forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com
Forum Archive Storage => Des Delatorre International Memorial Group Build => Topic started by: Bluesfan on February 12, 2019, 09:02:38 AM
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I've had this kit in my stash for a very long while. I stalled initially after finding out about the fuselage error; I'm not usually too fussy, but this entailed quite a visible difference. Later I picked up Brian Fawcett's resin replacement fuselage. And now, this group build has given me the motivation to get it made. Like everyone else I'm humbly grateful for what Des achieved, not just in creating this forum, but in the inspiration offered by his own models, and in the way he made this a great place to come.
I plan to build Collishaw's N5492, a single gun machine. As well as the replacement fuselage, I'm using Pheon's decal sheet for the Triplane.
Naturally I don't have WNW's Collishaw figure but I will probably include the Tommy's War naval rating, and time permitting, Roden's 1:35 RNAS Rolls Royce. And a dog. It'll be a sad day if I can't include a canine friend in a vignette.
I'm unlikely to be able to make much progress until after a hockey-watching trip in April, but we'll see.
Cheers!
Mark
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Great selection of items selected Mark. Hope you have enough time to get to the RR. Best of luck.
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Mark,
Glad to see someone take a crack at Roden's Tripe. The best of luck to you in this GB my friend.
Highest Regards,
Gregory Jouette
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Nice choice, looking forward for progress.
Ciao
Giuseppe
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Good to see a Roden kit represented in the GB. Looking forward to your progress.
RAGIII
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Yes, good to see a Roden kit here.
I have only built one Roden kit before. The gray plastic was very soft, in fact the softest plastic of any kit I have built. Does this kit also have soft plastic? Is that typical of Roden kits?
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Hi p9o1r1sche - About the softness of the plastic: I know what you mean, though I've never found it a problem. It varies. I've just opened the pack and checked, and I would say I've encountered softer plastic than this in one or two other Roden kits. For me, the test is how easy it is to drill through the wings, and these might test my little hand drill somewhat.
At the other end of the scale, I once built one of their 1:48 Gloster Gladiators, which features very solid wings, and dense plastic, and I broke several drill bits on that kit!
Mark
...The gray plastic was very soft, in fact the softest plastic of any kit I have built. Does this kit also have soft plastic? Is that typical of Roden kits?
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Wow, I've never seen that warning before - "This topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days....etc."
Well I do indeed want to post. The truth is, I'm an inveterate last-minuter, and here begins the race for the line.
I can report that I've been up to a few things, in the way of preparation and research. For starters, here are a couple of engines, Clerget for the Triplane, and Rolls-Royce for the Armoured Car. I probably spent more time on them than was merited, since the rear of the Clerget won't be visible and the Rolls engine won't be visible at all. That one was very fiddly indeed. I'm quite pleased with the Clerget although it seems it should have had two spark plugs per cylinder; I've lazily left it as is. But I'm happy to say this is the first time I've ever wired up an engine. That's the great thing about this forum, constantly making you think about raising your game :)
I can also report regarding that hockey watching trip that 'my' team made it to the final only to lose out thanks to a dodgy VAR decision in overtime >:(
Cheers
Mark
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Sorry to hear that your team loss, but glad to see you back on this project. :D
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Nice work on the engines! I am looking forward to your frenzied pace build ;D
RAGIII
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Engines look super !
Terri
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Thanks for the comments, much appreciated!
But here's something not so great, so I'll get it out of the way, that I've decided not to use the replacement fuselage.
I was well up for this, after reading all about the error with the Roden Triplane fuselage. The consensus was that 6mm had to be accounted for, and that the error may have been derived from the prototype having been shorter than the production planes.
Brian Fawcett did a brilliant job of providing a replacement fuselage, incorporating several other improvements thanks to his being a nifty sculptor. The fuselage latticework is especially pleasing compared to Roden's vaguer rendering.
