Greyhead

Well the Indian summer continues, I’m glad to say, with the result that the instrument panel is far more advanced than I thought it would be. To finish off the left hand side all that’s required is the petrol selector.

The first job is to turn a knob; no lathe being available I used my Dremmel and a couple of needle files.




The knob is glued to a cocktail stick for easy handling during the preparation and to use as a spigot when gluing to the panel itself.




Once again the back plate is a simple printout glued to 1/64th ply.



The term instrument panel seems a bit of a misnomer; of the 5 “instruments” on this side of the panel only 2 are what I would call instruments but it has certainly made for an interesting build so far.

The small plastic rings added to the temperature and air pressure gauges came from my “useful items” box; these were originally from an electric toothbrush and are used to identify the different heads, I’ve been collecting them for years and just knew they’d come in one day! To try to explain what a difference these small additions make I’d used words like “convincing” and “realistic” but I think Barry’s description “come alive” really says it all.

Here’s another shot of the panel that shows how the acetate sheet in front of the dials brings the whole lot “alive”.

wonwinglo

Grahame,nice work with the improvised lathe,and why not ? for anyone who wants to have a go at making model instruments your techniques are inspirational,the office is a model in itself,nice photography as well,thank you.

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'And there I was oil on my goggles from a broken pipe,then I looked at the altimeter,all I could see was the makers name !'
www.wonwinglo.scale-models.net/

rjwood_uk

absolutly amazing!! those dials do look sooo realistic. i could not get a picture of scale in my head but once you mentioned the plastic rings from the eletric toothrushes i knew exactly how big these dials where.

..and now i am even more impressed!

keep up the lovely work!

Bunkerbarge

Beautifull Grahame, a work of art in itself and a model in its own right.

Your aircraft is going to become a collection of such masterpeices and will be stunning when finished.

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“Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days"

Greyhead

The rear spars don’t go through the fuselage, they are just keyed into the ply ribs, the inner one has a doubler for the rear section. I had been a little concerned that this might weaken the wing stubs too much but with the 1/64th ply covering tying everything together they’re as solid as a rock



The slot is for the rear flying wires, which pass through the wing stubs into the fuselage. As these will have to be threaded through each time the model is rigged I will eventually build in some form of guide tubes but I’ll leave this until the model is test rigged before covering to ensure they’re in the correct position.

This underside photo shows the hole through which the wires enter the fuselage; it will have a piano wire “bearing” to prevent the wires cutting into the fuselage side.




The snake outer for the aileron control is securely attached with a few wraps of carbon fibre tows.

And finally a thank you to everyone for the positive feedback, it certainly encourages me to continue taking the photos and writing the posts. Not that I need all that much encouragement; I find it very useful to recap on the build, I quite often think of a better way to do things so it helps to generate new ideas for the next model.

wonwinglo

One of the things that I quickly learned with my Parnall Elf,was the fiddly assembly threading wire pins etc to fix the wings in place,biplanes to remain functional need plenty of planning right at the very early stages of construction,as shown here.
There are so many things to consider and the easiest solutions are usually the best ones as you have proven.
I am amazed how this model is coming along leaps and bounds !
As for the support,this is the very least that we can do to thank you for the continued detailed coverage of your lovely S.E.5A.

__________________
'And there I was oil on my goggles from a broken pipe,then I looked at the altimeter,all I could see was the makers name !'
www.wonwinglo.scale-models.net/

Greyhead

The cabane struts need cladding, for this I’ve used 3 layers of 1/16th balsa glued together “cross grain”.



They are attached to the struts with 5-minute epoxy, sanded to a streamlined shape, filled and then sanded again.

Before gluing to the struts I decided to add another pin just to be on the safe side! (SE5a CONSTRUCTION BEGINNING TO . . .)





The top decking from the tank cover to the rear of the cockpit and cladding of the rear cabane struts can’t be done until the instrument panel and all the controls etc. are fitted so it’s time to continue with the rear fuselage. As I mentioned before the rear fuselage is made from 1/8th square spruce and as such is very light but quite fragile, all the joints have had biscuits added which strengthens things up considerably but it was still very flexible.

Flexible is good if you hit something solid, things bend not break; but flexible isn’t so good if it allows the fin and tail plane to move relative to the wings! On the full size they used wire braces but button thread will suffice for a model.



Each section has a cross of thread; the very rear sections will be done after the fin and tail plane mounting is completed. The thread is locked with a drop of cyano at the corners and cross over points; and then given a coat of shrinking dope to finally tighten everything up.



The rear fuselage is now solid and hopefully any too heavy landing will break an easily replaceable thread and not a longeron!

Incidentally that is why the side coverings are laced, for easy removal / replacement during repairs and maintenance.

wonwinglo

And you will be surprised how much strength that internal rigging gives as well,the longerons on a full sized machine are quite frail until braced with swaged piano wire.
The pins on the strut cladding is a wise decision,how many times has the cladding migrated in flight on models ? they just seem to want to twist around.
Those struts really finish things off nicely.
At this rate Grahame you will have her flying by Christmas !

__________________
'And there I was oil on my goggles from a broken pipe,then I looked at the altimeter,all I could see was the makers name !'
www.wonwinglo.scale-models.net/

Greyhead

Barry

I first realised how much strength is imparted by button thread bracing when building the Elf wing (Another Parnall Elf); that was one thread were as this is a real “cat’s cradle”.

Cladding around metal always seems to move; well mine does anyway! The first pin was primarily to stop this but I decided that another pin through the joint for the top tube wouldn’t go amiss.

As for flying by Christmas, if you mean Christmas 2008 you might be about right!

Greyhead

The right hand side of the instrument panel wasn’t such a challenge.

The 3 dials are just “variations on a theme” and and with 2 being bigger made things that much easier, the hand pump is a .22 cartridge with spruce handle and the flight plan holder is simply printed out twice and assembled decoupage style.



I quite like the “broken glass “ on the oil pressure gauge; a purely accidental scratch but I think very effective and true to life!

Metal panels have in the past caused me problems, but the method I devised for the air pump selector back plate has worked equally as well for the brass identification plate. That is reversing the image, printing it onto a transparency and painting the back with metallic paint; it certainly looks brass and not yellow

The complete panel. Just the compass needed before fitting to the model.