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Originally Posted by Greyhead This is one of my all time favourite aeroplanes, and model. I built it back in 1997/8 before I went digital so unfortunately no construction photos, just a quick talk through some of the “interesting” building methods used.
It took several trips to use the school photocopier to enlarge the 1/72 nd scale 3 view to the 54" span I’d decided would be suitable for the Laser 70. The problem with using a photocopier is the thickness of the outline increases so a new “plan” with thin lines has to be traced after only a modest enlargement and the process repeated but I hope you’ll agree the end result is most pleasing. 
The fuselage is a simple girder box using 1/4" square spruce longerons with balsa cross braces. 5 sets of formers were fitted, nose, wheel attachment points, front of fin/tail plane and fuselage rear, to give the correct circular section with polystyrene blocks glued in-between. The fuselage was then shaped using rough sandpaper, this must be the messiest modelling job I’ve ever done; the polystyrene “dust” sticks to everything (static electricity?)! Individual panels of Obechi veneer were then attached with “wing skinning” adhesive.
The wing construction was rather unusual but works well, in fact an SE5a I previously built using this method is now on it’s 4th owner and still flying regularly. The top main spar is 1/2" x1/8" balsa with 1/8" square spruce glued top and bottom and faced on one side with 1/64" ply, the lower wing has a thinner section so used smaller balsa. Polystyrene aerofoil sections, cut with a hot wire bow, are glued in front and behind the spar then balsa leading and trailing edges added. Then “false” ribs from 1/16" square balsa glued in place and excess polystyrene from spar to LE and spar to TE removed, again using the hot wire bow, to allow the covering to sag
The spinner is made from fibreglass and the entire Litho plate covered cowl is removable for easy access to the radio gear and engine.
Next post will be about flying the model and this is where the title will be explained! |
*** She is a beauty Grahame,your fuselage construction is perfectly practical for this type of full size structure,the originals were built by top class furniture craftsmen,a practise repeated with the Mosquito in WW.2.
A very sleek biplane for its day and your model certainly captures the graceful lines.
Regarding your wing construction I used a similar method on a DH.71 monoplane,once covered you would never know there was no conventional structure underneath,the torsional strength is superior to the normal thin section built up wings.