Tony thats some major surgery! Was so looking forward to see you start this after you mentioned it earlier.Off to a great looking start, eagerly awaiting the next update! cheers Trey
Bit more progress on the second seat , and work has started on the cockpit tub ,starting with the mid bulkhead divider . The horns on the top of the cowling will be cut to size and mounted on them will be the clear glass wind deflector . There are lots of wires etc to be added to the tub as well as basic stuff that just isnt there-for example the throttle controls are totally absent! Until the cockpit is done I cant glue the front fuselage halves together , and that also depends on the work being done on the nose ring and intakes, and until both these are done I cant glue the front and rear fuselage sections -at which point I will finally be able to start fettling the twin seat cockpit frame . Obviously the order of construction is slowing this down a bit so apologies if it doesnt seem to be moving very fast. cheers tony
You say the fit of the seats was a fluke. I don't believe that at all. Have you noticed that the sportsmen who spend the most time developing and practising their skills seem to have the most luck?
Your seats went together so well because of your careful preparation and work.
The second seat is done at last, the fiddly home made seat harnesses took ages and sent me cross eyed!! Ive tried to give the seats a bit of variation so have positioned the belts slightly differently and have attached the headrest at a different angle as these were adjustable for different sized pilots. Ive also been adding scratchbuilt details to the cockpit tub. Like a lot of this kit the detail is simplified but basically accurate so its a good starting point.Lots of plastic card, copper wires , fuse wire , telephone cable, plastic rod and wine foil have spruced it up a bit so its now ready for painting. The Instrument panels are next to be done . cheers for looking Tony
Hi all , I'm back . Sorry Ian but as I said in my "apologies" post I didnt have a prayer of finishing this for the deadline. The combination of multiple household jobs plus a wedding (my sons) and the fact that the build turned out to be a LOT more involved than i first thought. I'm still going ahead though as Ive now got a bit more spare time. This build has also been a victim of TMI (too much information !) ,the excellent 4+ book being very comprehensively detailed . This meant that with all these photos of every area I couldnt just do half the job and had to detail everything as much as i could, which of course takes time. SO anyhoo heres where I'm at . The cockpit is done apart from the gunsight , coaming and clear dividing screen ,these all being sorted later to avoid being knocked off during the coming assembly/bashing.To the same end the seats and control columns will also be left out for the time being. The intake splitter has had the back edges extended using good old wine foil, to prevent being able to see the cockpit tub through the nose, and the nose ring has been filled and smoothed as it had a sharp lip on the inside. This means i can now glue the two front fuselage halves at last , meaning i can then move onto the upper canopy framing . Heres a few pics , cheers tony
Well its slowly starting to look like an aircraft instead of just a cockpit! The fuselage sections have all been glued together meaning i have finally been able to get the 2 seat canopy frame fettled and fitted. This should only need a smear of vallejo now and its all good. Ive also fitted the wings which needed a bit of plastic card shimming and a line of filler .The re-worked section under the nose that usually carries the 3 cannons has been left off for now as ive got to figure out how much lead I need to put in there (quite a bit i think !)On the subject of the wings I decided to have the flaps hanging down a bit . The kit supplies seperate flaps but theyre a bit one dimensional and the method of fixing them is wrong. The kit ones are just fastened at the back edge whereas the actual flaps slid on a curved track so when deployed they are halfway past the trailing edge.The kit parts arent that far off in detail just very simplified so to remedy this I added 26 tiny quarter circle segments to the wing section and drilled all the holes in the kit flap , thickening the front egdes and adding a new outer skin. once fixed halfway out and the actuating rods added they should look fine. heres some pics , cheers tony