Evening All,
Thanks again to everyone for the supportive and encouraging remarks. I am honoured that such compliments have come from modellers who regularly post models of the highest quality and whose work I greatly respect. I do hope that some of you will give one of these pushers a try in the future: as I hope to show here they really are stronger than they look, even in the construction stage. I started the next stage by gluing the booms to the wings and the horizontal tail unit (as described in the FE 2b build), with epoxy glue and allowed them 24 hours to dry out. The lower surfaces, nacelle sides and wheel discs were clear doped linen, the top surfaces and nacelle nose, top and rear of the underside were PC 12. In fact it is not certain whether DH 1A's were painted in these colours according to C. Overs in the DatatFile, but Munson shows this colour in his illustration, and I think it reasonable that some covering would have been used particularly in the desert sun. The ammunition boxes, booms, fuel tank and tyres were grey. The struts were natural wood.
While I thought that posting photos of paint drying would not be too interesting I did think that some people would like to know how I paint roundels (cockades) by hand. I start by scribing circles equivalent to the outer diameter of the roundels on the wings using a pair of dividers. I then paint two coats of white paint inside these circles, allowing the paint to run into the grooves and so make a clean sharp edge. Then I scribe the inner rings of the roundels with the dividers.
The above image shows the rings scribed on the top wing and the blue outer painted in. This was too dark so I painted a second coat of lighter blue over this before the red centre was painted. By using a fine brush very clean rings can be achieved and no touching in was needed. The rudder stripes were hand painted and the serial came from Almarks.
When that the wings, nacelles and tail surfaces were complete the assembly continued. I cemented the four outer wing struts into the holes on the lower wing. (The struts came from the DH 4). Then I put small drops of glue into the holes in the upper wing and carefully lowered the top wing on to the lower wing and rudder. I inserted the pin on the bottom of the rudder into the V of the lower boom where I held it with superglue, and the top of the rudder was cemented to the rear of the fin on the horizontal tail surface. This assembly was allowed to dry out overnight. This assembly is actually much stronger than it looks and allows considerable amounts of (gentle) handling as you insert the remaining struts. I have used this method on all of my pushers so far and not had a problem with it.
When it was dry I added the inner wing and cabane struts first, followed by the boom struts. On the starboard forward cabane strut I added a wind generator made from scrap 30 thou card, and on the port forward cabane strut a fuel pipe from the fuel tank to the top of the nacelle.
I cut two sets of undercarriage legs from 30 thou card and shaped them to aerofoil section. I cut a small extension to the bottom of the legs so that I could put in the small curved section which supported the axle. The DH 4 axle was used without modification, as were the wheels. The legs were glued to the fuselage and the axle between the legs and they were painted PC 12. I cut a tail skid from card but did not glue this or the wheels as I will wait until the model is rigged as they are easily damaged. Finally I added the control horns to the fuselage and flying surfaces - these were from scrap 15 thou card.
The next task will be to rig the model and add the final details. I will post these when the model is complete.
Thanks for looking.
