Archimedes

HI All, I have called time on my build of the Tiger Moth floatplane. The build thread is Here should you want to take a look. G-AIVW was not always a floatplane and in fact was a King’s Cup Air-race winner long before she wore clown shoes. Once converted she was not described kindly in her floatplane configuration as she allegedly was not a stable aircraft and needed to be continuously flown. Sadly she was written off in an accident and no longer exists. My model depicts her in the late 1970’s when she was used for joy rides and to train neophyte floatplane pilots. Kind regards, Paul

Hey folks, Well, I finished G-AIVW at 04:30 this morning after wrestling the cabane rigging into submission. The stats are that I started it in June 2021, it has taken about 210 hours and, whilst the kit cost about 4.50 GBP, the new airbrush, compressor and spray booth cost considerably more. Still, by comparison with many other hobbies, this is still a very low cost way of enjoying yourself. It’s been an interesting journey. My primary objectives were to a) get a model finished, b) learn how to rig a biplane and c) do a bit of scratch building. All have been achieved. What have I learned? 1. That a 49 year old biplane kit is not the place to start for a quick build - even for a rigging mule. Matchbox’s PK-505 is a bit of a ‘curate’s egg’ - good in parts. The headlines are: The Good: - The wings and empennage have a very good representation of fabric effect and are nicely accurate in outline. The Bad: - The cockpit needs to be scratch built to be in any way accurate - especially the front cockpit which is a work of fiction as standard. - Almost all of the attachment points are either way out of scale (cabane strut to fuselage joints) or are weak (the float structure breaks a lot even with the reinforcing rigging I added. - The floats are good in overall shape but are mostly devoid of detail. That which does exist is grossly over-scale. The Ugly: - The nose does not fit around the engine and, even when it is shoehorned into place, it has to shimmed at the back of the attachment points at the firewall to get the line of the front fuselage correct. None of the panels have any meaningful attachment points which means one ends up with each error compounding the next in terms of nose shape. I don’t begrudge any of the above: it has been fun to build what is at challenging kit. I am, however, very glad to call time on it and to move onto pastures new. But what about my own capabilities?. my scratch-building of the cockpit went well but my traditional bette-noir, surfaced when painting the fuselage. I’d achieved a decent finish on the wings but both the fuselage and floats had to be repainted twice. A bad workman blames his tools and I am not going to do that. Instead I will blame my maintenance of my venerable Paasche VL for what became ever more patchy performance when laying down paint. The other things that affected the finish on it was getting the heating system in our home repaired. It is a blow-air system and the repairs caused dislodging of dust in the air ducts - each time I came to G-AIVW she seemed to be layered in fine dust and required a clean down before i could begin work. So I know this is not the build I hoped it would turn out as due to several things: i) the rigging got better as I went on but my first attempts look very clunky, largely down to me using the CA gel glue I had rather than using thin CA that I should have used. ii)There are numerous paint and glue smears (mea culpa) and finally iii) it has a highly variable paint finish on the fuselage and floats. For all that it is a reasonable ‘3-footer’ that I am happy to have called it a day on. Many of the Matchbox builds I have seen do not get completed and, given the challenges that the kit throws at the builder, it is easy to see why. I’ll do some glamour shots and send it over to “Ready for Inspection’ now. For me it looks a bit toy like but that’s OK; I have learned a great deal made new friends along the way and am (hopefully) a better kit assembler than I was when I started. One final point: I did the build here to ‘force’ me to finish. In the event it was the kind encouragement of all who took the time to take a look as it progressed. Thank you guys: I have learned so much from you all but especially Max Williams @mozart, LSP Kev @LSP_Kevin, Chris Woolford @Christa, Alain Gadbois @Alain Gadbois and many others. Thank you guys. Kind regards, Paul

I’m late to this party but interested. I read this with interest because in the Finescale Modeler article that you refer to @Gazzas, no one appears to suggest putting paint under the foil. Or am I missing something? Brian @Out2gtcha - nice P40! Kind regards, Paul

Kev’s publication shows off to best effect what a highly skilled modeller you are Max! Great to see this!

Neatly done on the bracing wires Mike! Kind regards, Paul

The second picture looks about right to me though I am no expert on the B5N. It is not everywhere (compare the top half of the wing to the bottom and you can see where it starts to appear) so it increases toward the centreline. For me they are doing a pretty good job of this and I suspect that for those who think it is overdone, that it would calm down under a coat of paint. Kind regards, Paul

Thank you Max! We just need someone to do a 1:32 Anson now… Kind regards, Paul

I think of it this way; Buying models and being a scale modeller are two different hobbies. Enjoy both. Kind regards, Paul

Cycling Guy, I think you are doing yourself a great disservice: you mottling, to these eyes, looks very convincing. As someone who struggles mightily with paint finishes, I tip my cap at you braving such a challenging camp scheme straight out of the gate and pulling it off so well. Bravo! Kind regards, Paul

A 1/32 DC-3 is a bit of a Holy Grail for me. What makes this kit such a bear to build? Kind regards, Paul

I don’t agree - Compare it with a clear side view of a real FW190 A series and they look to have it right. Sorry I could not get a dead-nuts side on view of the real one but its was as close as I could get. I have seen plenty of drawings that have side elevations that have the underside of the fuselage too flat. Kind regards, Paul

Hi Andy - yes I refreshed the page several times and it comes up blank each time. I’ve also tried it on PC and a Mac desktop to see if there is anything system related stopping it. The page does not load on any of those machines. Kind regards, Paul

Hi Max, I just tried to access your site via my iPad and it came up as ‘not secure’ and I could not access it. As you know I am in the USA. Sorry for your troubles! Kind regards, Paul

Thank you B-17!

