wheel cuts the engine pod line? That’s why it literally rotates into the box during the last 10% of main strut rotation - insaine design.
Lessons learned:
Even the Grumman blueprints are worth sh*t when it comes to MLG proportions and measurements.
Never model a landing gear in down position :).
Whatever floats your boat, Baby.
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Here’s to cheer you up, a vid I found in my daily navigation in the depths of the interwebs :
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Stingray,
I just wanted to drop in and say that I only found out about this project yesterday, and Holy Mackerel, it’s awesome! Also, mad props on learning to use Blender - I never managed to sit down and get myself to do it. About the only thing I’m apprehensive about is the nosecone shape, and I know you won’t let anything less than excellent leave your workspace.
Freakin’ Awesometastic Sauce, Man!
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November 28th? Wow almost 2 months…. You still alive out there Stingray?