Part 5
Propeller and Landing Gear:
The propeller was easy:
The propeller hub consist of a sphere with 16x17 polygons that I have turned into flying direction and then stretched from the “Equator” to the front. Now we have a volume that looks like a pill.
The points behind the half-sphere I have deleted and then closed with a face.
Then I have made two cuts at about the middle of the propeller hub with “Knife” and then scaled the backmost cut and the closing-face a little bigger.
This is the thicker area for the blade-adjust mechanism.
I have built 3 primitive cylinders that I have rounded a little on one side and then arranged them in a 120 degree angle; all in the same object. Now we have finished the propeller hub.
Next I created a new object for one propeller blade. Inside this object I have built a 12-sided cylinder. This cylinder I have stretched to a length that goes from the propeller hub to the blade tip (propeller disk from the reference photo in the background).
The blades are round near the hub and then get tapered. Exactly where the transition ends I have made a cut with “Knife” and then flattened the outer part.
The round blade tip is made by multiple “knifing” and downscaling- like on the tip of the wing.
For the transition I have made some more cuts and then adjusted them with “Scale Z” and “Scale X” to get a nice rolling shape.
The wing tips are then wrenched and after this the whole blade is turned to an angle of attack of about 20 degrees (mind the direction of rotation).
With two times copy into own objects and moving 120 degrees we get a nice propeller:
Now our Corsair looks like this:
OK, let’s come to the landing gear:
The wheel consists of “rounded” cylinders (you can find them under “Primitive”) with 16 polygons.
If you compress the rounded sides you get a nearly perfect wheel that you have to position exactly according to the reference photo in the background.
The struts of the landing gear need a little more effort. We create a 16-sided cylinder that we stretch to a sufficient length.
Then we make a 45 degree cut at the lower edge (“Knife”). Now move the lower end to the direction of the wheel and turn it 90 degrees. This gives us a nice break in the strut. Two more cuts near the break will allow us to scale a little and it looks rounded.
We need more cuts (always four) to create the “swelling”. We just scale the polygons between the double-cuts a little bigger.
For the track shear I have drawn a rough side view with “Line” and then extruded it with “Pull”. Close it with polygons and the landing gear is finished.
Easy?
Of course it is not finished yet. We also want to build the wheel wells and the covers…
Before we start with the wheel wells we check if the wheel fit into the wings.
Therefore we copy the left landing gear and the left wheel together in a new object and turn it to the retracted position.
It can be easily seen if the landing gear fits. The background photo does unfortunately not allow exact work here. This is the reason why the gear comes slightly through the wing surface.
I have deleted the test-object and modified the original objects. Another test shows that it now fits perfectly into the wing. The landing gear now also looks more realistic because the proportions are correct.
With the APF parameters we must later set the exact centre- and angle of rotation to make sure the landing gear fits into the wing.
For the wheel wells we must prepare the downside of the wing because we need edges and faces in the correct positions. Therefore we move the points at the downside, split some faces with “Knife” and replace them with triangular polygons.
When the lower side of the wing is split we can copy the face for the front cover (that is also the air-brake) and the back cover into own objects.
After this I have pulled the edges of the big hole with “Pull” upwards, so that the upper edges of the sides are straight and the wheel fits inside.
Add some covering faces and the wheel wells are finished.
The wheel wells are quite easy at the “Corsair” because the cut-outs for the wheels are rectangular. For other aircraft you must spend more effort, because for e.g. the round wheel wells of a Bf-109 need an extensive prepare of the downside of the wing.
The finished main gear looks like this:
The finished main gear looks like this:
I have shown the landing gear in extended and retracted position.
Here we need a lot of textures because the outside of the covers get other textures than the insides.
OK, the building is nearly finished. The tail-wheel I have made similar to the main gear.
Now we come to the AFP specific parts like rudders and combining or diverting objects.
At first we will add some textures, of course.
