wonwinglo
SMF Supporter
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 6,754
- Points
- 113
- First Name
- Barry
ISSUE 90-Brackets for the guns.
This weeks issue deals with assembling the guns to the cross members,this would have been a fairly simple task had the parts that have been supplied been fit for the purpose,but no surprises they are not so we need to do a lot more work to get things to fit properly,for a start the cross bars are far too short and no way will they reach the longerons,Hachette state 'Do not worry if the fuselage seems too wide-we will correct this later' sorry Hacheete I do not trust this statement as the fuselage sides are and should be perfectly vertical,any attempt to pull them in would end in disaster and be incorrect,what is needed is for the correct length of bars in the first place ! to this end we have two choices 1/ to lengthen the existing bars which is what I have done here or, 2/ better still throw them away and make them from brass tube,the latter would be far the easiest thing to do under the circumstances as they are too large a diameter anyway,and why are they made oval anyway ? my remarks here are scathing but once again we have been let down with faulty and incorrectly sized components something we have lived with over the past 22 months.
So lets start with something easy,and that is marking out and drilling the tiny block of wood that is used to locate the rudder bar at the lower end on the floorboard-
To locate the centre of the tiny wooden block draw two lines,where they intersect drill a suitable hole carefully to locate the lower portion of the rudder pedals.
If you have pre-varnished the floor then remove a portion where the block fits before glueing into place onto the floor and over the respective hole.
Here we are locating the rudder bar support rod into the re-inforced hole in the floor,the piece at the top lays across and between the upper longerons,well it should do except it is too short,it has already been ground to fit through the hole at the top of the bar.
Here we see both upper cross bars which have been reworked to include brass tube either end,do a trial fit until they are flush with the outside of the longerons,then file halfway through the tube so they fit across the longerons themselves,bending them slightly upwards will adjust the height of the guns,once you are happy with the modifications you can epoxy them onto the rods.
Due to the extra thickness of the tube the two upper moon shaped pieces need to have the slots reworked with a round file in order that they fit snugly,better still do yourself a favour and ditch the rods supplied and make new ones from brass tube,this will solve a lot of problems.
The assembly here is easily lifted out to allow any work underneath,note also beware of opening out the guns as shown in the instructions,the gun as shown is nothing like the one supplied with our model,I used a small reamer to open the hole,but be careful as the metal is very brittle and there is not much meat in that area.
My middle wing has a mod so that it bolts into place,the cut outs was an attempt to attach the silly and inpractical brackets for locating the middle wing.
Once again we have had to resort to extra and unecessary work on this model because of the poor standard of parts supplied,next week we get the upper shroud for fitting above the nose,lets hope that it fits as it will be difficult to do much about it if it does not !
The bracket to hold the tachometer seen here on the port side has still to be dealt with,the tacho on the real machine did not stick out like this but is mounted snug against the fuselage side,there is no way that something like this would interfere with the control column of any aircraft.
Well 10 more issues to go and a lot of parts are still missing that we need to complete the Red Baron.
This weeks issue deals with assembling the guns to the cross members,this would have been a fairly simple task had the parts that have been supplied been fit for the purpose,but no surprises they are not so we need to do a lot more work to get things to fit properly,for a start the cross bars are far too short and no way will they reach the longerons,Hachette state 'Do not worry if the fuselage seems too wide-we will correct this later' sorry Hacheete I do not trust this statement as the fuselage sides are and should be perfectly vertical,any attempt to pull them in would end in disaster and be incorrect,what is needed is for the correct length of bars in the first place ! to this end we have two choices 1/ to lengthen the existing bars which is what I have done here or, 2/ better still throw them away and make them from brass tube,the latter would be far the easiest thing to do under the circumstances as they are too large a diameter anyway,and why are they made oval anyway ? my remarks here are scathing but once again we have been let down with faulty and incorrectly sized components something we have lived with over the past 22 months.
So lets start with something easy,and that is marking out and drilling the tiny block of wood that is used to locate the rudder bar at the lower end on the floorboard-
To locate the centre of the tiny wooden block draw two lines,where they intersect drill a suitable hole carefully to locate the lower portion of the rudder pedals.
If you have pre-varnished the floor then remove a portion where the block fits before glueing into place onto the floor and over the respective hole.
Here we are locating the rudder bar support rod into the re-inforced hole in the floor,the piece at the top lays across and between the upper longerons,well it should do except it is too short,it has already been ground to fit through the hole at the top of the bar.
Here we see both upper cross bars which have been reworked to include brass tube either end,do a trial fit until they are flush with the outside of the longerons,then file halfway through the tube so they fit across the longerons themselves,bending them slightly upwards will adjust the height of the guns,once you are happy with the modifications you can epoxy them onto the rods.
Due to the extra thickness of the tube the two upper moon shaped pieces need to have the slots reworked with a round file in order that they fit snugly,better still do yourself a favour and ditch the rods supplied and make new ones from brass tube,this will solve a lot of problems.
The assembly here is easily lifted out to allow any work underneath,note also beware of opening out the guns as shown in the instructions,the gun as shown is nothing like the one supplied with our model,I used a small reamer to open the hole,but be careful as the metal is very brittle and there is not much meat in that area.
My middle wing has a mod so that it bolts into place,the cut outs was an attempt to attach the silly and inpractical brackets for locating the middle wing.
Once again we have had to resort to extra and unecessary work on this model because of the poor standard of parts supplied,next week we get the upper shroud for fitting above the nose,lets hope that it fits as it will be difficult to do much about it if it does not !
The bracket to hold the tachometer seen here on the port side has still to be dealt with,the tacho on the real machine did not stick out like this but is mounted snug against the fuselage side,there is no way that something like this would interfere with the control column of any aircraft.
Well 10 more issues to go and a lot of parts are still missing that we need to complete the Red Baron.