IIRC this was all just before WNW's Triplane appeared, and I guess not so many of the Roden version have sold since then. But I had it, along with the resin fuselage, stashed away until now.
When I compared the two fuselages, I was stupefied. If you look at the picture, you can see why. Yes, the Roden fuselage is the grey one.
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The resin fuselage appears to be shorter than the injected moulded one in almost every dimension, even top to bottom through the cross section - see the top view in the image below. The only measurement which is longer can be seen in the lower shot, going from the back of the top decking to the tail; and that doesn't seem to be the full 6mm.
I found some old comparison pictures by James Fahey on (I think) the Large Scale Modellers forum, which are very clear, and very different from what I'm seeing with my purchase. His Brian Fawcett fuselage was obviously longer than the Roden one. It seems to be a different colour resin, too. Do some resins shrink? I'm frankly ignorant about resin, I think I've only previously worked with it for figures.
Oh well, win some, lose some. I don't fancy messing about with cutting out some 'nice' resin sections and trying to make them fit with the Roden fuselage, it'd be asking for trouble. And a small point of detail is that, on looking closely at photos, Roden does seem to have moulded the correct style of stitching. I will at least gain one improvement; Brian Fawcett's fuel pump, very visible on the Triplane, is much more nicely rendered. :D
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Really odd about the Resin Fuselage. I found a build log using the search engine and the fuselage sure does "Look" to be different than yours.
https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=1853.msg30110#msg30110
Either way I am sure you will produce a beautiful triplane!
RAGIII
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Thanks Rick, I'd be curious to know what happened with the resin pieces, but when all's said and done, I'm okay with using the original fuselage for this project - after all, I'm mixing 1/32 and 1/35 scales in the scene and presumably a few millimeters will be going amiss there as well.
Cheers
Mark
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Blimey, nearly a month since I updated this, sorry - not that great at this build log thing. Anyway, here are a handful of recent snaps to show that 'something' has been happening. FWIW I still expect to beat the deadline, even if a stopwatch is required. Almost a fortnight left? Loads of time! :)
The first one shows Roden's approach to the wire wheels on the RR Armoured Car kit. They offer four of those formers in fact, for the various wire discs. The whole building operation was mildly stressful(!) but overall I think the end result was worth it. Good for Roden, really, because it was only the early 1914 version of the AC which employed wire wheels, but they put a decent effort into them.
Second pic: the Triplane's propeller, for which I've managed a fair 'woody' look which'll do for me.
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First pic here: work so far on fin and rudder. I'm a little dubious about the fit as per the instruction sheet, but I'm sure it'll all be okay in the end...
A minor note: you can just see a small black dot at the top/front of the fin. They often don't bother to mould anything there, on the Triplane and other contemporary types, but I've noticed from photos that rather than running through the edge of the fin, support wires often went through a small extension of the vertical post, so I've placed a tiny piece there to suit.
Also (sadly) the fin will indeed be green, because this is supposed to represent Collishaw's earlier machine. I gather he only painted the fin black on his two gun machine.
Second: the underside at an early stage. Yes, I've had a go at filling some very noticeable sink holes! I'm generally quite forgiving of sink marks, but in this case... wow.
And now I look at it again, and despite all the double checking I did, I'm wondering again (this being a single gun machine) if I actually removed the correct shell case chute... Yes, I did :)
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I'm not doing myself any favours showing this pic - here's my Triplane's instrument panel. Honestly, it doesn't look too bad at normal size; and the random mix of natural and room lighting, and the reflections on the dials, probably didn't help. But consider this a public service. The intention here is to show what others have no doubt considered doing when no instrument decals are provided. Before now, I've sometimes rendered the dials with a few simple dashes of black or white, depending on the background, and even in 1/32 scale it can be okay (for me!) if the panel isn't too prominent or visible. However, I decided in this case to see what would happen if I found some photos of Triplane instrument panels and printed the dials out to scale size.
