What an impressive monster! But I am sure you‘ll build a wonderful model!
Andreas
It's colossal, a single engined, single bay biplane with a 15 metre wingspan! I really hope I can nail this one as a tribute to the illustrious Frenchmen and to repay the tremendous amount of help with research I have received.
I forgot to mention, a big part of the reason for setting the BE2c aside is that I have finally quit smoking and need to keep my hands and mind occupied. It being the weekend (a dangerous time) I made a start.
Due to limited space caused by my work place being littered with BE2c parts I decided to make the tail plane first. There was something I was keen to try too.
I cut the outline from styrene sheet then made 2 more progressively smaller shapes and stuck them together.
20230714_111958 by
Richard Williams, on Flickr
The same was done for the elevator flaps. To make life simple and help with symmetry I made this as a single length. The separate flaps will be cut out and shaped much later. It's a big single piece and harder to lose!
The steps were then fill with UV resin
20230715_094236 by
Richard Williams, on Flickr
With the elevators I was trying to achieve a thin trailing edge and the shape hinted at by the feint shadow halfway along the flap in this photograph. This is why the thickest styrene layer sits on top and ends at the midpoint from the cut out. This is where I am guessing a spar would be. Sorry for the rubbish little photo, if you can zoom in you might see what I mean!
lOiseauBanc by
Richard Williams, on Flickr
After curing, a spot of filing, sanding and a little filling later the elevator segment looked like this;
20230715_131656 by
Richard Williams, on Flickr
Much careful measuring and drafting onto 0.13mm styrene later the rib details were embossed with a ball point pen.
20230713_224414 by
Richard Williams, on Flickr
The top side only is skinned because the ribs do not tend to protrude on the lower wing surface surface of fabric covered wings, if anything I have noticed that the covering usually sags between the ribs.
I checked the symmetry of the wing tips by simply drawing round the wing, turning it over and drawing round it again. This revealed a little segment that needed refining.
20230714_231005 by
Richard Williams, on Flickr
A shot of car primer later shows nice thin trailing edges and very little more touching up to do.
20230715_192511 by
Richard Williams, on Flickr
That's as far as I got today. There was a lot of touching up and filling of dimples in the skin caused by too much solvent but it kept my hands occupied and my lungs smoke free. Best of all I've had great fun and feel very motivated by this aircraft and the mystery of where the last flight of Nungesser and Coli's ended.
Many thanks for looking in.
Richie