JayW

Yahooo!!!! What an effort on the windshield and coaming Peter! Shrink ray!

The windshield looks to be a major challenge. It was a shortcoming of sorts on my 1/18 P-51D which has an entirely different windshield. And I overcame it by completely scratch building the wind shield. It was entirely single curvature (or nearly so) - which allowed me to simply roll form the "glass" from thin gage clear plastic, as opposed to a vac form. The periphery trim being the biggest challenge - to mate it to the existing shape on the fuselage, and the posts and frame. Also, I took that opportunity to make the posts and aft frame in such a way that they would accept the "glass", and look like the separate parts that they truly are. This also allowed me to use thick gage clear plastic for the bullet-proof flat screen. With the exception of the small upper compound-curved segment (which would require a vac form), you could do the same thing if you wanted. Oh what a project it would be - but with your mad skills anything is possible! However I have no doubt you will make it look totally real no matter what method you choose.

The seat belts are just a big double-take. Your effort so far is the most realistic model I've ever seen. Keep it up. Oh, and the wheel/tire combo 3d Cad model is amazing.

You are no doubt your own worst critic Peter. To me it looks like a picture of the real thing. Way to go! It's hard to get the texture of a wrinkly cushion - that's about the best effort I have seen.

Superb looking IP! On Miss Velma (1/18 D-model) I worked like the devil on the cockpit digitally modelling it so as to prevent mistakes. But for reasons of file size, I split the cockpit and fuselage tank areas into two, creating two separate CAD models, with the boundary somewhere around the front of the pilot seat. That, combined with inherent inaccuracies with the fuselage, gave me about a .06 inch length error and resulted in a clash between the fuel selector panel and control lock mechanism in front of the stick. I just screwed up, that's all. But it forced me to have to scramble! That's a tight clearance even without the error. Make sure you have that all correct!

Oh yeah GIANT thumbs up on the rudder pedals. How did you create the printing? And BTW - you will have to be satisfied that they are there - they are all but invisible in my Miss Velma!

Lathe? Can you show us some pictures of your lathe?

Doggone! One of these projects where its hard to tell the pics of the model from the pics of the real thing!

The indented detail is 106-31079 cup assembly - fuel vent pressure. This had to be for the fuselage mounted fuel tank. It's install drawing is cover assembly 102-31079. Your detail looks really good but you can study the drawings anyway. Keep up the great work!

Juggernut - the Aircorplibrary Republic drawing file for the P-47 is just awesome. Just about every drawing is there, and readable. I love it. I used it extensively for my 1/18 P-47 build, recently finished if you want to peruse the "ready for inspection" site. One thing Republic was very good about was keeping airplane effectivities up to date on their drawings. The true source is the "used on" drawing, not the next higher assembly block on the drawing in question. But seldom have I seen discrepancies on the P-47 drawings, and none here. Drawing 89L41000 (Installation Landing Gear) has five different next higher assemblies (NHA's) - 89X1000 through 93X10200 - from P-47B to P-47M. All these drawings are the top drawings for the model - "Airplane General Assembly - 3 View". And 93X10200 covers P-47D-25 through P-47M (i.e. the bubbletops). 89L41000 also has a general note on it just to the left of the bill of material which states "See 96L41000 for later P-47 models....", whihc is of course the N-model configuration. Republic was really good about providing superceding configuration information on drawings, and also going the other way sometimes. BTW, the NHA for P-47N landing gear drawing 96L41000 is 96C22000 wing panel assembly complete - strangely! It could be that the manufacturing process was rearranged for the P-47N. I can tell the P-47 drawing system tends to be "design as built", so shows assemblies and sub-assemblies much like they would have been built up in the factory setting. Perhaps LG was installed further up the chain for P-47N....

Here is what the engineering drawings say: 89L41000 MLG installation drawing effective all P-47's including P-47M. 34 x 9.0 tire with Bendix wheels and brakes. These must be the 6-spoke wheels. 96L41000 MLG installation drawing effective P-47N-1 and on. 34 x 9.9 tire with Goodyear wheels and brakes. These must be the 8-spoke wheels IPC is in agreement. I suspect there was no interchangability due to different size brakes? I did not realize the N model had wider tires. Wider gear I knew about. It appears to me though that the 8-spoke wheel is all that is available today. All today's P-47 resto's seem to have it far as I can tell.

Your Dzus fasteners are better than mine! By alot! Can you elaborate how you have done them?

Oh my! What fine looking P-47's. Curious - what about the engines?

Am in a struggle right now trying to develop critical dimensions for the R2800. It is so jam packed with stuff, if I get something wrong, it will result in something not fitting. So, cylinder outer diameters, engine block cylinder base plane distance from centerline, location of intake and exhaust ports on the cylinder heads, distance between rocker arm covers, etc, etc, etc. You may wonder why I do not just duplicate my P-47 engine, but believe it or not it was chalk full of inaccuracies, all of which I intend to correct. The best thing to do here is model it digitally, but I am seriously hesitant to one, pay for the program software, and two, learn it. I can manual draft pretty well.... Stay tuned!

Just amazing Peter - realism and cool factor way up high!