Evening All, Thanks Richie, Zac, Frederik and Willem for dropping by and leaving encouraging comments - they are all much appreciated.
While I have been building the Albatros, I have also been working on some of the smaller parts of the BE 2a while waiting for larger parts to dry/set. One of these was the instrument board. Early aircraft had very few instruments (some had only a clock, fuel gauge and compass): the BE 2 was not an exception. It had an Elliot board: one pattern for RFC machines and a different one for RNAS machines. I intend to represent a machine from the RNAS based at Eastchurch on Sheppy in Kent so I have modelled the Elliot board Mk 1 which had three instrument dials between an air speed indicator and an ascent/descent guage. Above the board were two smaller dials. I could not find any transfers which even remotely represented the dials on the board, or were small enough so a blob of paint and some bezels form Eduard have to suffice. Next to the instrument board is a map board:
This is not the best instrument board/panel that I have made but as it will be largely hidden under the fuselage cover and as I want to live to do something else, this will have to suffice.
Another set of parts which can be tedious to make are the struts. I am making them from laminated marquetry wood and will varnish them, so to save my shoulder I have made a few in between other tasks; the remainder including the undercarriage legs and skids, will follow later:
With the solid part of the upper wing sanded and ready to paint I added a strip of 20 thou card to the opening in the centre to represent the rib:
That was shaped and filled prior to adding the remaining ribs to the spars. Then the fun began because the wings had two solid spars front and rear, and a centre spar which was full of holes. Cue cutting short lengths of 40 thou plastic card, drilling lots of holes and then inserting said pieces of drilled plastic between the ribs.... I found that I could make two or at most three of these per session before the will to live nearly expired. However they are now done!
To finish the construction of the top wing I used 30 thou rod for the leading edge and 20 thou rod for the trailing edge:
and looking at the photo I can see that I have got to adjust some of the centre spar sections to make them line up more accurately.....grrrr.
However the span of the upper uncovered wing half matches the covered lower wing half on the same side of the model. I have also checked that the strut holes in the covered parts of the wings align accurately with the exposed spars on the opposing wing: at least I have managed to get that right! Now the struts should line up vertically from the sides and front as per the original machines.
This project seemed to be badly stalled but it is truly under way again: making the Albatros at the same time has really helped restore my mojo. Must remember that in future ..... keep to God's Own Scale and all is (usually) well.
Thanks for looking.
Stephen.