GPM Hangar

Cuajete
Wow... the hangar inspired by Łukasz! 😛
Following!

Thomas Kolb
Indeed! Hadn't it been for Łukasz, I would never have found this kit. But it is a brilliant design by GPM: just a few sheets of thick cardboard and clear acetate, and it looks absolutely beautiful straight OOTB. I am thinking of adding LED lights in the ceiling, we'll see if it works.

Łukasz Gliński
I have to watch this 😄

Bart Goesaert
I'm in too

Andy Ball
May I 'hang' around?.....

Cuajete
Thinking adding LED lights in the ceiling?? Good news!!
This may be promising 🙂

Erik De Smet
Following too. I thought it was no longer available.

Thomas Kolb
The LED lighting is still just an idea ... I would need to scratch build a few parallel "boxes" in the roof to hide the wiring, but I am still not sure how to do it yet....

Łukasz Gliński
@Cuajete: GPM used to provide it via their own website all the time. Not sure about other sources.

Thomas Kolb
@Erik, I bought it directly from GPM's web shop.

sklep.gpm.pl/modele-..odel-wyciety-laserem

Erik De Smet
I once bought a 5V led strip in a bargain shop. It has a USB connection and you can cut it on length. Sure you can find these in Sweden too.

Łukasz Gliński
Sorry folks, I should have written @Erik 🙂

Maverick212
Following

Dominik Weitzer
this is really cool! watching your work, very informativ.

Łukasz Gliński
I see you have reached the most tricky part - the grid assembly.
My parts became bit wavy once put together, but your skeleton looks much better. 👍
You can seal the paper using some kind of epoxy or soak it with CA glue. I went for the latter and just sprayed it with quick-drying car paint using a rattle can.

Thomas Kolb
Łukasz, yes, I noticed that the roof grid has a tendency to be a bit wonky so I needed to work slowly, section by section and let the glue dry properly between the sections. I will also add three lateral cross-beams, one in the center and one on each side to give it some stability, before adding the roof to the lower walls. Thanks for the tip on impregnating the material with CA! I actually did some spray painting with Tamiya acrylics on a cutoff piece and couldn't see any negative effect as long as I sprayed consecutive thin layers.

Thomas Kolb
Now I will need to wait a week or so until the 330 Ω resistors for the LED lights arrive in the mail. In the meantime I can try to improve my (sub-par) soldering skills and try to figure out how to hide the inevitable wiring mess...

Bart Goesaert
Soldering is easy, clean up the connections, add some flux and let the temperature do it's job

Erik De Smet
Might be easier to use a spray can with grey car paint.

Thomas Kolb
Erik, absolutely, that was my first intention, but I got a bit worried that I might flood the parts with paint and get them to swell, deform, sag or bend. Probably not, but I didn't want to risk it - it is just cardboard paper after all. With the airbrush I can just mist on the paint.

Dominik Weitzer
looks good.

Łukasz Gliński
Nice sunshine you've got up there😉
Fully agree with you Thomas, though I went the same way Erik proposed 🙂

Dominik Weitzer
Those pencils are interesting! Looks good

Łukasz Gliński
Wow, that's gonna be much more realistic than mine, I can now call my hangar a quickbuild 😄

Thomas Kolb
Łukasz, not sure, I will try to make the hangar pretty neutral, not a war-zone ruin. This weekend I took a bunch of photos of our hangar at our airport for reference - it definitely looks far more well-maintained than the Humbrol clip. I think I already went way overboard with the rusty deposits... 😉

Łukasz Gliński
Still... I just sprayed the grey car paint all around 😄

Cuajete
Nice effect, Thomas. Glad to hear those LEDs are on the way 🙂
They're making me want to try and get one of these hangars 😄

Thomas Kolb
One LED strip of three is finished... it wasn't easy but I got there. So now I will need to make two more of these and then the tricky part will be to attach the light strips to the roof. I definitely don't want the wiring to be visible so it is a bit of a challenge.

Cuajete
Well done, Thomas! 🙂 👍

Thomas Kolb
Having sorted out the wiring, the next challenge will be where to hide the battery box. I am not too happy having a big ugly 9V battery sitting on the outside with a bunch of wires leading out through the walls, so I will need to think a bit. Maybe building a small, movable "shed" hiding the battery?

Łukasz Gliński
I'd attach an 'outhouse' to one of the walls (on the outside of course) 👍

Thomas Kolb
Łukasz, yes, that, or something like a "workshop office" on the inside, kind of like the one in the corner in my project photo. I have plenty of leftover material, so it should be doable.

