Fire Raptor build questions

[AngelVeto]

i got a fire raptor over 6 months ago and am just getting to building it (took a quick break for real life things)...

 

Anyway, I have two questions for those who have built one before.

 

1) does the clear plastic canopy go on before the pilot Armour thing from the storm raven kit(the one with the Aquilla on it)? Fw sent me the super tiny canopy for the top turret of the fire raptor but not the big one, and while I wait for a replacement to come in the mail I wanted to finish assembling and start airbrushing, but I don't want to glue that piece on if the canopy is supposed to go underneath it.

 

2) the model seems a bit on the heavy side, but I was wondering if any of you fine gentlemen have an idea on wether or not. I could put a bend in the flight stand for a more dynamic look on the table without it being so overbalanced that I have to put a kilo of stones on the base.

 

 

Thanks for any help you guys can give me!

[AngelVeto]

I lied, I have another question. Have any of you built your fire raptor without those stubby wings in the front? I'm thinking of leaving them off.

[Polythemus]

Since they are largely the same thing I will answer with my experience building a storm eagle. 

 

1 Pilot Canopy - the clear pilots canopy fits the same way as the storm eagle, so it goes underneath a plastic piece with the aquilla in the front.

 

2 Dynamic flight - there is an article on the tale of painters blog site where they talk about utilizing a clear acrylic flight stand with the top cut at a 45 angle. there was a wire that was fixed through the hull region which acted as a fulcrum to contact the angled acrylic peice and give a variety of flight modes. you could consider something like this in order to vary how your flyer is angled.

personally i just sawed out the area where the flight stand fits into the fuselage, because i found that the amount of contact offered by flight stand into the fuselage was unstable and caused the plane to fall off the stand too easily.

 

3 front stabilizers - i added them and feel they do actually look good.

 

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-shV4EPesZbI/U1UTa40yiYI/AAAAAAAABUM/w1696bOumAY/s1600/Stormeagle4.gif

[AngelVeto]

yea the storm eagle front wings look better, but the raptor ones are higher on the side of the fuselage and are much stubbier.

 

The dynamic aspect I was looking for was going to be more along the lines of heating up the middle of the stand to bend it a little bit to give it a banking look. I'll check out that other blog and see what they said too

[Nykidemus]

Word of warning if you havent worked with the little clear canopy before - dont get superglue anywhere near it. The fumes fog the hell out of the clear plastic.

The completed Fire Raptor is crazy heavy - I ended up getting two of these guys https://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=BY0Y02 to mount to the flight base, so I could actually stow the thing. The flight peg itself is plenty strong, but the connecting point was not. If you're going to bend it, make sure you've got it on there reeeeeally secure. As heavy as it is, I expect it could do itself a fair bit of damage in a fall.

[Jeff Newton]

I used the drill press at work and drilled 1/2" holes thru both engine blocks. This took off about half the weight of those pieces. If you attempt something like that make sure you center the bit you are going to use and start small. There is a lot of material to remove so I tarted with a pin vice from both ends and worked up the sizing until I got to 1/2" and it could go all the way thru from a single side.