Evening All,
Many thakns Prez, p9o1rische,Rick and Giuseppe for the very encouraging comments: I really appreciate you people who drop by and leave such positive comments.
Roberto: I did know that the photo to which you refer was of a torpedo bomber, but I did not know which unit the aircraft belonged to, nor did I know about the squadron commander. Thank you for the information: it is truly surprising what one can learn from others simply by building a model!
I have been working on the fuselage nacelle - trying to make a decent gun ring on the nose and add some radiator cooling vents around the front end. The Ca 5 was a trimotor like the earlier Ca 3, which presented the designers with the problem of how to cool the pusher engine at the rear of the fuselage nacelle. The answer was to mount a radiator in the extreme front of the nose and pump the cooling water from the engine to the nose and back again. It does not require a degree in mechanical or thermal engineering to work out that this was not an optimal solution: the type was not a success in part because of the overheating problems associated with the engine mounted in the fuselage. However that may have been I still had to add the coolig gills to the fuselage (and will have to add more later to the booms when I get around to making them). I decided that if I cut and glued strips of 10 x 20 thou strip in the right places and then used a file and glasspaper to shape them I might just get away with something resembling said gills:
I have also built up the nose for the front gunners gun ring with a plastic disc which was cut and filed to fit the nose position. Filler did the rest: you can also see the filler around various parts of the fuselage mouldings where trimming and small errors needed correction. When all is primed I am hoping that the blemishes will disappear.... we will see.
I decided to apply more to 10 x 30 thou strip and add the ribs to the wings. For those who may not know of this technique (and I am constantly asked about this at model club open days), here is a brief description:
I mark the positions of the ribs with a pencil on the wings, tail surfaces, ailerons, elevators, rudders, etc as appropriate. In this case I am using 10 x 30 strip because this was a large aircraft and the ribs would accordingly have been wider. On smaller aircraft I use 10 x 20 thou strip, and on larger scale aircraft I use larger strip suitable for the scale.
I cut lengths of strip which are longer than the chord of the surface to be covered. I apply liquid cement liberally along the pencil line and quicly lay a strip directly on to the line and gently press it down with the end of a nail file of other suitable hard, flat tool.
When all of the strips have been applied and the glue allowed enough time to dry I check each strip by trying to push it gently sideways. If any section of strip have not adhered properly I apply more cement to the areas which have not stuck down.
When the cement is dry and all the ribs are firmly in place I cut off the ends of the strips with a sharp scalpe and gently rub them along their lengths with fine grade glass paper to take off the sharp edges and give them a rounded cross profile. Finally a couple of coats of primer ensure that any small gaps or blemishes disappear.
This photo shows some of the strip being applied to the lower wing and one of the ailerons: the yellowish strip will be under the fuselage nacelle so if it is visible later the bright white plastic surface will not show.
Waiting for liquid cement to dry can be tedious so I started to build one of the engines (there will be three eventually). The engines were 6 cylinder Fiat A 12 inlines developing between 200 and 300 horse power on the early variants: later machines had Fiat Isotta or Liberty engines fitted. The differences between the original and later Fiat engines are not really apparant in this scale so I made one using plastic rod of different diameters, strip and bits of sheet - some of the latter was laminated to make the engine block/sump. The components look like this when laid out:
and like this when glued together and painted:
Only two more of those to make now, but at least I know how to do it so they should not take too long..
The next update will be delayed as unfortunately I have to go on my travels (again) for a couple of weeks. But if you have been, thanks for looking.
Stephen.
