JayW

I find the swivel mounts for the Ma Dueces interesting. What a pounding those mechanisms must have endured. I believe the recoil forces of a 50 cal MG are large, and with a 800 rounds per minute frequency, metal fatigue must have been an issue.

Oh man Peter - that is very realistic looking. Adding figures to a model just opens up another world.

Let's see - last I posted progress, I had finished the elevator skeletons and added .005 inch thick plastic skins (instead of the fabric used on the rudder). P-38 filler was added at the tip and the balance weight tower without much problem. What was needed now was to apply decal strips to simulate doubled up fabric along ribs and spar and other structural elements. First though, a coat of primer and then some semi-gloss for good decal adhesion: You can see that the plastic skins have a slight draped effect that, I think, simulates a taught fabric covered surface. Then decal strips - a not-so-fun task: Then top coat: Note the tab hinge points (three of them), and the penetration for the trim tab control rod (made from a chunk of 1/16 dia aluminum tube, sanded to proper shape. Theses elevators turned out better than the rudder in almost every respect. Now that the top coat has been applied, I definitely have a LH and a RH elevator, if only due to color. Prior to top coat, they were identical. BTW - how do you like my sawhorses? In parallel with the finishing of the elevators proper, I began work on the four tab surfaces (two trim tabs, two "balance" tabs). First, the skeletons: I intend for the balance tabs to be movable, at least for a while. The trim tabs will be glued into place. I used P-38 filler to shape the small leading edges of the tab surfaces: Worked OK, but this is certainly a small application for body putty. Then came paint application - I used the double hairspray method so I could do some chipping. Keep in mind the tabs in real life are aluminum skinned as opposed to the elevators which are fabric. Here: Addition of a few more details (like the elevator torque shafts and round access doors), a couple of decals, and I had a batch of parts ready for assembly: Assembled, on saw horses just like the factory floor: Well - they aren't perfect, and the huge thumbnails really expose any flaw. The double hairsprayed tabs have a bit of show-through of the YZC primer. This happened to some of my skin panels on the fuselage as well. I don't like it but I am going to leave it alone at least for now. Next post you will see the inside of the tail wheel bay again, at last. Don't go away.

Well you ought to know Andy! I noticed a while back you were going through the entire build. Thank you, and I really appreciate your interest, and I promise alot more adventure to follow. It isn't done!

A very beautiful rudder Peter. Man. I smell trouble masking over decal. Have you done it before? Thankfully on my F4U, I don't have to mask over the decal strips. Makes me wonder if painting instead of decals is better. A couple of coats ought to be as thick as a decal.....

The rudder - dam Peter. You just did in one day what it took me the better part of a week to do with that skeleton. Will this model have a functioning rudder?

Wow Peter, just like everyone else, I'm floored by the aluminum work. It occurs to me that this P-40 might have been your biggest skinning challenge yet?

How many crew in a B'fighter? BTW Pete - sublime interior work.

If a Trumpeter rep were following this build, he/she would be loving it. Good for business.

You guys are not making it any easier when I try to decide whether or not to remake the rudder! Your comments are well received here; thanks. Truthfully as soon as I finished it, I knew that it left something to be desired. That was evident when I first posted on it. Too rough, and the trailing edge is just too blunt. At a considerable risk to the tissue covering, I went to work sanding the edges and thinning the trailing edge as much as I dared, and it looks better now. But only an incremental improvement. Got a lukewarm reception initially by OBG whose opinions I value. And I think he'd still like to see a new one, which I get. I think he thinks I have a great model going here, and wants to see it stay that way. And lastly, I made a mistake with the rudder skin's tab cutout - the gap between the tab leading edge and the rudder is supposed to be more covered than it is. It's fixable, and I will probably try, but it will look like a fix I am afraid. Which strengthens the argument to just do it over. I only hesitate because the rudder looks awfully cool from a few feet away (it really does), and it was just a SOB to build. I am going to stay on course for now. After the elevators are done, it's back to the wheel well, and also h/stab skinning - not sure which order. All with the intent to join the aft fuselage halves so that final skinning can commence (including the feared fillet fairings and tail cone) and ultimately join the aft fuselage to the forward fuselage. Don't need the rudder for any of that. So plenty of time to mull over the decision.

GREAT skinning in those compound curve areas Peter. Am taking notes, as I have fillet fairings on the horizon.

Seeing - before I developed cataracts, I was quite near sighted and had to have glasses for distance. At that point, I had a zone about 6 inches to 1 foot away or so where I felt like I had x-ray vision, without any correction. Only rarely did I feel I needed magnification. Good ole' days. Now, after eye surgery for bionic lenses (to fix the cataracts), I have distance vision at the expense of close-up vision. Anything close-up requires readers or a progressive lens. For modeling, I use the optivisor plus readers (+3.00 power). Works for me; hope it continues to work.

