Birdcage Corsair the Hard Way!

[Allan Peters]

Bingo! Thanks, Allan. Now I can proceed with the tail wheel assembly with some sense of clarity.

 

Kev

Another detail is the tires on the main wheels have a fine radial tread with seven ( as best as I can tell ) fine grooves. Of course nobody makes a tire with this pattern. I did this once using a smooth tire laid on its side next to a razor saw blade shimmed to the corresponding height in a stack of paper. Once you do the math on the width of the tire, the thicknesses of the blade and paper the grooving is the easy part. Don't try to gang the blades together to save time, you can't control the depth of cut, it works best one blade at a time.

 

Allan

[LSP_Kevin]

Thanks, Allan. I've got a set of aftermarket wheels in the box somewhere, and am happy to go with whatever tread pattern they feature at this stage. I've decided that if this build is ever to actually get finished, I'll need to pick my battles carefully!

 

Kev

[BiggTim]

Three weeks into your leave already? Wow, time really flew. I hope all is going well so far?

 

Tim

[LSP_Kevin]

Three weeks into your leave already? Wow, time really flew. I hope all is going well so far?

 

Tim

 

Yes, time is really flying along these days. Plus, I'm much busier than I expected to be, so that tends to push things along too. So far, things are travelling mostly OK, with fatigue being the main issue for my wife.

 

On the modelling front, I've been tinkering with the Moskit exhausts, and am hoping to get the time to assemble them today. I've also started to put the tail wheel assembly together, which is an alarmingly fiddly operation! I also have to figure out what colour to paint it.

 

Kev

[LSP_Kevin]

So, photos at last! As noted earlier, I've been spending my time on the tail wheel assembly and the Moskit exhausts. The latter are quite a handful, and I'm still not convinced they're going to work. You get two pairs of 3 exhaust pipes, and a pair of resin spacers for each:

 

 

They're amazing thin, and consequently, amazingly fragile:

 

 

Getting them together into a 3-pipe unit is a bit of a nightmare. I resorted to using a piece of tape to secure their relative positions, so that I could attach the resin spacers:

 

 

The end result looks something like this:

 

 

 

I've yet to ascertain how well they're going to fit into the outlet holes on the undersides, as the spacing looks a little loose to me. My next task is to tape everything up for a test fit. Fingers crossed!

 

I'll talk about the tail wheel in the next post.

 

Kev

[LSP_Kevin]

So, Trumpeter's annoyingly fiddly tail wheel assembly. Since I'm not using the arrestor hook, I could discard some of the parts involved, which also simplified the assembly somewhat. Trumpeter would have you capture the tail wheel inside the fork at this stage, and I just didn't want to do that. Instead, I removed the axle pins from each side of the fork, and drilled an indent to accept a replacement axle made from brass tubing:

 

 

This will allow me to insert the tail wheel at the end of the building and painting process, so that I can paint it separately.

 

After much fiddling, cursing, and dropping of parts, I finally arrived at this:

 

 

There's still one more part to attach, but it's largely finished. Trumpeter suggests painting it gloss white - anybody disagree?

 

The tail wheel itself led me on a merry dance for a while, before the path became clear. As I mentioned in a previous post, there are some aftermarket resin wheels in the box (we'll take a look at those in the next post). In the same bag, I found what looked like a replacement tail wheel, too. It's not part of the same set as the main wheels, and in fact looks like a True Details part, complete with flat spot and exaggerated bulge.

 

I set about carving off the unnecessary bulge, and drilling a hole to accept the new brass axle. But the more I looked at the part, the less like a Corsair tail wheel it looked to me. I dug out the kit parts, which comprised a plastic hub and a separate vinyl tyre. They look much better, but I hate vinyl tyres! Here's the comparison:

 

 

The kit part reminds me of a Mustang tail wheel, actually. I've decided to make a resin copy of the assembled kit tail wheel, which means I'll be able to deal with the seam on the tyre effectively, and have the ability to paint and weather it properly.

 

We'll take a look at the main wheels next.

 

Kev

[LSP_Ron]

Those exhaust are very convincing Kev,  I like!

[LSP_Kevin]

So, I found the resin main wheels in a bag with a pair of G-Factor bronze main gear legs. I still have no idea of the provenance of the wheels, though. Here's a comparison with the kit's vinyl tyre:

 

 

Interestingly, the kit part has the radial tread Allan mentioned in an early post, though certainly not 7 of them. The resin part is substantially thicker than the vinyl part, and looks massive - almost too wide:

 

 

What do you guys think? Too wide for real? Any ideas on whose parts they are? My current choices are to use the resin parts, or assemble and cast copies of the kit parts.

 

Here are the G-Factor main gear legs:

 

 

Sturdy!

 

OK, that's it for now. Thanks for checking in!

 

Kev

[LSP_Kevin]

Those exhaust are very convincing Kev,  I like!

 

Thanks, Ron. I'm just not sure if they'll fit now!

 

Kev

[LSP_Ron]

They will fit, the Trump exhaust opening is wrong. I'll see if I can find my build thread on the kit and post a link. 

 

The Resin wheels look to be correct, I think they are two bobs? 

[LSP_Ron]

Here  post 32 shows how I changed the opening. I made my own exhaust out of brass tube you can see them in post 64.  You maybe interested in post 57 also to fix the gear doors (easy 5 min fix) \

 

http://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?showtopic=37271&hl=%20trump%20%20f4-u1&page=1

[LSP_Kevin]

They will fit, the Trump exhaust opening is wrong.

 

Ah, but I'm not using the Trumpeter exhaust openings! If you remember, I'm using a corrected resin part (I forget whose, now), designed for the Revell kit:

 

 

As it happens, this part is designed to work with the Moskit exhausts, but I'm not sure my assembly of them is within the expected tolerances.

 

The Resin wheels look to be correct, I think they are two bobs?

 

I still have no idea whose they are, Ron. Presumably not G-Factor, as I'm not aware of Ernie providing resin wheels with his sets. I wasn't aware that Two Bobs made Corsair wheels. I still reckon they look too wide, though.

 

Kev

[LSP_Kevin]

Here  post 32 shows how I changed the opening. I made my own exhaust out of brass tube you can see them in post 64.  You maybe interested in post 57 also to fix the gear doors (easy 5 min fix) \

 

http://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?showtopic=37271&hl=%20trump%20%20f4-u1&page=1

 

Thanks, Ron. The Aires wheel bay set I'll be attempting to use actually provides corrected front doors for the landing gear.

 

Kev

[LSP_Ron]

Kool,  I did forget about the correct, I didn't go back and re-read the thread.

 

I think the wheels are correct. The kit ones are definitely too thin.  I used the same set but I can't recall where I got them. I thought it was Two Bobs?

 

[LSP_Kevin]

Thanks, Ron. I count 6 striations on that tread. So even using the kit wheels would produce an incorrect pattern. I guess I can either modify the resin ones, or use them as-is (which would be no more incorrect than the kit parts, really).

 

Kev