Model B-50 Bomber



Tony Nijhuis built this functional model of the Boeing B-50 bomber, a postwar variant of the B-29:

The real bomber had four engines, so he hunted down four of the biggest electric motors he could find. He created 2-D sketches of the body, wings and tail using AutoCAD and commissioned a laser-cutting company to handle the more than 300 custom segments he needed.

To make the plastic nose and gun canopies, Nijhuis first had to hand-carve wooden molds of each one. For the retractable landing gear, he hooked an off-the-shelf pneumatic system up to pressurized air tanks made from plastic Coke bottles. He also skinned the balsa-wood-ribbed fuselage with laminate wood composite and fiberglass.


To make his model more realistic, Nijhuis added speakers that play the sound that the engines from the actual B-50 made. The entire project took two years and cost $9,000.

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2010-07/backyard-b-50-bomber | Photo: Jonathan Worth

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PopSci - hanging on to the whole magazine mantra of "still photos" is good enough.

How hard would it have been to throw in a video of the damn thing?

Die you dinosaur magazines, die!
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