Another Macchi!

[mammut08]

Hi All,

I thought I would join the fun with my HPH Macchi build. I thought this might be fun, since Des has started his assemble sequence in a different place from mine. HPH have treated us to one of the most elegant aircraft of the Great War and for the most part the kit is very nicely presented. The hull is a wonderful casting and has some very fine detail. All in all, I am looking forward to putting this one together.

I am assembling, test fitting, and modifying all of the major components as necessary before I move on to detail parts, gluing or painting. For all intents, I intend to completely build the model, then disassemble it, paint and then glue. To do so I have constructed a couple of jigs from foam core.

This first photo shows the jig that will aid in aligning all of the major components. It will grow and be modified as needed as I work through the test fit sequence.



Here is my jig for building the engine supports and associated struts. I have been experimenting with several different alignment strategies, so it looks a little messy. The holes in the engine bearers are for pins to hold everything together. I suspect that this part of the assembly will be the crux of the build and crucial to getting the upper wings to sit properly on the rest of the airframe. I may decide to fabricate a new set out of brass. We will see what happens with the kit pieces first.



A couple of observations for those building this kit. First, the lower vertical tail plane/hull (its a boat, yes?) from my example has a slight (about 3-4 degree) twist just before the tail. This might not seem like much, but it is noticeable when the horizontal stabilizer is attached. I may try and fix this, I may not. Second, the lower wings do not sit flush with the fuselage and leave a large gap. I have fixed this (see below) by recessing the rear wing root for each lower wing.



This in itself is an easy, three minute, fix. However, I am taking a risk here in that doing so moves the mounting points for the main wing struts back and towards the hull a couple of millimeters. Depending on how the kit was designed to be assembled (it could be that I was supposed to just fill the gaps, and I have put the upper an lower wings out of alignment) my solution may or may not have been the right one. Time will tell. I will keep my fingers crossed.

Thanks for looking,

Dave

[coyotemagic]

Welcome aboard, Dave!  What a brilliant introduction.  I'm looking forward to following your build.
Cheers,
Bud

[radio]

Good start Dave.
Martin

[lcarroll]

Dave,   
    Very thorough approach to the basic assembly; I'm a great fan of simple jigs as well and I like your ideas here. I'll be following your progress closely, good luck with the alignment concerns.
Cheers,
Lance

[Des]

Hello Dave. Glad to see another M.5 being built, this will now give me something to follow, looking forward to seeing your progress with this build.

Des.

[RAGIII]

Welcome aboard, Dave!  What a brilliant introduction.  I'm looking forward to following your build.
Cheers,
Bud

I agree with my Amigo! Brilliant Intro indeed!
RAGIII

[mammut08]

Hi All,

Thank you for the warm reception. I look forward to this build. I do want to echo some of the impressions voiced in Des' thread. Some of the components of this kit are outstanding - wings and hull, while others are lacking in detail. I think also that we are going to find that the fit issues Des is finding with the engine components are going to be endemic with the kit, but then that is half the fun, yes?

Best,

Dave

[Des]

A little bit of scratch building or modifications to existing parts adds a lot of enjoyment to building a kit, but it does really make me wonder how they can get some parts so wrong, or don't even add some important parts. I'm looking forward to seeing you build your model Dave, it will be interesting to see how the remainder of the parts fit.

Des.

[ermeio]

I will follow with interest

[stefanbuss]

It will be interesting to compare those two builds (and their share of problem areas).

I like the jig-approach you used.

Stefan

[mammut08]

Hi All,

Its been a while, but I had some time to work on my Macchi this weekend. Below are a couple of photos as it sits today - next up will be markings and then a final post shade. I scribed some panel lines and the wood grain was painted using RB Productions wood grain stencils - I love those things!. It looks like I now need to add a fuel filler cap as well .

I would like to throw the following up for discussion. I would like to suggest that both of the color schemes are incorrect as identified by HPH. After spending some time with the Windsock Datafile, I think that the upper hull both in front of and immediately behind the pilot should be unfinished aluminum for M 7288 and dark green, matching the rest of the upper surfaces, for M 13083. Unless I miss read the information in the Datafile, M 13083 is most likely wrong, as HPH show these areas as natural wood and, best I can tell, they were in fact aluminum.





Thanks for looking and everyone keep up the good work.

Dave

[ermeio]

Very nice, Dave!
I like the wooden effect .

[KitRookie37]

Hello gentlemen and ladies,
Yes, Macchi in stereo, what a very good idea. Great!!!
Best regards.
Alain.

[Pgtaylorart]

Looking great, Dave! That's some pretty nice wood and aluminum.

George

[GAJouette]

  Dave,
Beautiful works my friend.I'm looking forward to following along and seeing your process of construction. One can never have enough Macchi's.
Highest Regards,
Gregory Jouette