Martin Mars

Roland Sachsenhofer
These four pictures begin a project that should result in one of the largest models I have ever attempted. Not the biggest - the 1:32 Liberator holds my record here - but close!
However, the impressively large box contains surprisingly little and, also surprisingly, large components such as the fuselage, wings and tailplane are already assembled. Incidentally, these are made of fibreglass and require their own treatment.
These parts are also stable and clean. A bit of filling was required, as the traces of glue and filler on the seams are very rough and show air pockets. This will now be sanded, the cockpit sawn out and the windows drilled - well, modelling a little differently than usual! 🙂

Gergő Takács
This looks like a cool project! Following.

Treehugger
The panel lines look ok I guess. I mean, I would be happy with those panel lines.

Mr D
Like it , nice project.
I'm working on the Beriev Be-6 Armoured Flying boat,
Revisiting a kit after 33yrs.
All the best with yours...😃👍👍

Robert Podkoński
A true behemoth it is. I will surely follow this build with utmost interest!

gorby
Looking forward to seeing this take shape. 🙂
I believe the last Mars had it's final flight two weeks ago.
Youtube Video
Youtube Video

Nathan Dempsey
Oh my another giant. Following 👀

Robert Podkoński
BTW. Do we see the finished Fairchild in the background, Roland?

Roland Sachsenhofer
I am very happy about all your interest! In fact, I also started this project because of its topicality; the pictures of the last flight of Hawai Mars are always a heart-warming pleasure; this one in particular, thanks Gorby for posting it!

Today I drilled the openings for the windows in the fuselage; I determined the diameter of the holes from kit glass parts. They seem a bit big to me, but we'll see. As I'm not going to use the clear parts from the kit, but want to make them with Klearfix, I could reduce the diameter quite a bit.
The next steps will be to finish sanding the fuselage seams - now only the top side has to be done - and then to glue the wings and stabilisers to the fuselage. To do this, I'm cutting solid steel rods to length, which I'll glue in place with a two-component adhesive.
The Mars should be ready by mid-October: I want to take it to the Euromodel in Ried, Upper Austria.

And yes, In fact, the more or less finished Fairchild F.91 had to serve as a scale model in the background! 🙂

Thomas Mayer
Du bist echt eine Bau-Maschine, Roland! Und immer kommt etwas sehr schönes raus! 👍

Roland Sachsenhofer
Danke für die Einschätzung, Thomas! 🙂

Roland Sachsenhofer
The construction of Mars is progressing: I'll show you a few construction steps in a little 'time lapse'. Attaching the wings and tailplane with 2k glue worked well; the materials could be sanded smooth and fine afterwards. However, the brittleness of the fibreglass caused some difficulties; parts kept splintering off and had to be filled, sanded and re-engraved. As I always do the whole thing standing up, wearing a mask and under running water, this always turns into an almost athletic exercise 🙂 But now it seems to be over and the Mars is ready for its first encounter with colour... I took the two crew members under the cockpit canopy to make the proportions clear and to keep my options open for presenting the finished aircraft - who knows, maybe it will take off or fly?

gorby
It's a bit of a monster! 😮
Doesn't look like an easy build but you seem to be beating it into shape. 🙂

Robert Podkoński
You're the brave man, Roland, not me...

DerMattes
Das schau ich mir weiter an 🙂

Mr D
Looking good Roland 👌
Be a nice bird when she done, pilots look smart 👍👍

Cuajete
Wow... an unusual and gigant model... It seems like fiberglass is difficult to handle.
Great job so far, Roland!

Michael Kohl
Na, da hab ich doch auch nen Blick drauf

Roland Sachsenhofer
Thank you very much for your motivating feedback and your interest, mates!

Łukasz Gliński
I have to follow that behemoth 👍 I don't think I'll ever find enough space to build one myself 😄

Thomas Kolb
My goodness, your models are just getting bigger and bigger! I cannot wait to see it finished!

Finn
Looking interesting, I'm in

Ray Loch
Following as well. Just saw its retirement flyby and landing in Pat Bay, Its Huge.

Roland Sachsenhofer
Fortunately, the Martin Mars has reached the stage where the colouring and surface design will be the main thing; so far I've been 'plugging holes' again and again: the fibreglass surface proves to be quite brittle, damage is difficult to putty, and when re-engraving the lost panel lines it quickly happens that it cracks again under the carefully guided scalpel blade - and a new hole has already appeared. The new pictures show a few such construction sites, for example at the bow under the cockpit glazing or on the back of the fuselage between the wings.
But, all in all, in retrospect it's all half as bad, now I'm looking forward to the paintwork!

