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Here I will post updates of my A-10 3D model in progress, requests for references and anything relating specifically to my model (not my movie). Cricisms are most welcome, even if they start with \"This sucks!\".. as long as they're followed by good reasons.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Update 3:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/50513935/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/50514171/


Modeled protrusions on the fuselage to attach wings
Modeled things in leading edge of wings (unknown function)
Put some temporary wheelwells in
Finished belly fins (texture is temporary though)

The mosy shocking defficiencies are still:

No GAU-8A!?
No fans in the engines!?
Man that will sure as hell fly.. for 2 seconds. And kill tanks... by crashing on them! Ah well, an A-10 doesn't need engines to fly.. or wings.. at least I heared once.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Looking good.

I don't see what you're talking about in the image. The only thing I can think of is the stall strip. It's about in the middle of the wing between the wingtip and gearpod. Just a metal strip about 18\"(?) wide and maybe 3/4\" deep.

I forgot to add: \"Modeled thing in leading edge of wing right next to the fuselage, it's something that can extend out of the wingedge a bit, a long board of some sort, not a flap.

As for the stall strip, I didn't even spot anything in the leading edge of the wing yet between the wheelwell (= same housing as gearpod?) and the wingtip.

Sorry to bother you about all the small details though, but I'm unable to put unnecesary inaccuracies in a model of my favourite aircraft.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Thats the slat. Its normally retracted (flush with wing) but automatically extends depending on flight conditions (the lift transducer feels the air and tells it what to do, its the metal square with a small trip of metal sticking out of it about a foot outboard of the left gear pod.


Same thing.

Another update:

-Modelled part of the fillet surface between wing and fuselage
-Molded the wheelwell into shape (though not entirely happy somehow)
-Fixed the slat (it was not cut out of the wing properly)
-Added fans to the engine
-Further tweaked the wingtips (turned out not to be a simple bend)

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/50587616/

After the fillet is done it's time to tweak the cockpit a bit, and fix the fuselage so I can *at last* add the 30mm auto cannon and complete the coarse outlines of the A-10.

Looking at the total result, I notice little changed after a couple of hours. It'll be quite some time before I become a fast and efficient modeler.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

A question for the hog experts:

How many rows of holes are there in the GAU-8A's cylinder around the barrels? 6 or 7?

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

It's only 3 deep, but I'll count how many around at work tonight if no-one beats me to the punch.

I saw a dismounted GAU8A on a photograph, it showed me 4 deep, but the amount of holes around is still a mystery.

Anyway, here's my first drawing of the gun:

http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs13/i/2007/ ... kildor.jpg

I don't really know what I should see when I look into the air intake under the gun.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

There are 7 holes around. Each row in in line with a barrel. Panel F-1 (the one covering the gun) covers some holes, they are only visible 3 deep with the panel installed.

Alright, then the gun muzzle is now finished within my 1 cubic centimetre precission standard.

The USAF website provided sufficient high res photos of the A-10's side and front to warrant demolition of my model's fuselage. It's going to take a few days before I can post a new update.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Here, I can finally show the origin of my madness:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/50781059/

The red surface has been maticulously contructed over the picture after bringing out the A-10's silhouette by applying a non-linear adjustment of brightness. It explains why the nose looked wonky.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

The aft end of the gear pod was the only part that was noticeably \"weird\". You are quite the perfectionist with this project it seems.

Ah, the perfectionalism - it's in my nature. I can control it to some degree, but unfortunately the A-10 is my favourite aircraft so no error goes unnoticed for long. By the standards of 3D pros I'm insane. No client pays for my desired level of precision - it's unnoticable.

The aft of the gearpod is off because I stopped modelling it for a while. I need to roam over the entire model to prevent getting obsessed over one part.

Well, I'm going to finish my frankenstein A-10 now. (Collage of many pictures glued together to form on aircraft)

I have some good luck now. I just downloaded a lot of pics at www.af.mil of the A-10, some of them are orthogonal to such a degree that the error is in the 3 centimetre (tad more than an inch) region. They only help to establish silhouettes though.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Alright, this project is (within the current precision standard) in trouble. The only bottom view I have is tilted by an unknown amount, causing the wings to be deformed, because they point up. I can confidently say now that photographs suitable for an A-10 3-view do not exist.

I'll need to do one of 3 things:

1) Adjust my standard of precision downward.
2) Find the A-10 on display somewhere. I have a friend with a 80x zoom lens and a very stable massive tripod so I can take photographs from more than a kilometer away.
3) Obtain technical drawings of the A-10's fuselage,wings and vins.

