Lavochkin La-7

La-7 Soviet Fighter

Here is the project I started for the "modeling contest" I had a good start on it....then got in the process of moving to another house. I just started working on it again last night. I still have A LOT of work to do, but at least it's in G4 and flying around!!

I plan to do a semi finished cockpit yet, along with a few more details. I don't have the tail gear (and doors) set up yet, that is why it is "down" in the flying picture. Edit: I won't add as many details and refinments...as I would of for the "contest model"

Attached are several pictures of it currently, along with a picture of what it will look like when I'm finished.

(Note the wing slats in the one attachment, and the aluminum cowl rings and "exhaust deflectors")

2 more

Edit: I forgot to mention, even though this was my "contest entry" I do plan on making it available to all members.....even though I am not in the contest. I say "do plan" because I am unsure of my estimated completion date for this model.

Very funny,

Somebody brought up hobbycity.com so I went there and this plane stuck out. Thinking of buying this plane.

http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=6560

Never really heard of it till today?

Funny.....

Beautiful choice my friend. I cannot wait to see the results.

Mikeymike21 said:

looks and will be great!
2 Thumbs up man!

Click to expand...

Which brings us to the word of the day: sycophant

Lol, nice!

I mapped the fuse, mmvs and mmr and added the basic CS layout. (Lacking most markings, panel lines, weathering, etc.) but it's a start. 90% of the plane is "un-mapped" currently, including the canopy (which is why it doesn't match the fuse color)

View post number two (2) to view the plastic model I'm basing my CS from.

pplace said:

(Lacking most markings, panel lines, weathering, etc.)

Click to expand...

Do most real R/C builders "weather" their planes?

jeffpn said:

Do most real R/C builders "weather" their planes?

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The ones I know do!! Here's proof! It's from another forum I frequent.

Granted this one is "Heavily Weathered" but most of the planes on the scale forums are weathered in one way or another.

A bit more progress:

I was thinking the La-7 was missing something, so I went back and looked at the plastic reference model when I realized I forgot the "greenish" spot with all the little white stars (62 of them) under the canopy on the left side of the fuse.

Edit: Also attached is the plastic reference model from the opposite side.

Mikeymike21 said:

Looks awsome! I think you might like this video. It's a Yak-11 but the two look pretty similar.
Yak-11

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kinda like the Black one there (it belongs to Kent Carlomagno)

Looking excellent... what is your TGA resolution on that?

willsonman said:

Looking excellent... what is your TGA resolution on that?

Click to expand...

4096x4096

Usually I use 2048x2048, but I thought I would give the higher res a try once. I can really notice how it slows the loading of the "DDS" and aircraft most of the time though. Seems to put much more of a burden than 2048 does on the computer? (It doesn't seem to affect the fps or multi-play at all though)

Plus this is a very simple CS so the extra res isn't really necessary (although it might have helped clean up around all the geometry of the stars.)

I noticed that too when I redid my Gee Bee. 4096 seems to just slow down load times but not by that much. Multiplayer seems just fine as well. SO, yeah, totally worth the extra resolution IMO.

On the swaps.

Note 4096x4096 cs file will result in slow load of aircraft the first time.

Thanks to both phrank and willsonman for your comments on the swaps.

I'll admit that I set out to to do a killer job on this aircraft (try and top my Fw 190a) in order to compete for the contest. Then plans changed, I was out of the contest, and time seemed to be dragging on.....so I didn't detail it anywhere near as far as planned.

That being said: I still want to produce quality models for everyone to enjoy, so I really appreciate the comments and critiques. I really didn't have any intentions of releasing this model any time soon.....then came the announcement of G4.5 and I got all giddy and decided it was time to finish up one of my projects laying around (I had to justify finishing one before I can start another one)

Willsonman:

The gear door fit, was a situation I struggled and worked with for a while. I tried a new (different) method for rotating my gear and doors in Max.....and well....I'll probably stick to my old method lets just say.