Thank you, mates, for your interest and feedback! Ray, I would have liked to have experienced that too!

Ben M
👀🤯

Cuajete
Roland, I was unaware of these problems with fiberglass and it is a shame that these kits are so expensive considering the quality of these materials. I think the worst is over. You can feel proud of the work done so far. The effort was worth it. Go on!

Roland Sachsenhofer
Those are encouraging responses, yes, Cuajete, I think so too. Thank you both for your interest and comments!

Mr D
How big is the model??
Is it cast in fiberglass because it's to big for injection molding??
Nice to see the update 😁👍👍
The vent in behind the cockpit done now.

Mirko Römer
That's what you call a project!👍

Nicolas
Cool project, following.

Roland Sachsenhofer
Thank you friends! The Mars as a 72 model measures 84.5cm in wingspan and has a length of 48.5cm: huge, but not so huge that it couldn't have been made into an injection moulded model. The B-24 Liberator from Hobby Boss in 1:32 that I built this spring, for example, was significantly larger and yet still injection moulded.

What is now proving to be a challenging issue is that the acrylic paint I used does not seem to want to adhere properly to some parts of the resin fuselage and wing panels, even though I have meticulously and accurately cleaned the surfaces. And another thing: after I sprayed a first coat of white paint on the fuselage today, something became apparent that hadn't appeared before: the resin surfaces are covered with small air pockets, i.e. holes.... 'Much enemy, much honour' as they say in German! 🙂

Ben M
What are you using for primer? I almost always use tamiya spray primer as it usually adheres even to challenging surfaces. I have had trouble occasionally on some resin surfaces where I've resorted to krylon plastic compatible spray paint as a primer.

Roland Sachsenhofer
That's a good question, thanks for the tips: I used glossy black acrylic paint here as usual - it actually looked quite good until yesterday, after a few days drying time, I started to mask off the black areas on the undersides of the wings....
I think I'll just carry on with Gunze and Tamiya acrylic paints - and touch up where necessary.

Roland Sachsenhofer
Der aktuelle Zustand der Mars in Weiß hat noch nichts mit der finalen Oberseiten-Farbe zu tun, sondern bildet nur die Basis für das Rot der Unterseiten. Aktuell erstrahlt die Mars sogar in leuchtend Gelb: Dies sollte die Leucht- und Deckkraft des folgenden Rot noch weiter stärken. Der Aufwand wird allerdings dadaurch erhöht, dass immer wieder Spachtel- Schleif und Gravierbedarf auftaucht: die Resin Oberflächen sind äußerst uneben und voller kleiner Lufteinschlüsse, ein echter Jammer. Aber ich bin zuversichtlich, dass mit der steigenden Stärke der Lackschichten auch die raue Oberfläche etwas mehr Geschlossenheit zeigen wird!

Mr D
It's come along way 👌👍👍

Łukasz Gliński
Oh man, that is bigly yuge indeed 😄

Cuajete
You're doing very well, Roland. Don't be discouraged.
Kopf hoch! 👍

Roland Sachsenhofer
Sapperlot! I only wrote the text in German yesterday: here it is in English:
The current state of the Mars in white has nothing to do with the final upper side colour, but only forms the basis for the red of the undersides. At the moment, the Mars is even shining in bright yellow: this should further enhance the luminosity and opacity of the red colour to follow. However, the effort is increased by the fact that there is always a need for filling, sanding and engraving: the resin surfaces are extremely uneven and full of small air pockets, a real shame. But I'm confident that as the thickness of the paint layers increases, the rough surface will also show a little more unity!

Thank you very much for your encouragement and motivation! Yesterday I mentioned that Mars has now been coloured yellow as the last stage before the red - here are the pictures!

Cuajete
👌

Roland Sachsenhofer
Thank you Cuajete!
....and now in red! It's getting really exciting for me now. Not just the question of how I'll manage the masking for the white upper sides, but above all whether the colour under the adhesive strips will stay on them or - hopefully - on the model when I peel them off!

Cuajete
I'm sure it does, Roland. That Mars looks great and the red color looks great.
Is the stand underneath included in the kit?