Here's the result. I don't think I'll do this again, decals are obviously always going to look better. But it was kind of interesting, especially while researching, and observing how different individual panels could be between different machines.
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And finally for today, here's the chassis of the Rolls-Royce Armoured Car 1914 pattern.
I think it looks great, even as I start to twitch nervously at the thought of ever building one of these again.
Like so many of the vehicles of the era, the chassis is extraordinarily complicated. I'm not sure Roden could have done anything to make it easier, but we'll find out soon, because I believe somebody else (Meng?) are bringing out their own 1/35 scale R-R Armoured Car.
Of course, most of this will be invisible under the armour. I'm hoping that the rest of the kit will be much more straightforward (famous last words).
But the best bit, those wire wheels, will still be gloriously on show :)
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Great to see some progress on this one. As for the panel your level of satisfaction is what counts! The chassis for the car looks great!
RAGIII
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Both projects seem to be moving along well.
Steve
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Thanks Both!
Pic - this may seem like a distraction at this stage, and in fact this fellow will only appear if I find the time to paint him.
I picked him up ages ago, and will include him in the scene even if that's after the deadline because I haven't any other suitable RNAS project. He's the Naval Division rating from Tommy's War. When I got him I don't think anyone had produced any obviously Naval personnel in 1/32. It's kind of annoying to me that since then we've had quite a few, but only officers. Unless of course you count the rather good personnel Copper State have produced for their Lanchester AC. Sometime I might add one of those to this scene, sitting in the back of the Rolls-Royce.
However, there might be somewhat of a scale issue. The Tommy's War figure is a good 6cm tall, which scales up to 6 foot 3 or 4. Ah well, not impossible, but...
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Nearly there on this one.
A little cross with myself that the issue of tire colour slipped my mind earlier, until it popped up on another thread last week. It's an interesting topic; as far as this model is concerned, I recognise that it's unlikely that the car would have had tires as dark as this. But I'll leave them as they are, partly because I'd end up with a very grey model indeed if I tried (a very messy!) repaint.
The interior is fairly basic. I have 'suggested' some instruments on the bare board provided with some dabs of paint ;)
Mark
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Your car is looking terrific! Great progress.
RAGIII
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I like the black tires, looking excellent so far Mark :)
Terri
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Thanks for looking in! :)
Here's the complete Rolls-Royce Armoured Car 1914 pattern. I hope it'll make a final appearance next week in the intended scene along with the Sopwith Triplane.
Work proceeds also on that front, it's just been hard to take worthwhile pictures, but that will change over the next few days.
I'm sure everyone finds themselves facing unexpected obstacles at times. Currently I'm being slowed down by the heat, which is making painting (with acrylics) a bit of a struggle.
As for the Triplane, it really is the oddest aircraft. I mean, the rigging isn't that complicated, but it is weird. Those double wires passing through the leading edge of the middle wing... And all those drag wires...
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A couple more.
Pity about the silvering. Those decals look so simple, don't they? But they were hell to deploy. I had to cut the large R.N.A.S. ones into several pieces, because there was no way they were going to settle over the pronounced rivets etc. And they did break up in places - I know Roden decals have a poor rep but in this case it was down to my necessarily rough handling. I'm okay with the end result.
The interior is even murkier than I expected; maybe I should have left the roof hatch open.
Anyway, I love the suitably naval look of this vehicle in battleship grey :)
Cheers
Mark
PS Those familiar with this kit will wonder where the flag is. Well, I suspect it's not appropriate for 1917 - and yes I know that in reality by then the car would probably have been sent to Macedonia or the desert but never mind. However, the practical reason is that the large white ensign is provided as a decal and I'm certain that there would have been no practical way to make it look vaguely realistic. Assuming it stayed in one piece. All I could think of was maybe photocopying it onto a suitable grade of paper, and then seeing if one could give it a rag-like texture. No, too much effort for marginal reward I reckoned.
