Evening All,
Thanks to all of you for the very kind remarks. I am sorry to write that I have not been following the GB as closely as I would have liked to have done: life and other events have been a constant distraction from modelling for most of this year, and it is sapping my energy and motivation. Your very supportive comments have really helped me to keep going and I have been plodding along as and when I have felt able to and can report some worthwhile progress at last
After I had joined the upper wing halves I succeeded in painting the model - the white took several coats as I had thinned the paint and had to keep applying layers to hide the filler! The black of the fuselage by contrast was much easier, but because I do not like painting the whole process seemed to take a very long time:
I cemented the lower wing to fuselage struts in place before I attempted to fit the upper wing. The fuel tank was attached to the upper wing but fixing the upper wing to the lower wing and fuselage presented more of a challenge than some biplanes because the inter-plane struts had a large angle of stagger. However a simple pair of card jigs solved the problem by supporting the upper wing while I inserted the outboard struts:
The cabane struts were not painted prior to fitting because I forgot to! They were cut to the required length from shaped Evergreen strip as were the other struts. I used 25 thou rod for the wing skids:
The struts underneath the tail were added from 30 thou rod. The main undercarriage structure was made from 20 x 30 strip, filed to aerofoil shape and the thinner inner bracing was made from 25 thou rod. This was assembled by attaching the main lags first and then inserting the rod and gently pulling the structure together and supporting ithe legs with small strips of wood while the cement set. The result looks like this:
There are more details to add before I can rig the model but at last I can see the end in sight.
Thanks for looking.
Stephen.
