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FSX: The 1940 Fokker T.5 bomber released

Take care of your hands Cees, I suppose you want to use them for flying my baby : D

Anyway: this is how everything looks ATM. Most of the cockpit is done, only the roof has to be done yet and some structural details.


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As seen from the nose cone: the links between the controls of both pilots. For us developers (and Felix especially), the yoke is just one object, one skinned mesh and it works flawlessly. You can see the brake trigger as well here. There's a small hook on that 'trigger' that keeps the brakes at fully deployed, it was in fact the Parking brake system. This is also modelled in my model. Sadly, no mouse rectangle...
By the way, the rudder pedals and rods are also of one skinned mesh.


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And a few nice pics to conclude:


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Last week, I've been in the archives of the Aviodrome museum, looking at photographs and some drawings. Consequently I had to redo the riveting and panellines (well, in fact I had to correct and supplement them). I think I now extracted the max from the available photographs.
New side:
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The chin. The starboard hole is meant to place a driftmeter into, covered with plexiglass at the outside and a hatch at the inside. The trapezium-shaped panel in the front is the pilot's and commander's access hatch (and emergency hatch). The circular hole is either for a bombsight or a camera.
The hatch in the rear port is covering a number of so-called Wiley parachute flares. If someone has information regarding these flares, please gimme a HU!


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Today, I made the bombs release control unit (eh, sounds far better in English, in Dutch it's Afvuurkast, something like firing box
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). I tried to write down a few functions of the unit. Of course, this gives a few nice opportunities for TacPack!
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And where it is probably located in the nose section. We don't know any photographs of this exact place, nor photographs showing the unit in place.
afvuurkast_06.png


The bomb release system and the bombrack for the T.5 was initially to be designed and produced by Van Heijst, a Dutch company. They used a semi-electrical system, the bombs were released by a mechanism that was activated with a small load of gunpowder. There were however a 'few' practical problems with this system, compared to a contemporary (German, electromagnetic based system) Heber rack. Some problems:
- The Van Heijst rack deformed during some load cases
- Loading 50 kg bombs took 47 minutes with 6 men (same case using Heber: 8 minutes with 3 men!)
- Unloading the bombs took 16 minutes compared to 2 minutes with Heber.

Eventually, it was decided that Van Heijst should obtain a license to build the Heber racks! Only 2 T.5 bombers had Heber racks in May 1940, one of them 856 (from the video).
 
That's the sexiest Afvuurkast I ever saw Daan. Especially the lettering!

"Afvuur" is "Affyr(ing)" in Danish, sounds about the same as in Dutch minus the potato. :p
 
I have been able to put a lot of work in this plane, the result so far (don't look at the textures, will be done later on)...

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The nose section is almost finished. A few details are still missing, like a box for the camera tapes and some wiring. Also the structure has to be redone: these will get a more realistic look. Now they look good enough for the exterior model, but not for the interior.

This is a kind of direction indicator. The indicator consisted of some lamps, telling the pilot which direction he should go. Both the pilot and the commander had one, the commander was in control of these by pressing one of the contact switches at either side of the grid. Below the grid: (probably) a signal lamp. This lamp could be controlled by the commander, pilot and radio operator.

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Right side. We find here a fire extinguisher, a mechanical direction indicator, a first-aid kit, a map storage and a bomb doors lever. The window should be sliding downward, so I might change the position of the first-aid kit.

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Left side, at the front of the pilot's floor. I had to guess here a bit more. Anyway, we can see the 18 magazines for the Solothurn cannon, the Afvuurkast and some other stuff. The light-colored levers (downward pointing) in the middle below the pilot's floor, are two of the four levers for the Wiley flares. The pilot had also two levers behind his seat. The flares themselves can be found in the cylinders, at the rear of the nose section below the pilot's floor. On the panel (right on the image), we see an intercom unit below the oxygen unit.

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Cheers!
 
Great work Daan. You have already been able to find much more details than I ever could have imagined!

Cheers,
Huub
 
Thanks mates! I'm getting satisfied now, with the detail I could achieve and the research to the real thing (like we did for the D.21, Huub). Finally, the interior is looking better.

As announced: work on the structure. The frames and stiffeners look much more realistic now. The flange which is adjacent to the skin, will be done with some 2D texturing.

Nose cone, mind the cord that's keeping the cannon in this position while not in use.

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Structural detail. Normally, cavities were made in the frames to let the stiffeners through. For the time being, I decided not to model them. It's a bit of work, and adds a bit to the complexity of the model. What's your opinion guys? So far, I couldn't discover these cavities on other FSX airplanes.



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And the seat for the commander/observer, he had to use this one during t/o and landing.

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It's looking great and don't worry about the cavities. I would rather have good frame rates, than have you spend a lot of polys to get a few small details which can be painted on.
 
Sundog said:
It's looking great and don't worry about the cavities. I would rather have good frame rates, than have you spend a lot of polys to get a few small details which can be painted on.
Click to expand...
So true! This level of detail is already breathtaking!

Great job Daan!

Cees
 
Right! I'm not yet arrived at the 'model optimization stage'..

Progress: the nose section is 'finished'. I had a few hassles with the roof, but the overall result is OK. I need to continue. Next on my planning was the centre section.

This section was occupied by the second pilot/gunner and the radio operator. It was made of wood and both wing spars crossed it. The upper part of this section was used by the crew and their equipment: the two crewmembers sat there, had their instruments but also wiring, control pushrods and control hydraulics were located there.
The lower part was in fact the bomb bay. The racks were installed at the spars.

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Both parts were seperated by a floor, 'also serving as a walkway.'

Well, thanks the Aviodrome archives, I was able to discover some more data. This enabled me to make a scratchy start with the radio operator's station. This station consists of multiple devices, all installed with flexible bands.

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The first work on the centre section, was adjusting the structure. After viewing a lot of photographs, I concluded the bulkheads were far to wide (cross-sectional height). On one photograph, it is visible that one bulkhead was reduced to accomodate the prop levers, as you can see below.

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Just one more detail: I was wondering what the purpose of the two knobs behind the pilot's seat was. After thoroughly reading through all available documentation, they appear to be the primers*. They're a bit inconvenient located though...

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*Primers: reffered to in Dutch as 'inspuitpompen'.
 
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