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Lovely Armored car! Can't see the silvering but I will take your word ::) I am looking forward to the triplane pics and final scene!
RAGIII
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Really nice job on the armour car 8)
Terri
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The armoured car looks good and does remind one of a battleship.
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Another bulletin from the battlefront...
Fraid it's somewhat messy in there, in the Triplane's cockpit. It's true that I tend to deliver glue via the proverbial garden hose; and as you may guess from these two pics, I had intended to include some token internal rigging but forgot before I stuck together the side and the floor-lower wing piece. So I'm sort of pleased that I managed to insert some rigging after the fact. Thanks to blobs of superglue and cocktail sticks. (Does anyone else regard cocktail sticks as essential modeller's tools?)
But look at that odd strut behind the seat in the first pic. Definitely something wrong there. I've done a lot of staring at Datafile plans as well as photos and the WNW and Roden instructions, trying to figure out all sorts of odd features of the Triplane cockpit. I think what we're seeing there is part of the fallout from the fuselage length debacle with this kit. So, in the second pic, it's still visible thanks to the lighting, but I painted over it and the rigging now makes sense. Thank goodness it'll be less visible once the top decking goes on :)
I hadn't tried those HGW fabric belts before - they're very nice, though not cheap.
Cheers,
Mark
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Your interior is looking great. Nice save on going back and doing the interior rigging!
RAGIII
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Inching forward... At last, it's beginning to look like a plane :)
Hmm. It just doesn't have enough wings yet, for our tastes, does it?
I love the big black look of that front end.
Mark
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A couple of details.
The first one to show what I was aiming for with that instrument panel, in place, with that kind of visibility. And the dials look like dials :)
The second, very interesting to me after a lot of time spent puzzling over the tail assembly. It seemed to me as if the fin and tailplane and fuselage couldn't possibly fit together. And they are fiddly. But examining pictures of the real thing, it's clear that the Triplane did have visible gaps between these parts.
The plastic pieces joined up surprisingly well in the end. It'll look great with the rigging (hopefully).
Mark
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Panel and Rudder look great in place. Keep hammering away 8)
RAGIII
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Good evening. More hammering to report, see below my last couple of pictures.
I usually find the raising of the wing the moment of greatest tension, especially when there are a multitude of wobbly struts. Of course, with this plane we're talking about raising two extra wings rather than the normal one. It was certainly tense here, but the Triplane's big broad struts took away most of the usual worry. No, my main concern was to do with the double wires running through the leading edge of the middle wing. I cut out the patch section, and crossed my fingers that the wires would be in roughly the right area when I pulled them taut. Things look good; I'll fill the space tomorrow.
And finish the rigging, and all being well, do the decals.
By the way, interesting the different approach by Roden to the wing construction, compared with Wingnuts. WNW build up from below, and split the outer two struts, whereas Roden split the inner struts and have you bring the top two wings as an assembly down to the fuselage/lower wing. It worked pretty well.
I must admit, I didn't actually expect to find myself getting SO close to the deadline - sorry for that. Yes, I've even looked up the time zone difference. I think I have until 3pm on Friday ::)
As a footnote, one thing has only become obvious today, which I bet most would have spotted straight away. With three wings, the model is a bit heavier than you'd think; and those undercarriage struts while beautifully to scale are rather slender. Yes, this (and maybe the WNW kit too?) is one of those kits which could benefit from metal replacements for the undercarriage. Too late for me, though.
Cheers
Mark
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Wow , you making excellent progress Mark :)
Terri
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Looking great Mark - you're so close to completion; here's hoping you get to the deadline - you can do it! ;D
Cheers,
BC
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You are really progressing well! You can do it Mark!
RAGIII
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Well, somewhat of a miracle to have got to this point, but here is the best Sopwith Triplane I've ever built (the other was the old Revell 1:72 kit)
Never mind what time it is here in the UK... Not the first time I've pulled an all nighter :)
If I wake up in time tomorrow I mean today, I'll post a picture of the scene with both kits.