Łukasz Gliński
Outhouse seems to give easier access for battery replacement...

Thomas Kolb
Łukasz, regarding battery replacement, you may have a point there.

bughunter
Nice work! May be a bit late, but I have remarks.
I would reduce the current a bit, the brightness is still nearly the same, the LEDs live longer and your battery will last longer. Try it first, may be 15mA or 12mA is enough, they look very bright on your pic.
With a 9V supply you can at least put two LED in a row, of course with new calculation for the resistor. This would reduce the actual current to the half! May be even 3 would work, if a 9V battery has 9,5V; also depending on real LED voltage. Less heat on the resistors and longer battery live.
Another good option for power supply is 5V, since you can use a USB power supply.
Good luck!

bughunter
At home you have power, and on a exhibition or something like that you can use a USB Power Bank.

Thomas Kolb
Bughunter, thanks a lot for the tips! The USB power is a great idea, not sure why I didn't think of that! I just tested using a cut off USB cable as power - guess what, the 5V power from my iPhone charger is perfectly enough to get all the LED's to light up. Slightly less bright, but still perfectly adequate. Not quite sure how though, the current (7 mA) should in theory not be enough for the 20 mA LED's to light up, but they certainly do. 🙂

bughunter
Nice that I could help and really great that you implement my suggestions immediately! 👍
That's why I suggest 12mA, nearly half is often a good value. As you see less then half is still enough. Your LED will last forever!

Erik De Smet
Interesting exchange of ideas, with the input of bughunter, I used LEDs in my projects too. At the end, Lukasz will have to upgrade his hangar to Thomas standards ...
I was thinking of buying the GPM kit for a diorama based on these pictures :
warbirdinformationex..ewtopic.php?p=630678

Thomas Kolb
Erik, what a jaw-dropping WW2 diorama that would be, particularly that color photo with the shot up fake buildings and that B-25 peaking out... 🙂 Although if you intend to build on the GPM kit, particularly if adding more weight on top of it, I would recommend reinforcing it with something like balsa wood, as the wall structures have a tendency to sag a bit. It is after all just cardboard paper.

Łukasz Gliński
Damnit, I didn't expect having to upgrade it😉

Thomas Kolb
Łukasz, don't think you need it, after all I stole the idea from you! 😉

Łukasz Gliński
Yeah, I can see the followers are passing me by😉 Still, I prefer the real sunlight 🙂

Cuajete
Wow... great job, Thomas! The wiring is very well camouflaged and the lighting effect looks super. Very well solved 🙂
Łukasz, you should upgrade the hangar with solar panels to take advantage of its sunlight 😄 😛

Erik De Smet
Solar panels could be an Alternative for batteries too for Thomas

Łukasz Gliński
Remember he's located up there in Sweden, so he would have to store the all the summer energy for half a year of darkness 😄

Andy Ball
Oh, now that is a great surrounding for your masterpiece!

Thomas Kolb
Solar panels are mostly no good during the dark winters in Sweden. But I thought I would scratch build a small fission reactor. I am trying to purchase some Uranium-235 on eBay ... oh, hold on a minute, I got to go, there are men in black knocking on the front door.

Łukasz Gliński
Aaaaand he's gone... 😛

Gary Dahlström
Any project involving LEDs gets my attention. Great imaginative display.

Dominik Weitzer
Nice!

John Thomas
Nice work

Łukasz Gliński
I see you went for similar tone of grey, Thomas😉

Thomas Kolb
Łukasz, well the roof is definitely gray (just plain Ultimate Primer for a completely flat finish), but the outer walls are sort of industrial green. You can see it more clearly on photo 20. The window frames will be left unpainted; it looks pretty nice that way, as the laser cuts have left some brown burn-marks that almost looks like rust.

Thomas Kolb
Gary, Dominik, John, thank you, I will try not to disappoint!

Günther Debiscop
Following...

Thomas Kolb
Main hangar more or less done, now I am tackling the sliding doors. I will obviously need to create some sort of railing, surely the doors need to have something to slide on, but it is not provided.

Daniel Klink
Watching and already loving the result....👍
Have to get one of those

Łukasz Gliński
The doors are intented as static in this kit and this is what my hangar features.
Even without the doors it looks outstanding, mine seems so old right now.

Thomas Kolb
Łukasz, ha ha, I didn't mean that the doors would be working (although that would be cool), they just look a bit strange to me without a slider rail on the top. But I have already fixed it with a strip of cardboard. Also I realized that I planned to add two working floodlights in the front, but I simply forgot. Well, whatever.