Roland Sachsenhofer
Thank you! Yes, that's him. Doesn't necessarily look much, but is very useful when building

Mr D
Hi Roland 👋.
Is it heavy? Being fiberglass ?
I've read about the difficulty you had with Glass resin!
My dad used to make parts for race bikes ....and air bubbles very hard to avoid! Also cutting against the grain....tends to pull other strands.
Your getting to a better stage now and it's coming on nicely now...
I thought it was the Goose at first glance.. earlier in build.
Good luck with rest.👍👍

Arseny K.
I just love it! Respect

Roland Sachsenhofer
Thank you both! Somehow it is really comforting and above all interesting that I am not alone with the problems with the fibreglass surfaces! Yes, the construction is fairly heavy, but above all it needs enough 'air space' above the workbenches when it is swivelled to get everywhere with the airbrush! 🙂
Well, the 'Spruce Goose' is still a dream - but one with a chance of realisation!

Roland Sachsenhofer
The time has come! Now the layers of paint under the masking have to prove that they can adhere to the fibreglass surface and want.... prognoses say it will all be possible! In the meantime, the white has been applied to the surfaces, which definitely looks good on the Martin Mars.

Cuajete
Great, Roland! 👍

Roland Sachsenhofer
Thank you for encouragement!
I would like to show you the condition of the Martin Mars this morning: The red and white areas survived the masking quite well, only small areas had to be touched up with brush strokes, but the black areas on the undersides of the surfaces, on the other hand, remained generously on the adhesive tape. I masked them again straight away - I now trusted the red areas surrounding them - and sprayed over the black, applying a first coat of glossy clear varnish over everything in the same session. Now I have to break up the red and white edges on the fuselage with a cloth, well, the white always builds up beautifully... Maybe I can try out the decals tomorrow!

Agnius
Interesting project! Following

Zbynek Honzik
It looks spectacular, Roland! Fingers crossed and looking forward to seeing the result. 👍

Cuajete
I agree with Zbynek Honzik 👍

Mr D
Very nice 👌
The hard work is being rewarded now 😁👍👍

Roland Sachsenhofer
Thank you very much for your encouragement and motivation - much appreciated! I'm all the more pleased to be able to show you the Martin Mars with decals! The decal material was anything but easy to apply and in some parts - with the red stripes - it broke into numerous stripes, but I'm all the more pleased to be able to show you the pictures of a reasonably well-marked Martin Mars! The engines and floats have been under construction for some time now and will soon complete the Martin Mars as it approaches the finish line.

Cuajete
Looks really great, Roland! 👍

Roland Sachsenhofer
Thank you Cuajete!

Nick Dragone
Excellent job ! The same plane is on the cover of the November 2024 edition of Fly Past Magazine. Fabulous work Roland

Mr D
Looks great 👍👍 hard work paying off 👌👍

Roland Sachsenhofer
ank you very much, Nick and Mr D! It's really quite inspiring to have a 'current' aircraft in the works. 🙂
I would like to show you a few current pictures of the Mars - the completion of which is slowly coming into sight. The surface qualities such as colour scheme and gloss level have been determined, the windows are in progress. One on the left side of the fuselage is still missing and the two small windows at the very front of the bow are so cracked by the drilling - the fibreglass material has its pitfalls - that I have to think of an alternative. Perhaps they will be finished with a decal.

Marko
brave project, respect!
You will be rewarded with a result that is outstanding.👍

Gary Victory
Really nice project and build Roland.

Roland Sachsenhofer
Thanks for this encouragement, Marko and Gary!

Cuajete
Fantastic result so far, Roland.
I hope that you can solve the problem with those windows. Krystal Klear, UV Glue or white glue didn't work?

Mr D
Gorilla glue clear sets 100% clear, but bit slow to dry in the air, l don't mind... usually leave overnight, l use it for all my canopy n glass jobs as it's none missing.
Looking great Roland you will have it to standard you like soon.
Photo's been a pleasure to view 👌👍👍

Mr D
You can buy 10mm perspex disks on eBay
.
https://ebay.co.uk/itm/12411..t_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Roland Sachsenhofer
Many thanks for the tips and your thoughts on the subject of windows at the bow - very helpful and interesting! I have now decided that I will expose the openings and clean them up a bit with filler and then fill them with Crystal Clear. Thanks for the encouragement!

Roland Sachsenhofer
A few quick pictures from just now: apart from a few small touch-ups with the brush tip, the Martin Mars is now finished - which is definitely a source of great joy! It has already been on the water base on a trial run, but the frame still needs to be glued in place. All in all, she will soon be ready for the 'last flight of the Martin Mars'! 🙂

David Taylor
Brill.

Mr D
Congratulations Roland 👏 well done.....you created a fine example, It's an engineering marvel and deserves recognition 😁.
"You can graduate to the Spurs Goose now" 🤣🤣
Nice 👌👍👍

Łukasz Gliński
Props for these "moving" props, they look fabulous! 👍

Taylor Durbon
The best spinning prop interpretation I've ever seen!

