Announcing Tu-22M3 Troika by Black Cat Simulations

The one we used was quite accurate, but needed reference stickers put on the surfaces to produce a good scan.

It was handheld and used for much of the same work as briainacooper11 is going to perform.

So quite accurate depictions of areas were possible to produce, but you still had to make quite extensive work to get proper 3D drawings out of it.

A trip to Ukraine would be awesome, it's a dream of mine. Will you be posting pictures of the cities and such or just the museum scans?

Great news!

The best news of the week!

We will definitely be telling the story of the entire trip with photos, etc. For me, it is a once in a lifetime thing. Although it is probably my favorite part of the world excepting my home in North America, I am never going to be able to travel to Eastern Europe/Russia very much.

I don't expect the 3D scanner to be a complete solution to the task of modeling the subject components. My hope/educated guess is that it provides a substantial net reduction in overall time and expense, and is a help to the modelers. It is not something I want to build a trade secret for Black Cat around, so I intend to share some data, tips, and the overall strengths and weaknesses with others. If it is a complete disaster, I will share that too, but I'm 99% convinced it's going to work well.

Brian

I count on you Brian, i really want this project to go on as i am a big fan of the Backfire. I will continue to support you until the module is released!

I hope you're going to so much desired trip. I want you to achieve everything you've imagined. Good luck brianacooper11! :pilotfly:

Thank you kobac, I am at the airport on my way to Kiev now! Will be stopping in Poltava, and then on to Russia.

Thanks,

Brian

Thank you kobac, I am at the airport on my way to Kiev now! Will be stopping in Poltava, and then on to Russia.

 

Thanks,

Brian

I hope to you guys become a 3rd party in the future, good luck on your project!:thumbup:

It would be good just to get to all the scans before start of the rainy season and the first snows. Good luck and safe way to get there.

We`ve been doing alot of research and gathering huge amount of reference around 3k images a day :)

Thx to the great museum and it`s crew for continuous help and allowing us climb where ever we want!

So here we are! :)

http://imgur.com/a/p2KcK

P.S. The temprature conditions are around/above 30 degrees Celsius, so on one side it`s pleasant to work with a warm weather, on the other it`s really hot, sometimes we have luck with clouds, that allows us to shoot diffuse images without strong highlights :)

wow that's awesome

good luck!

Really cool pictures! And it's awesome that the folks at the museum gave you the amount of access they did.

Wow, fantastic shots. This is a really cool project. Fingers crossed and the best of luck for you! ;)

Nice pictures - thx for sharing.

I wish you all the best for your project!

Good job!

Wow nice !

Good luck !

Nice!

Wow Oleg's Site is awesome, He is a phenomenal 3D Artist.

I found some photos and interactive schemes of cockpit with names of blocks and instruments in internet. On russian.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw4LJrWNuIKKdEdkcTJaUjhfM2c/view?usp=sharing

Big thank you, CiberAlex!

Extremely helpful!

Interesting!

Would love to help out.

Interesting!

Would love to help out.

Sended PM

We did it!

Oleg and I had a successful trip in Ukraine. Most of our activity was at the museum in Kyiv (Kiev, take your pick). This was the first time they had opened up the cockpits since receiving the aircraft, I am told. All of the locals remembered when the US came in and paid for all the Tu-22M's and Tu-160's to be cut up. It was heartbreaking for them (me too), and I think they were grateful for all the attention we gave their Backfires. I think they liked the opportunity to peek inside, too. The cockpits were in exceptionally good condition. All of the windows, including those for forward visibility, have roll-up shields against nuclear blasts, and they were all in place, so the sun had no opportunity to degrade anything. When the aircraft was delivered to the museum, only one or two black boxes were removed from the rear, and I think the front was untouched. They gutted the avionics bay, though. I believe one box removed was the control panel for launching Kh-15's, but there are pix on the internet of that, so it's fair game :music_whistling:

We took two approaches 'scanning' the cockpits. One was normal photogrammetry using the thousands of pictures Oleg took. The other are the direct scans using my Artec Eva scanner. We took some quick looks which were promising, but both methods require a lot of time post processing. to get good results. Oleg was upside down taking pictures of the space/junk between cockpits, and his photogrammetry software picked it up, so the final model should be good.

Oleg left before I went to Poltava to look at more stuff and talk to the crewmembers, but he didn't miss anything. The Poltava Long Range Aviation Museum is now closed to foreigners, so I didn't get to see anything. I also caught 'travelers butt' and didn't meet personally with the Tu-22M3 crewmembers, though I will be in touch with them.

The State Aviation Museum in Kyiv was very professional, and provided substantial assistance in terms of aircraft access, information, manpower, etc. We are definitely going to help out the museum with a portion of sales, and it's going to be an ongoing partnership. For those who donated, know that I gave $1000 upfront, so that's where all the money collected so far went.

As far as documentation, I did get some more, but not everything. Having crewmembers to consult is a huge gain, however, and there is enough information to make a simulation with the performance and handling fidelity I wanted when I started this project.

So, what was the airplane like? When you look at it next to the Tu-142 (navy Tu-95), it doesn't look so big for a bomber. When you compare it to an F-15 or MiG-25 in your head, it appears absolutely huge. My mind went back and forth. Sitting in the front feels like an airliner with poor visibility and a pointy nose. The rear feels like being in a submarine, especially if the 'shades' are drawn. Not claustrophobic, at least for me. Everything felt sturdy, strong. There are switches everywhere, in places you can't even see when seated. You just have to know where they are.

Little things strike you. The nuclear blast shields on every window. Right next to a very sophisticated data link (for the time) is a big Morse code telegraph key. The rear crewmembers have little mirrors that let them see behind them. The tail gun controls are 'cool', and also identical to Tu-95. The Tu-22M2 has mounts for four JATO rockets (the M3 deletes these). The nosegear has brakes, though only used to hold back the aircraft on takeoff, when the engines are run up to full AB. There is some wood used, around the canopy sills. Some switches are mounted in rotatable boxes, to make space for more switches behind them (we're definitely not going to simulate everything!). They had a FAB-9000 on display that the M3 could carry. Big! Walking on the fuselage and wings, I was careful where I stepped, but it still felt like I couldn't hurt it. And to stand there and look at the M1, M2 and M3 in a row was beautiful.

Brian

BTW, I'm in Moscow until Saturday. I'm not expecting much information, since the Tu-22M3 is not retired here. The big thing for me is to see Monino. Going to try the Tupolev museum too. If anybody wants to go sightseeing this week, ring me up on Skype: brianacooper11.