Oh man! I worked my a__ off on that thing! Since I last posted on it I cleaned up the edges as best I could and refinished: You must admit it looks better than before. That photo is from an electron scanning microscope (my I-phone zoom close-up). Step away a couple feet and that is a pretty cool looking control surface. Heck, you get that close to my engine and it starts looking a little ratty. You know, that engine that everyone seems to love... I hear ya man. I will finish up the elevators, and if they are on a truly different level compared to the rudder, then yes I will do the rudder over again, with plastic skin and trailing edges a bit thinner. And, I will take this opportunity to say that constructive criticism is welcome on this build, from people who know what they are talking about. And my audience sure seems to know. It helps make this Corsair better than it otherwise would be. Keep the inputs coming.

Wow - these elevators are turning out to be a big project! I underestimated them. So no, the elevator skeletons were not complete until until leading edge ribs were in place. The elevators basically have two leading edges due to their length - an inboard one and an outboard one, separated by a middle intermediate hinge. Straight forward but necessarily very exacting work, so that the thin semicircular shaped skin will cover them with a minimum of lumps and bumps. Then came one of the main box skin panels (0.005 inch plastic, not fabric). Bonding down the skin worked just fine, and I did not use plastic glue. No sir, not with .005 inch gage. 2-part epoxy and CA instead. The elevators on this model are much thinner than the rudder, so the leading edge skins have a tighter radius, and boy what a PITA that was! Here I am in the process of trying to coax the 0.005 inch thick outboard leading edge skin over the ribs: Note one of the main skins is on there. I felt like the other one had to wait until the leading edge skins were in place... First bond one side, slather the LE ribs with epoxy, then wrap it around and bond the other side, all under lots of pressure from tape and clamps. What you see there is try number four. First was a formed piece of litho - way too stiff for that tight radius - I'd have broken the skeleton monkeying with it. Second was heat/freeze formed .005 plastic sheet, which shrunk about .10 inch during the process rendering it unusable. Third was annealed .005 alum, which worked sort of OK and reserved as a back up. And fourth was what you see - .005 inch plastic sheet formed over a file handle to give at least some curvature. It took lots of coaxing and incremental bonding to the ribs, but I got it to work: Both: Important to get the shape of those LE skins right so the elevator mates up properly to the h/stab at the hinge line. Then rinse/repeat for the inboard LE portion (a bit easier due to a larger LE radius), bond the opposite side main skin, lots of fiddling with edge trims and thinning the trailing edges, and voila: Nice and stiff. Fit on the airplane is pretty good: I don't know if you can notice, but the thin .005 plastic skins give a very slight draped fabric appearance, which is what I want. These will be cleaner than the rudder I believe. Next up is filling in the tip and balance weight towers with putty and sanding it to shape. Lots of work to go, but the elevators are coming along. This scratch building work is very difficult to do and have it come out to the standards I see posted on LSP by some of our geniuses. I hope to get close anyway.

So clean! Your cockpit is a gem.

Yes it is!! Especially when it comes out so well! When the time comes to apply the US insignia masks to my metallic skin surfaces on the Corsair, I am not sure "fun" will be the right word.

You are flying through this build. But it looks as professional as your FW-'s and your superb F4U. I love P-47's, so I am highly anticipating your next post.

Might as well ask - did Eileen have the canvas shield over the IP? Often, I have learned from somewhere, they were removed. John - I have no idea how it would be modeled, or if Trumpy has some version of it already. Or if you want to bother with it at all.

It feels as if I am stuck in concrete, progress seems so slow. But, I have put in alot of work the past week plus; just not alot to show for it. In anticipation of fillet fairing work, I took a detour and added another aluminum skin panel and its opposite to the aft fuselage: The upper one is the new one; the lower one I did a couple months ago. It is missing an access door; it will be added after the fillet fairing work is done. The really hard work though is the elevators. I have completed the "skeleton's" for both LH and RH: These assemblies were built up similar to the rudder skeleton, but are designed to accept thin plastic skins instead of the fabric I used on the rudder. These two items are supposed to be identical, but tolerances come into play, and one tends to fit up to the LH side h/stab better, and the other fits the RH side a bit better. So I have identified them as such. I suppose they are not really "complete". The leading edge ribs must be added, which is next. Next post will no doubt be completed elevators. Hopefully with the tabs. On the horizon is a return to the wheel well, and h/stab installation and skinning. I am not sure which will happen first. Both will prove adventurous! Stay tuned.