The physics: I'll be the first to admit that I'm not to technical (smart) about all the settings in the editor...I was mainly trying to focus on getting the wire frame to match the 3d model and get it to fly somewhat reasonable (as I've never flown a real world model of it) After I was finished last night....I looked at the size of the model and the finished weight and decided it was too low (for the size) so I added a few strategic pounds here and there.....to be honest I took it for a quick test flight, but never did land it!! (Possibly the reason for being nose heavy on landing??? I'll have to try that out tonight)

The polys: Actually I still have plenty of room for poly details (I was around 13,000 with collision meshes) You are correct in the statement of the poly use: Fuse nose was very important to get "round and smooth" along with a nice smooth canopy area! I had a 16 sided cylinder for the fuse nose....but the "stainless cowl rings" looked to jagged, so I went back and increased it to 32 sides (from the nose to the front canopy area) this helped tremendously in smoothing it out.

Edit: Gear Doors: Is there a way to slow or speed up the motion of gear doors? I know exactly what you mean about the wheel meshing through them....but I don't know how to correct that issue.

Thanks again
Dane

Not exactly what you asked but, this may help.

~CS_GD1_ something will rotate at the same time as gear
~CS_GD2_ something will rotate after the gear has started to rotate
~CS_GD3_ something is used for inner / tyre doors, using ~CS_GD3_ something the door will remain down when the gear is down.
~CS_GD4_ something is used for inner / tyre doors, using ~CS_GD4_ something the door will retract back once the gear is down.

rcplanefubar said:

Not exactly what you asked but, this may help.

~CS_GD1_ something will rotate at the same time as gear
~CS_GD2_ something will rotate after the gear has started to rotate
~CS_GD3_ something is used for inner / tyre doors, using ~CS_GD3_ something the door will remain down when the gear is down.
~CS_GD4_ something is used for inner / tyre doors, using ~CS_GD4_ something the door will retract back once the gear is down.

Click to expand...

Yeah that's a different situation (kinda) I wish there was a way to "vary" the speed of them.

I used GD3 on the inner doors and GD2 on the tail gear doors that on the inner gear doors. I guess I didn't try GD1 on the tail gear doors to see if it would help....I'll see if that helps.

Edit: I came home at lunch and switch the inner gear doors to GD2 and that solved the problem of the tires going through the inner doors.

Is this a big enough reason to delete and upload a new EA for it? (I usually don't like to do this and loose the comments / critique from the current downloaders)

I decided to upload a slightly improved EA (inner gear doors per willsonmans comments)

I didn't want to lose the great comments / critiques that people gave so I will post a copy of them here:


10-17-2008 10 phrank:
Wow! Very complex and detailed bird both visual and physics model. I love the wing and flap detail when deployed. Great cockpit interior. Well done Dane. Absolutely perfect!

10-17-2008 10 willsonman:
Masterfully crafted. Plenty of polygons used in smoothing the fuselage and canopy. Just wonderful detail in the CS but not overkill. A few polys mesh into the exhaust pipes. Wheels mesh through the gear doors when retracting, also alignment off just by a degree or two but not that serious. Tail gear doors are also a bit out of alignment when retracted and collide into each other. Stall severity at 0 all around and I would not really expect that out of a fighter aircraft. I reduced it to 0 where it should and it did not make that much of a difference in flight characteristics, so no big deal. level flying but very front heavy when landing, just something to note for future flyers. An excellent scale warbird to be sure.

10-17-2008 10 Mikeymike21:
Great work! I've always been a fan of your work. And you've improved so much since your ME-262!

10-17-2008 10 doug schluter:
Excellent I like the right hand torque on take off thats what my P40 does you need to use left rudder to counter it,lots of work in this one great detail,thanks

10-17-2008 10 3-DMan:
Very well constucted bird! Great job!

Thanks guys....please download and overwrite previous EA