But the two models are both finished.
Mark
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Another couple of pictures.
As noted before, this is Collishaw's earlier Triplane, a single gun machine, in which he scored 18 victories. In fact it was overall the most successful Triplane; thanks to other pilots' efforts, it racked up a total of 23 I believe.
Originally, I wanted to paint it in PC12, but in (I think) Norman Frank's Osprey book of the Triplane, I read some of Collishaw's own comments, including that their Triplanes were all in the standard khaki. It's hard to interpret that as indicating chocolate brown. But this is fine, it's a handsome aircraft.
Also, going by the one photo I found, it had the earlier roundels without the white surrounds, hence why I've put on these plain blue white and red decals.
Cheers to everyone in the group, whether they managed to complete or not; I've really enjoyed it, it had a great atmosphere, and the results I've seen elsewhere are definitely a fitting tribute. Thanks to the organisers and sponsors!
Mark
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Wonderful work! Great to see you got this one over the line - bravo!
Cheers,
BC
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Congratulations on getting both completed. :D
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Great to see that you were able to complete this Beauty! Looking forward to the photos of the scene!
RAGIII
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Many thanks, the encouragement all the way through has been really appreciated! 8)
Here is a final batch of pictures, of the whole scene.
I guess it's a little odd for all sorts of reasons, not least the compression of the different elements, but on account of its RNAS theme I'm very happy with it.
Mark
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Looks fantastic. Des would have loved seeing the Roden kit built to this standard! The whole scene is great!
RAGIII
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I spent more time than expected on the Tommy's War figure, just because it was a lot of fun. They're beautifully sculpted and some of the detail they work in is mid-boggling. For instance, on looking at the picture on the box, I was a little grumpy about the need to fashion a cigarette (You think that's easy? Just try it! :) )... until I noticed that it had indeed been included, attached to another piece.
Though how to make the rifle strap was a puzzle. But they make it easy to attach whatever one comes up with.
A typical jack tar... Though his smoking would have probably not been appreciated so close to the highly flammable Triplane ;)
Now if only some of the various wonderful figure sculptors we are so blessed with could come up with some ordinary ratings in working clothes, to go along with RN seaplanes or Ship's Camels...
Mark
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Many thanks Rick!
Third picture, a view from above.
Yes, the aircraft has been parked very foolishly close to the vehicle track.
Oh, and I can draw your attention to the inspection windows on the Triplane. It turned out to be easier than expected to cut out the sections from the decals, luckily they were the easy to handle Pheon ones. But I was very glad that Roden moulded the interiors this time around (true, they missed out the drag wire windows - I 'choose to believe' that they were painted over on this plane). It makes a load of difference in 1:32.
Mark
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Final picture.
The main subject of this scene is absolutely the Sopwith Triplane.
I was interested in the type beforehand, and building this model has only boosted my appreciation of the modest genius behind both its conception and its operation. It was perfect for its brief moment in history; it made a big impact on its opposition, it was the mount of many of the great naval pilots, and it paved the way for the Camel. Given the attention usually given to Collishaw's later two-gun Triplane, I felt that his N5492 deserved this humble tribute.
But I must pay tribute once more to Des, his nurturing of this forum and his encouragement and inspiring of modellers of all standards. I very much doubt if I'd be spending quite so much time on this wonderful and satisfying hobby if it weren't for him.
Cheers
Mark
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Congratulations on finishing! Looks great.
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That looks really good - an interesting little vignette, very well presented and different.
Stephen.
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Thanks for looking!
The scene now has an acrylic case on top. No danger of dust and future clumsy attempts to wipe it off! :) Except of course some of that grass flock is already floating up on to the acrylic ::)
Overall I'm very pleased with this effort, and hugely admiring of everything I've seen on other modellers' threads for this group build. I'd love to think next year's group build will have a similar level of support.
Mark
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Very nice builds!!
Steve