I imagine partial technical drawings are sought after by many model makers. Do you know if any of the A-10's technical drawings are commercially available? (due to the inconsistent errors in model kits, I've got this really, really bad feeling about this)

EDIT -

www.theinfoexchange.net lives by selling blueprints and linedrawings, their A-10 is explicitly not the original technical drawing.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Can you view .tif files? (I think adobe is required) If you can, I may have what you are looking for.

Yea my software can read .tif. I never expected finding referece materials was this difficult, I appreciate it a lot.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Sent you an e-mail. Also, this link should be pretty helpful. Scroll down to the A-10 section and there are several walkarounds with lots of pics.
http://s96920072.onlinehome.us/walk-jet.htm

This is the best 3-view I have seen so far, now I will find out if it stands up to the test of consistency, I sure pray it does. I'll write down what I find right here. But no matter what, this 3-view is going to be the final reference. There no better one in sight anywhere.

Findings so far:

Angular errors: 1 degree max. Angles that should be 90 degrees differ between 89 and 91 degrees.
Non-linear positional inconsistencies between side/bottom view: 2 linewidths max, 1% of A-10 length, roughly 16 cm.

I can correct for these mistakes using hog pics, because side views do give a good fuselage silhouette, I need to completely trust the 3-views to find the positioning of the wingtips though.

The match-up between my best hog side pic and the side view is very good, also within the 16cm error. Way better than the dramatic 30 cm error on my previous schematic near the tail boom. This gives me the confidence, that the artist has studied the hog well. All I need to do is add in pieces of hog pics there were the detail rather than the precision of the line drawings fails. The lines drawings make sure the picture pieces go to the right places.

Conclusion:

This is going to work. Thank you, I'm going to piece together my monster collage of references, trash my old model, and model me an A-10!

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

I have that same type of drawing from different angles if you run into any other snags.

A front view would be nice. It provides information that is mostly redundant (2 2D coordinates already pin a single 3D coordinate with 1 redundant coordinate), but it will give me vital information about the front view of the engines, the cockpit window frame and the thickness of the wing. Diagonal orthographic views will just get me in trouble, because they require multiple measurements to regain coordinates in the original orthogonal coordinate system, adding more error.

I'm seriously wondering - are most of the things I say redundant? A fellow student, an infamous 'reader over the shoulder' said I could reduce my entire post to:

\"I could use a front view.\"

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

It would only be redundant if I understood what you meant after \"A front view would be nice\" Orthogonal? Is that even a word?

I fear I overdid it with the designer's jargon, I'm too used to these terms becuase I hang around computer art sites so much.

\"Orthogonal planes\" is a way to compact: \"Every plane in the set is perpendicular to every other plane in the set\".

An orthographic view means a picture taken from any direction, but every line that is paralel in the real object is also paralel on the screen (no perspective)

But forgetting about all of that, it boils down to needing a front view of the A-10. It's not absolutely necesary, but will come in handy.

EDIT -

Yea these are definitly drawings for a model designed by eye - the tail boom is gradually curved downward, the A-10's tail boom is absolutely straight up to its tapered end. Using a curved tail boom gives the aircraft a round bulged up cartoony look when viewed right from behind. Also, the engines are 35 cm out of place and somewhat contracted. The maximum inaccuracy is about the same for all model drawings. I think Fairchild Republic quite simply *never* provided technical drawings to anyone civilian *ever*.

An A-10 called \"Battle Creek (Or Greek? I can't see too well)\" was photographed almost perfectly from the side when landing in some kind of sandy place (Iraq or Afghanistan). It confirmed my feeling: Just about everything on the a-10 is straight. Straight back, straight belly with one gentle bend under the wing, totally flat nose, flat front cockpit window.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

An A-10 called \"Battle Creek (Or Greek? I can't see too well)\"
Battle Creek. They are a Guard Unit in Pennsylvania
was photographed almost perfectly from the side when landing in some kind of sandy place (Iraq or Afghanistan).
I think that's Nellis, maybe DM, but probably Nellis.
It confirmed my feeling: Just about everything on the a-10 is straight. Straight back, straight belly with one gentle bend under the wing, totally flat nose, flat front cockpit window.
The nose is not totally flat, its does round out. The wings sure do look flat (to my non-engineer eyes), there is no real bend in them, they are straight out of the fuselage and hit the gear pod, and are at an angle on the other side of the gear pod.The center windscreen is definitely 110% flat. Me and another crew chief have a table made out one.

I decided I really didn't write anything interesting here, so I deleted it.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III