Detailing Masterclass: Simple Addons

One of the great things about the foam board planes we all love here in the FT community is that they're super customisable: you can build them as simple as you like or throw on a ton of detail. Here's the first article in a new series of 'Detailing Masterclasses' with ideas and mini-tutorials to help you get the best out of your homebuilt airplanes.

Exhausts

So, I'm currently building a mini BF 109 and was wanting to add a few extra little bits and pieces to make it really make it stand out.

I thought the engine exhaust stacks would be pretty easy. A good place to start is to consult a reference image, but I had one better. From this small plastic model, I could get an approximate idea of where the exhausts should be placed. I could also measure how big they were to scale them up.

To make the airplane's scale exhaust stacks, I switched a piece of balsa wood cut to shape between two sheets of card. Having a few clamps around whilst waiting for the CA glue to cure was handy.

The next step was, quite simply, glueing the stacks to the sides of the fuselage.

Voila! One step closer to finishing the 109.

Machine guns

Want to add some WW1 character to your FT Simple Scout? Here's how you can make some miniature machine guns using just a few materials you'll probably have lying around.

All you'll need for the main materials are some thin dowels and other scraps of wood. Try to find different thicknesses of the dowel to create the illusion that an inner gun barrel is sticking out of a larger sleeve.

Once you've glued it all together, you should have something similar to this. Next, simply paint the entire assembly black. You can highlight corners of the model with silver or grey paint and even add some blobs of white to simulate cooling holes if you wish. From a distance, the contrast is quite convincing.

All that you have to do next is place it on your model. You could put one or two up front like this or even use several in turrets on a larger multi-engined model.

And there you have it - a super fun flying model with a bunch of character and old-school style.

Transparent canopies and windows

One of my favourite types of flying is scale FPV. It all started when I saw David Windestål's FPV P-51 video back in the day and I thought "hey, I want to do that too!" - it's the next best thing to stepping into a full sized plane and piloting it from the cockpit. Here's a new twin-engine design I put together a month or so ago.

Here's the build video in case you're interested.

As I want to fly it FPV from the cockpit, I needed some way of seeing downwards. Many real warbirds like the Petlyakov Pe-2 used windows cut into the underside of the fuselage to increase visibility.

The window is made from transparent plastic found on some packaging. The frames are just card.

You can use transparent plastic to create more complex curved canopies too. Here's a great tutorial.

So, there you have it! If you found some inspiration in this article or found any of it helpful, remember to give it a thumbs up so that more people will find it. We're going to be realising a new video soon on 3D printing useful parts for your aircraft, so be sure watch out for that too.