brian-f

Hi Peter, I've got the German guy about to swing the prop almost done, just his hands and a few little details to finish. I would think I should have him ready for moulding by the weekend. What do you think about some bits and bobs, petrol cans, oil cans, tools and toolboxes, that sort of thing? These have been something I have been thinking might be worth doing. Cheers, Brian.

Hi LSP'ers You may find the figures on my website of interest, these have been quietly in the works for some time. These are the first releases from what I hope will be a good range of WWI pilots and ground crew. Samples have been sent out for review, which should be on the web soon. Almost ready for production is a seated pilot and ground crewman swinging the prop for the WNW Fokker Eindecker family and also almost ready is a pair of crewmen to go in the FE-2. Late war seated and standing pilots to go with the Fokker DVII will be the next ones to be sculpted. Any ideas of what you would like to see produced for this range would be looked at seriously, so far the figures are what I wanted so I'm open to your ideas. Anyway, have a look here http://www.fawcettmodelsandpatterns.co.uk/ and see what you think. Cheers, Brian.

Hi Nick and He who shall not be named (just ordered your book from Hannants) To help sort the Lightning wheel types, I looked through a couple of my refs, AIRDOC "British Lightnings", Page 16 top shows the prototype and very early F1 style with 16 oval holes, Page 12 bottom left and page 13 bottom show XM215 F1A with recessed faces this style seems to be common on F1A's and early F3's, Page 20 bottom left shows F2A style dished face wheels, in this case on an F6 ! I have only seen these dished wheels on F2A's and on a very few F6's. Modellers Datafile (SAM) "The English Electric Lightning". Page 27 top F1 with recessed wheels, Page 32 F1A with recessed wheels, The drawing on page 66 labeled "main undercarriage assembly" shows prototype and early F1 16 hole wheel. Martin Bowman "Lightning Strikes" Page19,31 and 43 all show the recessed style wheel. To sum up, the 16 hole wheel can be seen on prototypes and F1's The recessed wheel can be seen on a few F1's more commonly on F1A's and F3's. The dished type wheel seems to first show up on F2A's and a small number of F6's The flat fronted wheel is the common F6 wheel but also is seen often on F3's It looks to me as if the wheel types were time dependent rather than which Mark, any airframe still in use in the later days would have the flat fronted wheel, but if you know different please let us know. The wheels in the Trumpeter F1A/F3 1/32 kit are poor representations of the flat fronted wheel and could be used for the F3 but not on the F1A. One way to spot the recessed wheel in a side view photo is to look for a ring around the ten bolts that hold the wheel on. On the recessed wheel these bolts sit on a raised ring. On the flat fronted wheel each bolt sits in its own recess, so does not show the ring. I hope this is of use, Cheers, Brian.

Ref the Mastercasters Lightning resin parts. The wheels will represent the early F3 style wheel with the recessed outer face, the F6 style with flat outer face will be the other wheel but you can see these fitted to F3's later in life. The F2A type with dished outer face my be made at later date if requested. The other item that could be of interest is a replacement nose ring, which has been exended back to mate up to the kit intake trunking, These parts will be available very soon, the hold up has been getting the brake details correct. Cheers, Brian. (patternmaker)

Hi David and Manu, I don't know when Bob will get the pictures up on the MDC site, but the conversion should be very easy to fit to the Tamiya A6M2. On the Tamiya kit, you just cut off the little fin fillet on the spine and fit the corrected fin, you have a little cutting on the rear fuselage to remove the tail cone but these cuts follow panel lines and then just glue in the rear fuselage plug and its ready for the rudder. I used dimentioned drawings from Japan which showed the corrected angles and lengths of the taller fin and rudder, I also enlarged photos as a double check. Cheers, Brian.

Hi David, I encountered this change in the fin/rudder when making the patterns for MDC's new conversion kit. The fin seems to start about 1.5mm further back and at a much steeper angle than the standard Zero, it is also taller and of course the rudder goes all the way to the bottom of the fuselage. I believe that the tail was the same on all grey and green/grey airframes, it certainly looked that way in the photos that I had available. I hope this is of use. Cheers, Brian.

Hi Guys, Just to put the record straight, the Extra 300 coming from MDC will be the low winged version. The high wing version that airshowmodels released may follow after the patterns have been breathed upon. Non of the moulds used to produce the airshowmodels kit are being used, but I feel justified in letting MDC use the modified patterns as I never got the agreed payment from airshowmodels for the Extra pattern work. Whenever I make patterns for a customer, the same rules apply, the patterns are my property until paid for. Yes it is a difficult business to be in! Cheers, Brian.

You could count me in for one. Brian.

Hi Guys, I can't help with a fix on the model but I think I know why it was built this way. On single rotor helis the torque from the rotor tries to rotate the fus in the opposite direction, The tail rotor prevents the fus from rotating but the rotational force is still being applied to the fus, so the only way it can move is sideways and as the fus is suspended from the rotorhead it swings to one side out of vertical. If you fly radio control helis you would know how the model always lifts off on one side first and tries to go sideways but once in the hover you tend not to notice anything strange, some modellers jack the u/c up on one side so that it will lift straight up. On the Mi-24 I bet that in the hover and slow flight the whole aircraft is hanging vertically. (Guess who's trying to learn how to fly r/c helis) I hope this is of interest, Brian.