Skyhiker
Man Roland! I wish I could just whip out high quality models at your rate of speed. You really have a talent. Great job again!

Michael Kohl
Impressive result - and not just because of it's size. 🙂

Roland Sachsenhofer
Your feedback is a great pleasure- much appreciated by many, as I'm sure you can imagine!! I'm also pleased that the ''spinning props'' have been well received. I feel motivated- and will upload pictures of the Mars on your base soon.

Frank Brzobohaty
how did you do the spinning props?

Roland Sachsenhofer
Hello Frank! I use thin transparent film for this - these are transparent envelopes - and first cut them into the approximate shape I want. Then the tricky part begins: I very carefully spray dark colour (glossy black in this case) on one side, but really only very little.... I make sure to darken the inner core and then let the colour flow outwards and towards the tip. I orientate myself on the photographic effect of blurred, frozen rotating propellers.
After this step, I trim the outer edges again so that any dark colour on the narrow side of the film does not make the edge visually recognisable or emphasise it.
I have taken two pictures of leftover pieces, so you can also see how I attach the transparent props to a piece of Tamiya masking tape.

Roland Sachsenhofer
Now the big Martin Mars is actually finished today. I am very happy that this challenging kit made of fibreglass, resin and a little polystyrene has actually come to a Martin Mars-like appearance and has now left the workbench - on which there is suddenly a lot more space! 🙂 The rather brittle model felt surprisingly comfortable on the catwalk and also cuts a passable figure in close-up shots. Finally, I'll show you a few pictures from today's photo shoot.
Thank you very much for your time and interest and the many extremely helpful and motivating tips!

gorby
WOW! Outstanding result!

Nicolas
Congrats, Great result. 👍

Zbynek Honzik
Awesome result, Roland! And the propellers are a perfect idea!

Alex K
Again: WOW!

Robert Podkoński
Great!

Curatorm
Awesome...

Pietro De Angelis
Beautiful beast, dare I say majestic,
congratulations Roland, your work is as always incredible.

Neuling
I agree with Pietro. - In Ried war ich am Samstagnachmittag an Deinem Stand, konnte aber nur schöne Modelle, nicht aber deren Schöpfer, antreffen. Bei Deinem gutbesuchten Fotokurs habe ich Dich dann gesehen, wegen des Andrangs habe ich aber akustisch nichts mitbekommen.

Transall NG
Well, it should be fascinating in public exhibitions !
But i guess i missed something... Do you hold the kit by a wing for pictures over the water display, or do you use some powerful magnets inserted in the hull when you cut the cockpit canopy ???
I'm really puzzled !

Transall NG
Or anything else ???

Mr D
Looking great over the Water Rolland 👌
Not to many people got one of these... Enjoy 👍👍

Ronan
Very impressive result, Roland
Congrats 👍

Roland Sachsenhofer
Thank you very much for your feedback, which makes me happy and motivates me a lot! I confess, it makes me a little proud when I read these words - thank you for that.
Transall, please take a look at pictures 52, 53 and 54 to see how I put tie Mars in the air. The model is not only large, but also heavy, so this time it had to be two metal rods, which could not be too thin. I took the liberty of briefly retouching the rods in the remaining pictures.
Neuling, it's a pity we didn't meet in person in Ried! Something we should make up for when the opportunity arises. The model photography lecture/workshop was actually well attended, well, pictures of Martin Mars would have fitted the theme quite well 🙂
Das ist aber schade, dass wir uns in Ried nicht persönlich getroffen haben! Eine Sache, die wir bei passender Gelegenheit nachholen solten. Der Modellfotografie Vortrag/ workshop war tatsächlich gut besucht- die Bilder der Martin Mars hätten ganz gut zum Thema gepasst 🙂

Neuling
🙂

Łukasz Gliński
Outstanding beast Roland! Hope to see it live one day.
Thanks a mil for sharing the props' tutorial 👍 They do their job more than very well

Cuajete
Wow... I was speechless with the fantastic result of this majestic model and the great effect of the propellers in flight and the water at the base.

Like the rest of your works, this is a big job for such a difficult kit to deal with.

I love it!
Glückwunsch!

Nathan Dempsey
Beautiful result on this large and challenging kit!

Roland Sachsenhofer
Your words are generous - and very welcome and appreciated, for sure 🙂 I'm so glad you like Mars and thank you very much, mates!