Airport fuel hatch

I made some good progress on a crucial part for a diorama that is almost finished, and I thought I would share it. It was a fun mini-scratchbuilding project that took a few hours to complete. The dio is almost complete and I’ll post pics when its done.

Here is the prototype:

And here is the part for my model. Not exactly the same…I needed an oblong with a strong diagonal in the middle to make the composition work. I don’t mind smudging reality a little to get things to look right

Wow… If didn’t know better… What scale is it?

Nice. Garden Grove is right up the street.

wow…nice scratching going on…

Hey Narayan, another great miniature from you! Looking good!

Thanks guys. Its a lot of fun making stuff like this. FYI I looked up DABICO and they have moved from Garden Grove. However the brochures from companies like that are a wealth of information about the hatches, lights, panels etc you find on a runway, both civilian and military.

HVH it’s hard for me to tell what scale it is…approx 1/24. I took the photo from the plane window and based on the width of painted lines in the area etc I took a guess and kept it in proportion. The real dimensions are 1" x 3/4" (around the size of a quarter dollar)

I finished the dio over the weekend. My photography lets the dio down badly. However I did want to post it . One thing I did do was to make a paint out of very small glass spheres and apply it to the lines. It actually simulates the effect of night glow paint pretty well, even if it is a little out of scale.

This was the inspiration

And here are some pics of the model. I took some liberties with reality to make the composition work better. All comments are welcome. Thanks for looking.

That’s so cool, Narayan–it honestly looks like you took up a piece of the concrete and saved it!

What amazes me is the things that inspire you–to the point of the absolute dedication you have to the fidelity of the reproduction! You make a whole “kit” out of what most people wouldn’t even pause two seconds to consider!

Well done…again! [:D]

Remarkable as always, Vespa. My only gripe is that that the images are too small for me to really pick up on the fine detail. Any chance you can link a larger sized image?

Steve

Thanks guys.

Karl you are 100% right about my models being the things that you never spend the time to notice. When I am waiting at an airport, it is a forced stop, suddenly things can take on a whole different dimension.

Steve: These are not great photos. There are some more in my fotki album. I’ll see if I can get some larger ones and load them.

Very interesting; well executed…would have been cool for you to maybe paint the large, foreground shadow into the dio as in the real pic!!! What does that thin piece of copper represent? Was that something you saw on the tarmac? Hope it didn’t fall outta that engine!

Great stuff !

Thanks Manny. It’s actually a piece of orange plastic meant to represent some plastic binding strip. There is a piece on the real runway but it is hard to see in the photo as it is too small (as Steve poined out)

As someone who is taxiing back and forth on airport ramps every day, I think you nailed it. Nice work! [tup]

Kevin