Eduard 109 E-1

[mykl8180]

Beautiful work - I really like it.

 

Out of interest - I'm working on an E-1 right now - what were your problems. It would be interesting to see if they match mine... :-)

Thomas,

 

Here are a few of the problem that I ran into.

 

- I could not get the instrument panel to fit in between the two fuselage halves. Granted, I used the Aires cockpit set, but I also test fitted the kit parts before I glued everything in place. Even the instrument panel (Part F19) which was supplied with the kit would not fit.

- The chin radiator assembly also fit poorly. I needed to fill and sand the seam which was made by the two fuselage halves repeatedly to make it look like it was one piece. There was also a large gap at both the front and back of the radiator assembly (Parts A12, F11, F7, and E11). Again it took a lot of filling and sanding to remove these gaps.

- The wings were another problem area. They didn't look quite right after I had assembled them. Once I tried to fit them to the fuselage, I immediately saw the problem. They were flat!!! There was no dihedral to speak of. This also left huge gaps at the fuselage to wing joins. So, I glued the bottom of the wing to the bottom of the fuselage. Once this was dry, I put glue on the edges of each the tops of the wing (Parts C1 and C2), and bent them until they met the fuselage. I then ran a rubber band between the wings over the top of the fuselage. I let everything dry overnight. When I removed the rubber band, the wings had a proper dihedral, and the nasty gaps at the wing/fuselage join were gone.

- The was also a pretty bad gap at the rear seam where the bottom of the wing assembly met the fuselage. Again this required a fair amount of filling and sanding.

- As has been mentioned elsewhere, the fit of the four parts (Parts A6, A11, A5, and A4) which cover the front of the fuselage was pretty bad. I made the issues worse, by including the engine. But I just didn't think it looked right to look through the holes in the cowling and see nothing. It took a lot of sanding and grinding, but you can make the engine fit. I also removed the small lip that Eduard molded on the parts to help fit them together. I found that the lip actually prevented some of the parts from fitting together properly. The parts went together much more smoothly after the lips was removed.

- The final area that I had problems with was the canopy. After the problems I had getting the cockpit assembly to fit into the fuselage, I had decided to close the canopy. Unfortunately, the three parts that make up the canopy (Parts J1, J3, and J4) fit together so badly, that opted to leave it open. The worst fit was the front windscreen (Part J1). For some reason, it did not fit entirely across the width of the fuselage. I think the part must have been misshapen, because the other two parts (J3 and J4) did not have this problem.

 

Well that is a list of some of the issues that I had. Hope your build is going well.

[MikeP]

Despite the problems you encountered, it really seems to have turned out really well when looking at the photos.   Your list will come in handy to watch out for when I build mine.

 

Mike

[Mikester]

Really nice work!