Chris - I am headlong into a giant F4U project in 1/18 scale and have explored a good bit of this territory already. Cockpit - I honestly do not know where to find the definitive specs on that. I say go with interior green for both models. You cannot go wrong there. As for the wheel wells, the colors are specified on drawing VS-10900 "Markings- F4U-1, F3A-1, FG-1 Airplanes". Here: This drawing I have shown is at revision level "G" (date 7/?/43). Here is the revision history next to the title block: The title block (which I don't show) shows the original release to be 1941 (cannot read the month). So this drawing covers the entire F4U-1 series from the birdcage to the -1D (the early ones anyway). It is then superseded by drawing VS-37990 (beginning at line number 3125, which is about 300 units into the -1D block, released 3/44). It is that drawing that specifies the familiar dark gloss sea blue for the entire airplane with exceptions - effective on -1D's only. Not our drawing. So for F4U-1's and F4U-1A's our source is 10900. Putting aside any painting done after delivery, the factories at Vought didn't just willy-nilly paint however they wanted. They were controlled by engineering drawings like 10900 which were created in engineering departments at Vought, and those departments were controlled by the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer). Engineering requirements changed frequently, which left factories scrambling on how to incorporate changes without scrapping already made stuff in the pipeline, reworking when they could, leaving inventory as is if permissible. That included finish requirements. So, evolving finish definition can be tough to pin down sometimes. Here are some close-ups of 10900: This closeup shows that the main landing gear and the wheel well are to be either light gray or white. I chose gray for mine. Those little circles with "F" inside bug me. That means the notes were either added or modified at revision "F". The revision block dates revision "F" at June 1943. So one might wonder what those notes said prior to revision "F"..... Another: This close-up shows that the tail gear and arresting hook mechanism are also either gray or white. Again, with the circle with "F" inside. But curiously it says nothing about the well itself. I chose to paint mine gray as well, to be consistent with the main gear wells. And I do not recall whether or not I got some coaching on that. Wish I could answer that one more definitively. I should also say that if you dirty the bay up enough, it won't matter if it is gray or white. It will look about the same!

To steal an aviator's term - this is Sierra Hotel!!! Those manuals are amazing. I am about 5' 5" - I would have fit in there beautifully. What an educational build Peter. Nice work. Can't believe you got a person in that ball....

Moving right along John. And, I already know that your repair work is as good as any I have seen. looking very very nice. Hey - I would dirty up that tail gear.....

Yeah, understood. I was kinda going in the direction of deceleration forces associated with firing large guns at a rapid rate, and what that might mean for the F-16. Your mention of rudder input doesn't surprise. I have also heard that the A-10's GAU-8A gatling gun decelerates the A-10 when fired. So the Beaufighter had Hispano's x 4. As did the P-38 BTW (x1, to complement the M2's x4). US version called the M2C I believe.

This is also the stated effective range of the ma deuce. That sound right? And yes that is magnificent. Doing some math, the stated rate of fire for a M61A1 Vulcan autocannon is 6000 rounds per minute. Or, 100 rounds per second. Or, if you will, 100/6 = 16.7 rounds per second per barrel. Six m2 machine guns (the aircraft type) had a rate of fire of 6 x 800 rounds per minute = 4800. You would see that on most American pursuit aircraft in WW2. The P-47 had eight guns, so its rate of fire would be 8 x 88 = 6400 rounds per minute. So your F-16 had about the same rate of fire as the P-47, only with 20 mm rounds (.78 inch diameter) compared with .50 inch diameter for the M2. And much heavier slugs perhaps .78/.50 to the third power = 3.8 times heavier. Really??? Muzzle velocity of the Vulcan is 3380 ft/sec. Muzzle velocity of the AN/M2 is 2840 ft/sec. Hopefully comparing apples to apples here. So the energy of a Vulcan 20 mm round is about 3.8 times 3380/2840 = 4.5 times that of a .50 caliber round from the M2. Or so. Yikes. That is some kind of fire power. I have read that when a P-47 lets loose with all eight of its M2 guns, it noticeably slows the aircraft down. I wonder Pete, when you fired the Vulcan, did you notice a decline in speed? The numbers suggest the rearward force is about 4.5 times what the P-47 felt.... BTW, I'd love to see the support bracketry for that F-16-mounted Vulcan. Had to be very beefy. Anyway, to get back on topic - what cannons were carried by the Beaufighter (the type you are building), and how many? And speaking of Beaufighters, the "Operation Squabble" raid on occupied Paris by a single Beaufighter on June 12 1942. Pretty daring, and distinctly British. Some cannon fire here too.

You mean one of these? Good god man - say hello to my little friend! Woooooot!