Hi All, Which boxing of HK’s B17 should one pick to model: a) B-17F Wabash Cannonball, Boeing Built, Serial 42-29947 b) B-17G Thunder Bird, Douglas Aircraft Built, Serial 42-38050 Askin’ for a friend. Kind regards, Paul

Oh me, oh my Max. That Hawker Demon is something to behold! Not only is it a beautiful aircraft, it is also incredibly well built. A tip of the cap to you Sir. Enjoy Italy! In bocca lupo! Kind regards, Paul

Really nice work Max! Kind regards, Paul

Thanks Kev - life got in the way for a while. I have been admiring your builds in the interim. You paint technique is light years ahead of mine! Kind regards, Paul

Thank you Max, this build was not only about making a (reasonably) accurate Tiger Moth floatplane, learning some scratchbuilding and rigging techniques but also about finishing (which I always take too long to do). Nearly there. The four wires in front of the cockpit: I intend to use the ‘guitar wire’ method for those, in the same way I did the float assembly. The holes are already pre drilled in the top cowling of the fuselage and under the top wing to take the pre-cut wires. they will be a bit fiddly to get in but I am sure it can be done. I have a loooong way to go to build anything as well as your Gauntlet but I shall persevere! I hope all is going well with you. Kind regards, Paul

Yeahhhhh! It’s been a long time hasn’t it? So close to the finish now…. Life got in the way for a while; you know the drill. So where is G-AIVW up to now? Well, the top wing was glued onto the cabane struts but I did not glue in the interplane struts. Why? Several reasons: 1. I wanted to emulate turnbuckles for the standing rigging: It struck me that I would have an easier time accessing where the wire loops to attach the turnbuckles would go without the interplane struts in the way. 2. I only had 3 interplane struts. Remember this was a second-hand car-boot-sale, already started kind of kit and when I came to cut the interplane struts from the sprue I found that one was missing. So, the 4th strut would have to be made. 3. Of the 3 interplane struts I did have, the one carrying the pitot tubes was inexplicably 2.5 mm shorter than the other two. So some modification would have to be done there. I think the previous owner of the kit had sanded one end of the pitot-carrying interplane strut but the end result was that it was short. You will notice I cut through the interplane strut and the intention was to put a fillet in and reglue it. I took the opportunity to cut off the lump of plastic that represented the pitot tube and was able to fashion a far more convincing pitot from some brass wire. Now it was time to make the wire loops and turnbuckles…. I took some very fine wire and double it over in a pin vise. I put s 0.5 mm drill bit through the loop. I then spun the drill bit and voila: a neat wire loop. So I made many more of them and my trusty Swann Morton shows the scale of them. I then did a trial run of what a turnbuckle would look like when fastened to one of the wire loops: I did the trial run with very fine copper wire rigging but that is not what I used for G-AIVW itself. In the photo above is a small length of 1.0 mm brass tube which represents the turnbuckle itself. It is not very accurate as a turnbuckle nor for the Tiger Moth in particular but remember this aircraft is a rigging mule yes? I was just getting experience doing different rigging techniques. So the float assembly has 0.009 gauge guitar sting as its rigging medium, I used nylon ‘invisible’ mending thread for the control cables and intended to use EZ-Line for the interplane standing rigging. Things did not go to plan on that because when I did the first line with EZ-Line it was clearly too thin for this scale. The EZ-Line I have would be much better suited to 1/48 or even 1/72 scale. I also thought it could do for rigging cables on 1/350 ships but that is another story. So, for the interplane standing rigging I went with the Nylon invisible mending thread but at a slightly thicker gauge. The first job was, however to ensure that the wire loops were fastened in using CA glue (I used Gorilla CA Gel). You can see the embedded wire loops in the image above. The next thing to do was to spray the interplane struts. This is when the wheels came off this build (no pun intended): I decanted and degassed some more of the Testors red that I have used for the rest of the build and then shot a coat across the three kit interplane struts and sundry other parts that will be fitted at the end of the build. This was the result when I sprayed them with my ancient Paasche VL. Bah humbug! This was bizarre as all parts looked smooth as they were sprayed and then after drying they all had the bubbles you can see, right down the middle! So in true G-AIVW style the paint was stripped and I reprimed all of the parts. I intend to brush paint the interplane struts but everything else got re-shot with my new Iwata brush and the misfiring Paasche has been sent in disgrace to West Coast Airbrush for a refurb. I am sure you will recall the various pieces of scratch building that had to be done for the cockpit. I ruined the wood instrument panels with inadequate masking and so had to redo them. This time I did the instrument panels in black and refitted them. At this point I had not fitted the P-Type compass to the front cockpit. You can see that I had fitted the control rigging for the elevator and rudder too. You can also see the repairs to one of the snapped of water rudders in the image below. I fitted the interplane struts, still in their grey primer and then confirmed what everyone was telling me all along: rigging is actually not difficult. Here is where she is at the moment: semi rigged. There are quite a few detail pieces to add (including the aero screens), more rigging to do and plenty of detail painting left, but I am pleased the adventure with this little kit is on the home straight. My main learning from this build is that the hard yards have always been dealing with the kit’s foibles rather than issues rigging it. Kind regards, Paul

Nice. All of those are welcome additions to the early airframes that are available. Kind regards, Paul

Agreed - I’ll stop gnawing at this bone now and go build something. Kind regards, Paul

Posted on Darryl Legg’s Facebook page… That’s Sale #1 right here. Best regards, Paul

I did check their website and HpH Sailplanes and HpH Models have the same address, same logo and same board of managing directors. I am sure you are right that they are legally separated though. Kind regards, Paul

Thanks Kev - duly noted.