Evening All,
Many thanks Rick, Nigel, Paul, Alexis and Enathan for the very kind comments - the help to keep me going when like Paul I sometimes lose motivation because things seem to take so long.
Painting and decorating of the Navy Plane has been almost completed - there will be more to do later as will become clear in this report. The colours of the original machine are not entirely clear as there is no authentic record that I can find. (The colours given by Chorozy Modelbud are not accurate for a number of reasons if the photographic sources that I am using are anything to go by). I have chosen PC 10 for the upper surfaces, fins, floats and nacelle - for this I used Revell acrylic Olive Drab (361) which is probably a little too green, but trying to mix in some chocolate brown and get a consistent shade was too fiddly for me! The undersurfaces are clear doped linen - a mix of acrylic white and Revell Beige (314). I have painted the booms in Revell tan (SM382 enamel), but I may change that to Olive Drab later as the wing and float struts were clearly also PC 10, not grey as suggested by Chorozy. The wing cockades were home printed, as was the number (9095) on the nacelle which can be clearly seen in photographs. (Although a serial number was assigned to this machine it is not on the rudders in the photos that I have access to: they were probably taken when the aircraft was completed and rolled out of the workshop and before delivery to the RNAS, so the serial may have been painted on at a later date. Chorozy supplies the serial their kit, but shows the fins as CDL - again the latter is not supported by the photographic evidence). The rudders were painted with enamels.
With the painting and decorating over I joined the main floats with two strips of 30 x 40 strip, and added the reinforcing plates on the tops of the floats, also from strip. A small indentation was filed into the plates after the cement had set. The assembly of the wings and fuselage needed some thought and planning - eventually I decided on the following procedure. I attached the fins/rudders to the underside of the horizontal tail surfaces and the two forward inner struts to the underside of the upper wing:
When the fin/rudders and struts were completely set I put drops of cement into the locating holes in the lower wing and superglue on to the bottoms of the fins and lowered the upper wing/boom assembly on to the lower wing/boom. I ensured that the wings were properly square with a simple jig:
When this assembly was dry I had a structure which could be handled with care while I inserted the outer wing struts which gave a much more robust structure:
The nacelle was attached to the lower wing via a single pillar to the rear spar and two splayed struts to the forward spar. I made the rear support from 30 thou rod and the struts from 30 x 40 strip which had been filed to aerofoil section. The rod was inserted into a hole on the nacelle and the struts into small depressions. When the cement had been allowed to set for approximately 20 minutes I lowered the nacelle on to the lower wing and was able to adjust the struts so that they fitted into the holes in the wing. While this was drying out I provided support to the nose of the nacelle with another jig:
The nacelle was held between the wings by four curved struts. These were cut from 30 x 40 thou strip which was filed to streamlined section and then carefully bent mid-section - I used dividers to measure the distance from the lower wing strut attachment point to the side of the fuselage where the bend in the strut was required. It was then a case of trial and error to get each of the 4 struts to fit between the wings and braced to the nacelle. I added the rear struts which were ahead of the booms at this stage:
The main float struts were attached to the lower wing by a pair of forward-rear V struts and a pair of V struts which were attached to centre section of the wing:
The main floats will be attached next via the existing strut arrangement and 4 more struts which were attached directly to the nacelle. A quick look at the photos and drawings show that one of this pair had an unusual configuration which will need some care to get right, but given the arrangement of the other struts on this model, that should come as no surprise.
Thanks for looking.
Stephen.
