1:32 Amodel Nieuport 16c

[Dutch522]

Yeah, me too, Tim; dark brown, dark green, and a lighter green. But there's still a lot of research to do on it. And at this rate it'll be sometime next year that I actually get around to having to worry about paint :-P

DV

[RAGIII]

Lovely Artwork and Very believable considering what we have to go on!
RAGIII

[Dutch522]

Thanks, Rick!

DV

[kensar]

I really like that paint scheme.  Much better than the silver ones.

[Dutch522]

Took a break from prop & profile last night to actually do something with the kit, and got an immediate wake-up as to how much of a challenge this project is going to be:





What exactly is going on with that firewall, one wonders? At first I thought it just butted up flush against the front of the fuselage, then I noticed a slight lip on the rear, so I refined it and tried insetting it, but it didn't fit that way either. But, fortunately, like I said at the beginning of this log I always end up hacking half the kit parts up and scratching my own anyway.

Fit problems aside, it has a definitely Bébé-ish look to it.

Dave V.

[pepperman42]

Quit swapping parts with other kits!!

Steve

[macsporran]

Maybe the Special Hobby kits weren't so bad after all!
Sandy

[RAGIII]

The fit does look a bit on the rough side  My guess is that the bottom forward section of the Fuselage and Firewall will be replaced 
RAGIII

[Dutch522]

Steve - Yup. I kept thinking "Did I take the wrong parts off the tree? This has gotta be the firewall..."

Sandy - As somebody who, like most of us, built a number of the old first-gen Eduard kits (and the Glencoe Oeffag Albatros!) I wasn't too horrified. This kit is better than, say, the 1:72 Merlin DH.10, which is my gold standard for Awfulness... once in a while I take those parts out of the box and just shudder.

Rick - What I really wanted to do last night was glue the two halves of the N.16 cowl together, but then, thinking that fit was an unknown quantity, decided to mock up the fuselage with low-tack tape. And boy am I glad I did, the N.11 cowl I'd glued up didn't even come close to fitting.

But as my best friend used to tell me about the collision repair business "If this stuff was easy, Dutch, everybody'd be doing it..."

DV

[Dutch522]

Spent an hour last night with files and an emery board, and finally got the fit kinda-sorta under control. The secret? Just leave out the firewall! :-D



There was no working with that floor of the cockpit/nose, so I made a heavy paper template for an eventual replacement in wood, or styrene, or something.



Onward and upward.

Dave V.

[Dutch522]

I've been breaking up work on the props and profile by starting my next sub-project, developing a drawing for the 3mm plywood Nieuport seat back, based on the best photo I've been able to find (from what appears to be a crashed N.17bis or 24) along with about twenty or thirty other photos, many of the Belgian N.23 under restoration.



I'm working 7x bigger, and while it may not be technically accurate, I think when it gets reduced back down to 1:32 it's going to look OK... the biggest problem has been figuring out how they laid out those holes (49 of them, by my count). At first I did it strictly by mechanical measurement, but that didn't work at all; the result lacked all the elegance of the original. Then I realized that was the key—being French it would be designed with an eye towards aesthetics as well as engineering and functionality—and rearranged everything so it looked good.



I'll redraw that one, reduce it back down on the copier, and use it as a template to start drilling out a blank cut from that piece of 1/32" basswood model ship decking. My theory is that the scored back will allow me to bend it more easily (after it gets hit with steam) to wrap around the seat bottom, while the "planks" won't be visible from the front.

Dave V.

[pepperman42]

Interesting process. A plastic seat back with wood grain paint effect easier?

Steve

[RAGIII]

You are amazing in your search for detail and methods used to carry them out.

Knowing how thorough you are in the research I imagine you have seen this one but figured I would share just in case.
RAGIII



Not sure if an 11 or 16 

[pepperman42]

oooo. That one's very different from yours Dave. Must have changed them on the 17 and up.

Steve

[Dutch522]

Hi Steve and Rick, and thanks for the input! You may have saved me from a bunch of wasted time. I was basing my decision to go with the taller seat on several photos I assumed showed an N.16, of which these two are among the clearest:



My reasons for believeing them to be a 16 were: a) the wedge-shaped top of the fuel tank like the N.11, I assumed all the 17s had the longer tank with the arched top, b) the fact that the motor was clearly a 110 hp Le Rhône 9J with rear-mounted pushrods and intake manifolds, c) the headrest on the upper photo, d) the center-mounted fuel and oil tank filler caps. But then I went back and looked closer...

The firewall on the 11/16, which had two lunette-shaped cutouts that let exhaust and burnt oil flow back and downwards through the aluminum "cheek pieces", appears to be solid—no cutouts—in the photos I was using. But the biggest clue was going back to the Windsock Datafile Nieuport Special, Vol. 1, where both those photos were clearly captioned as being N.17s.

Going back through my interior photo collection I can only find two that are unquestionably N.11/16s, and both show the shorter seat. And finally, I probably could've saved myself the trouble if I'd looked at the 1:48 Eduard N.11 I built back during the pandemic:



First rule of research: Check, check, and check again!

Thanks again guys.

Dave V.