Hello everyone,
I am glad to finally present to you a final version of the B787-9 cargo holds which were started way too long ago, they took me more much time than I expected.
This set will be available separately (FWD hold / AFT hold) and it is mainly designed for Zvezda’s B787-9 item 500787021.
I am aware that there is hopefully a B787-9 version from Revell coming this year, so I hope these cargo holds will fit in it as well. Shape should be similar, and hopefully plastic thickness will be the same.
Now, due the situation in the world, I am not sure what will happen with Zvezda, but I do still have some kits which I had plans to make some items for, galleys and cargo holds for instance. This has me somewhat confused as to what to do on the B747-8F/-400F project which is due to be started for the (and using as base) 8F Revell kit first, but I am also looking to do this project for Revell’s 8i (conversion).
Anyway, here are some pictures of the final result, I must say that I have to rework the LED wiring as it is a big mess currently, and I will be posting a mini guide with some tips and tricks for the assembly of those as well as the LED addition which won’t be included in the set (you may find several options for colours such as white and yellow).
My idea is to run the positive and the negative all the way through the landing gear, behind the wheels and into a cavity behind the model base (tarmac diorama).
A general view with the doors opened, I think that once there is a livery on the model, it will look more realistic, you can also imagine the light hitting the ramp coming from the interior which can also be a nice night time diorama.
Everything is incredibly tight inside, sanding a bit the containers was necessary, specially around the area closer to the nose and closer to the tail. Having to deal with keeping the LD3 dimensions as similar to the real ones while dealing with the plastic thickness was a very difficult thing to do, there wasn’t much margin for anything.
Latches are glued right on top of the plastic profile, so it is important to keep a good order while assembling this, because painting of the plastic profile first, can make things easier for later adding the latches.
You can see here the R2 door (and L2) door opened. For my build, I plan to open both L1, L2, L4 and R1 (possibly) R2 and R4. The forward cargo hold was designed so that it gives space to install the middle galley module, in a later update where I will publish the mini guide, you will be able to see, that the FWD hold LED cables have to run through the middle galley ceiling in order to head to the center of the aircraft and down the landing gear.
Some containers were strategically put, however, you can really leave the area empty to see the main area of the interior.
The cargo holds were designed keeping in mind the forward and rear galleys, so that there is also room for these in the model. Lots of constraints here and there in terms of space, but everything can fit.
This makes me think of doing this in a different manner for further projects as I gained more experience with this one, hopefully the next cargo holds won’t take me as long as these.
Here is a video of the cargo holds, but one thing I should add, light seems way brighter in the camera, in person they are more dim and thus more realistic to scale:
Of course, lighting this up reminded me of how it would be to have this in the whole main deck for the B747-8F/-400F, for sure the larger cargo doors (nose and side) will allow for much more detailing so I can’t wait to continue with this project.
My time is quite limited because of stock preparations as well as fine tuning the F59 in1/72 scale which again, did not think would take me this long, but I am taking my time to detail it as much as I can.
Although these cargo holds are finished, time to make the instructions and the first units has to be considered, but, the important thing is that they are done and production will start as soon as the GSE catalog is established.
Thank you all for reading and stay safe,
Guillem