Hello everyone,
I have now sorted out the last thing, the four ropes hat hang down for the ground crew. On the real thing they are swept back, this is because the nose always faces the wind. They hang vertically on my one which looked odd. I tried to shape the thread I had glued on but despite test runs on some I glued to my furniture going OK the thread on the balloon seems to have a life of its own. I have tried to avoid using wire as much as is practically possible but despite this working better I chose to stick to the thread already there because at this stage I am not prepared to take off what has already been glued on, have to make good of what is left behind and risk another so called ' happy accident'. To make the wires swept back I added four posts that attach to the base with magnets. I feel this is cheating somewhat as I originally planned to have this entirely suspended with nothing supporting it from underneath. I know in some time in the future I will need to re rig some if this as nothing lasts forever and when I do then very bottom parts of the rigging will be wire. I originally set out to avoid using wire because once it is bent out of shape it is near impossible to put right. As there are already four posts guiding the four ropes I thought I might as well add a fifth one for the cable. I had posted previously that a handling accident had caused a couple of lines to be slightly bent, this was not he case. It as in fact the four previously mentioned ground crew ropes that did this, their extra weight caused the thread to warp slightly. A small lead weight on the end of the cable rectifies this. One slightly annoying thing about adding these posts to the base is that had I known I would do this I would have angled the cable forward rather than vertical because that is how it is on the real thing. Again because it faces the wind the balloon is pushed back from the winch on the ground.
This is the last post I will make regarding progress but it will be a little bit longer before I put this in the completed models section because during the seven years this has been on my workbench it has picked up its fair share of knocks. Over the last three months, while I have concentrated on the rigging, some of the buckles around the envelope have come off due to handling not to mention a few other things. So I will take this opportunity to thank all that have followed this and also apologise it has taken so long. If this was my second or third Drachenballon the build would have taken a fraction of the time. To be honest, when I set out to build this, I did not know how I was going to do alot of the stuff so I went up alot of wrong paths and also spent alot of time experimenting on ideas. From the start I set out to make a Drachenballon that appears to be completely suspended with nothing supporting it from below. I kind of half achieved this in the end. Another thing I wanted to achieve was a Drachenballon with most of is rigging, the few I have seen built elsewhere have had the rigging vastly simplified and for me that takes away alot of then appeal of the Drachenballon. I accept that I have not included every bit of rigging but I am happy that I have included everything that is practice in a 1/72 scale model. On the same subject of the rigging I wanted all the load bearing ropes to be straight, on others I have seen built they are not. The glue soaked thread made this possible. The last thing is what most people on this site try to achieve and that is accuracy. I struggled with this early on but realised during the build that there is a fair difference in many things from balloon to balloon, basket to basket and rigging to rigging. This is a generic version rather than an exact copy of one I know which does cover my ars to some degree. I will list the mistakes I know of below.
1. There is a long tail of parachutes or small spherical balloons trailing behind to help it face the wind. These are omitted because it is impracricle to have a meter of thread trailing behind with these attached. The rigging leading to this is there and I have cut it short where the windsack ends.
2. The rigging suspending the basket is darker that the rigging attached to the winch cable on the real thing. I will spare you the long story of my search for the right thread but when I finally got a reel I was happy with I used it as it came for the main rigging and for the thinner rigging that supports the basket I found a way of splitting the thread to give the half width I needed. Being afraid I would loose the effect super glue has on the half width thread if painted I decided to paint it after it is on the balloon. This was a mistake because when I tried to paint it the effect the paint made was to make it look double the thickness. Being at the point I did not want to strip the rigging off again I left it as it was rather than the right colour and the wrong thickness. If I had known this would happen I would have just bought a different colour of the same thread.
3. Directly above the basket and in front of the windsack there is a line going width wise across. I originally thought this existed, it appeared to be part of the same line that joins the parachutes mentioned in #1 on a photo but I later realised this was a red herring. When doing the main rigging the rear half that leads to the cable was weighted heavily (so it hung vertically) and I soaked it in super glue as per the rest. I spared the very top of the rigging from the glue so it would still be flexible but the capillary action of the glue carried it right up to the buckles and it ended up being permanently stuck in that verticals position. I tried a few things to fix this but none worked so in the end I cheated and added the afore mentioned red herring line which pulled the port and starboard sides perfectly in the right place.
4. There is a rip panel somewhere on the envelope but I am dammed if I could reliably see where it is on any of the archive pictures so i left it off. Because the panel was left off the rip cord was also omitted.
5. There are four lines that run from the basket to the front and back ends of the envelope. I used for this cotton thread which does simulate brilliantly rope in 1/72 but in fact I believe this to be some kind of canvas or linen chord. Eazy Line replicates this perfectly but only when it is taught. Unfortunately it is not taught on the real thing. I suspect these four chords are safety back ups rather than actual supports for the basket.
6. At the top of the four ground crew ropes mentioned earlier are pulleys which house a few lines. Hanging from these is some kind of apparatus I just simply cannot make out so it was omitted.
If there is anything else you see then it is something I have missed. Unfortunately I never had the pleasure of meeting August Von Parseval and had I probably would have asked him stuff about his airships rather than his balloons. One thing some may pick me up on and this is a Biggie. Of the few models I have seen of Drachenballons they have all had arched backs. This is correct, they do have arched backs when the are on the ground and not subjected to the pull of the cable and full weight of the basket and rigging. My one is straight. When it is fully airborne (there are very few pictures of these at high altitude) they are in fact very nearly straight. I mentioned in a previous post I got the number of buckles wrong around the envelope. I now think I put the correct number on. The mistake I made was thinking all Drachenballons were rigged the same, not all the same ropes go to the same buckles from Drachen to Drachen.
These are the things I learned from this build. This has been something at a voyage of discovery.
1. Soaking cotton thread in Superglue, it's a WINNER! Like a lot of things it is not as simple as it may seem but it is a good skill to learn.
2. Dense Foam or insulating foam was a godsend in this. So easy to work with and very forgiving. The best quality is its near weightlessness. It's only
Achilles heel is once it has been sealed with cellulite or glue THAT IS IT! You will not be changing it.
3.Regarding whicker seats I have cheated in the past and avoided by some means or another putting in the cockpit a realistic whicker seat but this is one
thing I cannot do on a balloon basket, unlike an aircraft this is on the outside. Another winner is the use of Nylon weave on certain outdoor wear. I experimented on several types of cloth and even bought a load of remnants from a habidashsry store but nothing worked as well as a Nylon waterproof work jacket that was coincidentally almost the right colour. Subsequent aircraft builds will have seats made from the same Nylon jacket which now has a few holes in the hood.
Once again thank you for all your support, Alan.
