Drum roll please - Brrrrrrrrrrrrr - ta da
The fuselage is almost done - it needs a tail wheel cowl, filleting around the tail feathers and a good rub and buff.
There rear of the fuselage ends abruptly were it joins tothe Tail section. I did consider and in fact tried carving fillets but soone lost patience.
Phil Clark at Fighteraces (good lad and extremely helpful) pointed me down the direction of resin and microballoons to do the filleting. He has built the the A-24 Banshee which is basically the Army version of the Navy Dauntless and has given some excellent advice - top man Phil
I had read on RCMF Phil stocks an excellent resin which unlike the Ripmax SP XXX gloop Phil's resin differs in that it's alledgegly much easier to work with and sand. I am just waiting on my order of Microballoons and Resin before I confirm that is the case
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Fuse |
Stepping back a few months I will briefly run through the building of the fuse
After a few Red Wines - I crack open the crisp new plans I discovered I need a few more parts such as special hinges and bellcranks
Bellcranks from C.B Associates and a specialized miniture piano type hinge for the flaps and dive brakes from Nelson's Hobbies.
Just when I thought I had done my bit for the American economy I then discovered I also need a FG top gun cover from Jerry Bates.
Cracked on and made the built up tail feathers and covered them in light Solartex (to help me when it comes to detailing) as per the full size Dauntless having a canvas covering on the Tail arae and Ailerons - I exposed the the Trim Tabs on the elevator and Rudder - pretty straight forward in that dept.
One little trick I stole from another online build was to run a thin strip of balsa around the T.E of the Elevators and Rudder to allow the Solartex to grab onto - as you probably know and as I found out when building the Harvard, Solartex does not grab onto ply very well. If you put Balsaloc on that area the finish looks odd, with the thin Balsa strip the TE of the surfaces look more built up and better finish when using the Solartex
Did a dry run on framing up the fuselage and found the cut parts did not match the plan - basically the cut formers were a tad too small when lined them up with the crutch. I read somewhere to always build from the centre line - so after finding the centre on all the formers and ensuring they lined up with centre line on the plan - off I went
Once that was all done I then fitted the tail section.
I chose not to to the servo in the Stab to drive the Rudder thang but preferred the Pull -Pulll closed loop approach. To me it looked much neater
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CB |
Top Sheeting was pretty straight forward until I came to the rear under belly - lots of compound curves - not going to happen with sheeting - so with a steer from Dave and a blow by blow on planking from Mr Scale himself Dave Platt DVD - I went ahead and planked.
I was quite pleased with the result.
Moving down to the business end I added the air vents on the sides that was a bit tricky getting the curvature right
I then had to make two gun barrel covers out of very thin balsa. This achieved by cutting to length soaking the balsa in my "muti" of 50/50 water and Ammonia to get the balsa to flex, which with in turn wrapped around a dowel to get the right diameter and all held together with tape until dry.
The Ammonia gives one quite a nice buzz
almost as good as the wine
Once dry I thinned some epoxy with alcohol and coated the barrell covers with the thinned epoxy to make the them a lot more ridged.
I have ordered a Dummy Radial and two Pilots from Frank Tiano and will pick it at Top Gun, much cheaper than buying it here
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guns |
I mentioned earlier the FG Top Gun cover was like rocking horse poop so beinga right Planker I decided to plank instead - hmmmmm
Not easy, if you look carefully at the pic you will see the two guns which has two bumps which run almost all the way back to the cockpit, navigatiing around those was a bit of swine.
With some sanding and Squaron Green Putty I think I have almost got it.
I must say I am very impressed with Squadron Green Putty it smells like Wigley's Juicey Fruit Gum and sands beautifully only down side is the dust from the sanding tends to stain the surrounding Balsa
I have built the centre section of the wing.
The Plan calls for Bellcranks to drive everything - but with my bad experince with my first Harvard ending up as a Lawn Dart on it's Maiden I have decide to go for 6Kg 6v servo's of which there are 7 in the wing to drive the indivual surfaces. I will need a JR Matchbox to do the servo reversing of the Flaps and to get them to deploy evenly
2x Ailerons 2x Dive Brakes & 3x for the Flaps oh yes and one small one to drive the air valves for the retracts.
Yep it will add al ittel extra weight but remeber this is warbird not a air chewing aerobatic model , they flew very slowly, climbed to height then dropped a whacking great 1000Lb bomb on the un-suspecting Jap then tootled off into the sunset muttering something about Pearl Harbour.
I have completed the centre section of the wing - pics to follow. I must say I am now a Superphatic convert.
Apart from the no smell and all the Museli muching, Jesus sandal wearing, knitted jumper, girly stuff
unlike Cyno, if you make a cock up you can get it off.
The Plans have the wing braces in the wrong way
which I only discovered after I happened to be browsing the Online build. Fortunately SuperPhatic does not dry as quickly as Cyno - I think you have 20 minute window and then good night Vienna.
The Building shed had a blue mist descend as I quickly swopped them the right way around. Delighted with myself I sat back and let everything cure. The next morning I discovered the one wing brace was not properly seated and was sitting a bit proud.
I discovered if you are gentle with the scalpel it is relatively easy to remove the offending part and re glue. SuperPhatic tends to have rubbery consistency when dry as opposed to Cyno which is rock hard. I have seen the light, praise the Lord
just kidding
In keeping with the scale look - The Dauntless features Freis ailerons, hinged at the bottom, and with a curved aileron (apart from yet more grey hairs) trying to think how to get the hinges at the right point to allow the aileron to swing up and down.
I also had a chat with Mick Reeves regarding the Pro Skin to sheet the wings - on reflection I think I will stick with what I know.
Pro Skin is great stuff but when it comes to compound curves and joints na - balsa is much better.
Anyway World of Warcraft is sucking up my bandwidth making posting a pain - I will continue my build in more detail tomorrow
