Waiting for the glue to set etc. whilst building the wing stubs gave me the opportunity to make the air pump selector; I chose this for no other reason than it connects to the regulator that I’ve already made, but before I go into the construction some general thoughts on instrument panels.
Having a good quality photo of the finished item is very useful and it might seem reasonable to scale the photo appropriately and stick that to the panel but I assure you it would look terrible. Take for example the regulator that I made earlier, it looks completely different from the front, side and top and there are an infinite number of variations between these extremes. A photo is 2 dimensional; our brains compensate to some degree when looking at a photo but put one into a “real” situation, such as a model’s cockpit and it looks just what it is flat! There are also shadows that move dependent upon the viewing angle; a very basic 3 dimensional representation will always look far more convincing than the most detailed photo.
The selector consists of 2 parts, the dial and the lever, so the first thing is to separate these, I do all the manipulation using Adobe Photoshop but I’m sure any photo editing software will do the job. There is an instant problem, some of the wording is missing, so failing more information I’ll make an educated guess and I think it is reasonable to assume that it is “FROM ENGINE & HAND PUMP”. Although I’m sure nobody will actually read the dial I feel that if at all possible the wording should be correct.
From the photo the dial is obviously aluminium, the illusion is created by the use of differing shades to simulate reflections, but once again these won’t work in real life. In the past I’ve used plain grey but it never looked very realistic, so this time I tried a different method and I’m really pleased with the results. I changed the grey to white, which of course doesn’t print out, reversed the image and printed it onto a transparency, when it was completely dry I painted the back with silver Solalac.
I had 3 failures before I managed to cut one good enough, this was then stuck onto 1/64th ply.
I had intended to use the lever as in “decoupage” pictures but it was too fiddlely to work with in paper so I made the lever from shim brass, a 2mm washer and a dress makers pin, all painted silver, the spindle is a 14BA bolt and a brass nut.
The backing is a simple disc of 1/8th balsa with some copper wire and brass tube .
The finished selector.
Another shot.
Notice the shadow has moved to the opposite side of the lever.
2 down, a lot more to go!!