Fokker F-500: The Skyguard revisited in paper!

The end result.

You may remember, a few months back I kitbashed an old plastic Revell 1/96 scale model of the F-27 into the Fokker F-270. Now I wanted to try and do the same in paper. Just to see if I could do that. It became a amusing game of trial and error.
 

some of the trial and error.

First, I took Gerard Methorst’s old F-27 model and started recolouring and redesigning parts. The wings needed to be further back and the fuselage in front of the wings needed to be longer.
I also used the tail from Kancho Iliyev’s Antonov An-71 Madcap (which started this whole whiffery in the first place), the tail section of Bruno VanHeecke’s C-141 Starlifter and the vertical H-tail ends from an An-224 Mriya model, of which the name of the designer is unknown to me. All of which was rescaled, reshapen and recoloured to fit my fictitious F-500.

Of course this plane also flies under the flag of the good old New Dutch Republic.

The first thing I did after redesigning was testing out the new cargo tail section of the fuselage. After two almost good ones, I got the right version. After that, I test built the tail itself. This one comes just straight from Kancho’s Madcap model. I just rescaled it for the Skyguard. I used my plastic model as a reference, since I used the same tail on it. Now, on to the fuselage.

Gerard told me this F-27 of his is one of the first models he published online. He warned me the model was a bit hard, and indeed it was. The main parts of the fuselage tube went together easily. I skipped the “separate sections with end caps” - kind of build method and substituted it with connecting glue strips on the inside of each segment. But there also was a lot of stuff needing some refinement and redesigning, especially in the front section. 

The cockpit section had drooping windows. The side view windows need to follow the horizontal line of the fuselage but these were drooping down as if the plane was very very sad. It took a couple of attempts in redrawing before I got it right. I am not a designer but I can deal with a bit of modification, luckily.
In Photoshop I changed the angle of the windows enough to make it look at least acceptable, because the shape still wasn't correct.  But while this was a fictitious model anyway,  I left it like this.

Next was the nose itself. Again, some trial and error involved, I used my trusty powertool to get rid of the nasty seam I got around the tapering nose parts.
A dark grey watercolour pencil was ideal to camouflage the white edges and seams. On to the tail section. I had to rescale the tail twice to get the correct size. I guess that was due to the combining of three kits in different sizes. In the end it was all right. With reinforcing pieces of card at both ends, the tail went on and looke exactly like the plastic version. Nice. The tail wings were slightly shortened to make room for the vertical tail parts. Next, the tail parts were secured with a small strut and glued to the big vertical rotodome tail.

I haven't documented the buildup of the rotodome, I'm sorry. It was probably the hardest part and I didn't think about taking pictures when I was working on it. It took two versions and I think five printouts before I was happy with the shape, the construction and Horus' eye. In the end I used the 1/25 Soyuz base heat shield which I recoloured and more or less completed with a little scratch building. A brass pin inside reinforced within a rolled-up strip of paper would take care of the rotating function. In the tail I placed a similar construction for the brass tube that would receive the pin.

The wing was an uneventful segment. Went together easily. I didn’t use Gerard’s reinforcement spar but rolled one from 80 gram paper and inserted it in the middle section. It is a pity the seams in the wing aren’t underneath the engine nacelles. It could have been nicely camouflaged, or at least partially. Oh well.
For this model I wanted to make the newer Skyguard version, based on the Fokker 50. So the propellers needed to be more modern, like the curved six-bladed ones like on modern turboprops. I found a nice photograph of a Rotol propeller and modified it to my needs and integrated it into the model sheets. They looked awesome. 

When I came to the engine nacelles, I immediately decided I wanted a much much simpler construction. Gerard used an almost ridiculous amount of formers inside the nacelles. That, together with his way of creating the separate engine parts, made me go search for something a little less elaborate. His nacelles possibly might have been much more accurate, which I don’t even doubt, because his work on shape, proportion and dimensions is often meticulously precise. But this was a little over the top. Sorry Gerard.

On the right the original version: That is about 90% too much formers. Left the replacement nacelles with Gerard's spinner cones added.

So I chose to go for a much simpler nacelle I found in a model I found on Royaje paper , designed by one Wong Hidayat. It is much simpler, just two parts, and I cut off the glue tabs to edge glue the sections together. It is interesting to see how different designers take a different approach to the same model.

So, with one nacelle readied, I cut out two circular pieces out of cardboard and glued them inside the nacelle. both had a small hole in the middle, through which I could guide the pin the propeller was on. A couple of tiny beads were used for easy spinning. I had to readjust the rear part a little to get it to fit over the wing but then it was there. The first engine mounted on the F-270. The second followed quickly.

Then it was time for some wheels. I used book binders’ linen for the rubber parts and paper lolly stick cuttings for the hubs. The gear struts were mostly card board and a little metal. I cut the gear doors out leftover parts of the misprinted sheets I had.

And now some beauty shots.

And there it is. Together with its plastic sibling. And that was all for now. Hope you enjoyed it, and see you next time. Thanks for stopping by and having a read.


--PK