Evening All,
Thank you Frank, Giuseppe, Terri, Andreas and Lance for dropping in and leaving your kind comments - they are much appreciated.
I have finished the ribs at last - some have taken three attempts to get right - some have holes, some holes and slots, some triangular slots and no hole, some triangular slots and hole....and the combinations were driving me mad as I would shape a rib and then cut/drill the wrong shapes in the wrong places. The tedium of repeating the same operations over and over and the different combinations of slots and holes meant that my concentration lapsed and so mistakes were made. At least the compression ribs, (the short riblets on the leading edges of the wings between the main ribs), were all the same - all 50 of them! Here are a few:
Some of these look a little rough but they have since been cleaned up enough that any small deficiencies can be concealed beneath a coat of paint!!
While I was fiddling and practising my Anglo-Saxon with the ribs, I took a little time to make some other parts. First off was a new radiator, because the first one I had made was for an FE 2: while the DH 1A had some features in common with the FE, the radiator was not one of them! I made a new one from laminated card and a small piece of Eduard etch kindly given to me by a fellow modeller. The radiator faces were painted black before the grille was CA'd into place and the sides of the radiator added from 10thou card:
The FE radiator blank is on the right above - why the DH 1A was smaller I do not know because they had to cool the same engine (120 hp Beardmore).
The DH 1A had a gravity tank under the top wing. It was triangular in shape and I made mine from scrap card. I used small pieces of strip to reinforce the corners and ensure that the sides and front faces were square with the top and bottom surfaces. A small piece of rod blocked the sharp end and allowed me to clean that up with filler:
Another part which needed correcting was the oil tank. Formerly I had made a cylindrical tank - again as per FE but close inspection of the drawings and photos showed that the oil tank on the DH 1A was a different shape. (I had seen this feature before but had thought that it was a protective plate between the tank and exhaust pipe. (How wrong!) This too was fashioned from laminated card. The fuel and new oil tanks look like this:
The oil tank on FE machines was sometimes tinned and sometimes painted black. Photos of the DH1A oil tank are rare, and it is not clear whether the tanks were grey or tinned metal on such photos as I can find. The same applies to the fuel tank. As I am modelling a strip down machine I decided to paint both aluminium:
Having finished (well almost), the ribs I thought that I would make a few more parts before I solder the lower wing spars to the nacelle frame, because when that is done i will have a large, fragile and awkward piece to put in a safe place when I am not working on it. Then I will only have to make a few parts to fit as I am assembling the model. So I carved and shaped the struts for wings, cabanes, booms, undercarriage and wing skids from wood. I used wood laminate: I glued some sheets together to get a suitable thickness. All of the parts except the control horns are slightly oversize so that I can cut them to fit exactly during the assembly process. The control horns were made from the same material:
They are top left - spreader bar for the undercarriage, bottom left undercarriage legs, (the 4th from left is much too large and will need cutting down), wing and cabane struts, (again the cabanes are too long), wing skids, (the small rough pieces will form the horizontal pieces later), and top right some of the control horns. These will all be clear varnished later before fixing into place.
I also decided to try ideas about making the tail surfaces. The fin was made from 30 x 40 thou strip and liquid cement, but had to be pinned in place during assembly to ensure the leading edge curved properly:
I decided not to make the rudder at the moment as that has to be attached directly to the rudder post. I am planning to make the post from brass rod and solder it to the ends of the booms: any plastic near the soldered joints is not going to survive. I can fit the rudder later (I hope) directly to the model. The tail plane and elevators will also be made later, as the rear ends of the booms have to pass through the tail plane and I have got to give that some serious thought too as I intend to solder the ends of the booms if I can. I may have to resort to CA for the joint - that is a question which can wait for the moment.
Now I cannot delay any longer soldering the lower wing spars to the nacelle frame and creating a large and potentially easily damaged structure.
Thanks for looking.
Stephen.