Łukasz Gliński
Hm, instruction states part #12...

Thomas Kolb
Well, well, what do you know, you are right, it is actually there, I must have missed it. Anyway, I made my own part so I will use that instead. It seems to fit better without cutting out a part of the roof.

Cuajete
Wow... Looks fantastic with leeds and natural light.
Have to get one of those, like Daniel 😛

Thomas Kolb
Daniel & Cuajete, thank you! You can still get them from the GPM web shop in different scales. I am now actually thinking to purchase that F-16 hangar they have and to turn it into a 70's Soviet style, dome-shaped, underground aircraft shelter.

sklep.gpm.pl/modele-..odel-wyciety-laserem

Łukasz Gliński
Thomas, you don't have to convert it, just head for one of their older products:
sklep.gpm.pl/modele-..odel-wyciety-laserem
Thinking of it too, but for me it would require respraying, the printed colours don't look that realistic to me.

Thomas Kolb
Łukasz, wow, that is just perfect! I am ordering that one right away, it will look amazing with some MiG-21's! 🙂 I agree, respraying is mandatory, that one in the illustration looks like the entry to a delfinarium or something.

Łukasz Gliński
Looking forward to seeing it being built, it's exactly the Warsaw Pact type than can be found in multiple locations on this side of the Baltic Sea 🙂
Example on the cover here: Book: MiG 23 MF (by Krzysztof Barcz, Dariusz Warszawski)
The Midget pic is just brilliant 👍

Thomas Kolb
Łukasz, bloody hell, you Polish guys always took such great care of your equipment. It always looks so nice, well maintained and clean on pictures. Hungarian air bases... not so much.

[img1]

Erik De Smet
Thomas, after all the hints you got from Lukasz , you should dig in your Stash and build at least one Polish plane to give him credit. btw I ordered the gpm hangar too ...

Łukasz Gliński
@Thomas: Hey, it's a still flying one on the photo😉
@Erik: Guinness, ekhm, a hangar is good for you😉

Andy Ball
Terrific backdrops for all your constructions!!

Thomas Kolb
Got a bit stuck with finishing the base plate for the hangar diorama, I simply don't have room to store the complete assembly. I think I will just cement down the concrete plates on the board, add some paint and weathering and put the hangar in place when needed.

Daniel Klink
Following!👍

Łukasz Gliński
This is what I wanted mine to look like 👍
The thing is quite big indeed, maybe you can just store the apron separately and add it for photo-sessions only?

Spanjaard
picture 47 simply seems like a reference picture.... perfect for shooting as background no doubt. great job!

Neuling
I agree with Spanjaard.

Thomas Kolb
Yes, that is the idea, but the entire set just turns out way too big for my hobby room. I am thinking to store the base plate (with the apron plates glued on) leaning against a wall and leave out a rectangle for the hangar assembly to place for the photo shoots.

John Thomas
Very nice work

Daniel Klink
Awesome! Mine is arriving soon i hope🙂

bughunter
Great result and the LEDs are bright enough now.

Thomas Kolb
Thank you gentlemen! 🙂

Cuajete
Fantastic!

Łukasz Gliński
#50 - I feel like a newbie now😉

Spanjaard
great idea about the interchangeable signs 🙂 👍

Erik De Smet
Great layout for presenting any model,Thomas. Did you fix the hangar on the same base ?

Thomas Kolb
Erik, no, the hangar is just placed loosely on the base. I unfortunately have no room to store it assembled like that, so the base will need to be stored leaning against the wall behind my home office computer screens (need to keep the missus happy).

Paweł W.
Great!!!

Ben Schumacher
Very cool project!

Thomas Kolb
And hereby I declare the hangar project finished!

Konrad -
Awesome work and presentation Thomas! Looks incredible realistic 👍!!

Daniel Klink
Awesome work mate..That looks so impressive.👍
Still waiting fo mine because the first went to wrong postal code with the same Streetname aarghh.
Cant wait to get.

Thomas Kolb
Pawel, Ben, Konrad & Daniel, thank you for your kind words! Daniel, yes, I know what it's like to just wait and wait for a package, one is like a kid waiting for Christmas!

Andy Ball
just so realistic!

Spanjaard
simply stunning.

Juergen Klinglhuber
It looks great!

Germen V
nice, congrats

Cuajete
Lovely hangar and fantastic pics. Like real life! 🙂
Congrats!