Evening All,
My belated thanks to Rick, Ken, Richie, Dan UFAG and Old Man for your ever-generous comments. In the past month I have spent much time traveling and visiting family members, so I have not had too much time either for commenting or for modelling. However I have made some progress since the last post as follows.
I have added some more details to the pilot's cockpit in the form of the seat and bench, control column (from rod with thin wire for the grip), and elevator bar, hand pump and pipework for the fuel, and pulleys for the control cables to the ailerons and rudder. The photos are not particularly good as these parts are partially hidden and difficult to see even on the model itself:
There is still some touching in to do but that can wait until I have finished scraping paint to fix some other parts on to the nacelle structure.
I have also been working on construction of the top wing. It has the same composition as the lower wing: brass bar for the spars and plastic strip for the ribs. The ribs between the boom attachment points to the rear spar were put in a group in the middle of the wing and a single rib near the tips of the wing. This ensured that the spars would be correctly spaced and that the centre ribs would not be affected by heat when I soldered the booms to the rear spar. When threading the ribs care had to be taken to ensure that they were in the correct order as they are not all the same. The booms are 1/16 inch brass rod: these had the front tailplane spar, made from 30 x 80 thou Evergreen strip, inserted at the rear end. Because there is no incidence on the booms relative to the spars (ie the rear of the boom is at the same level as the spars), it was easy to make a simple jig to allow me to solder the booms into place. The spars and booms were placed over a plan of the upper surfaces of the aircraft and held with pins before the nacelle and lower wing was held over the jigged upper wing to make sure that the two sub-assemblies match as closely as possible. When I was satisfied with the alignments I soldered the booms. An after solder check showed that the minor mis-alignments between the upper and lower wings and booms can be easily corrected at the final assembly stage.
The ribs between the booms were aligned with the ribs in the lower wing but the ribs which will hold the cabane struts had to be aligned with the nacelle frame: all were CA'd into place:
The ribs outboard of the booms were CA'd: each one had to be measured against its counterpart in the lower wing to make sure that all are properly in line:
Now I have to add the plastic strips above and below the brass spars between the ribs to increase the thickness of the former prior to adding the compression ribs. Other details will also be added before I paint the wood parts of the wing. I have also got to think about and decide how I am going to construct the tailplane as that too will only consist of ribs and spars, but has to be strong enough to hold the elevators.
Thanks for looking.
Stephen.
