Guest Peterpools Posted August 12, 2016 Share Posted August 12, 2016 Andy Excellent progress on a very complicated kit and assembly. I'm planning on buying the Tigercat when released and will be heeding your warnings about looking a few steps ahead. Looking good Keep 'em coming Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monthebiff Posted August 12, 2016 Author Share Posted August 12, 2016 Nice! This complex arrangement reminds me of the F7Fs complex gear. Also coming from HpH and I hope they put some thought into that as well. Cockpit looks wonderful in situ Thank you Brian, HpH definitely seem to put some thought into their kits, coupled with some very clever casting technology helps make for a very enjoyable build. Andy Excellent progress on a very complicated kit and assembly. I'm planning on buying the Tigercat when released and will be heeding your warnings about looking a few steps ahead. Looking good Keep 'em coming Peter Peter, definitely worth looking a few steps ahead with these kits and even then you still need to be careful when you commit to glue. Regards. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monthebiff Posted August 12, 2016 Author Share Posted August 12, 2016 Started today by giving the front U/C bay a pin wash in readiness to get the fuselage halves together. HpH supply a very crudly cast white metal nose weight which the U/C bay fits in to, I had to trim the weight to get this to fit and then trim some more for the weight to fit the nose and the fuselage halves to close (or so I thought)......... Somehow when I glued the nose and U/C bay in the weight didn't go in quite at the right angle so I ended up with a huge gap between fuse halves in the nose section. After some major trimming I was able to get everything to close up. However before I closed everything up I weighed the excess metal from the nose weight which started out at 90 grams, needing to add around 14 grams I decided to play safe and add a little more and settled on 3 x 2 pence pieces which came to 21 grams securely bonded just behind the rear of the U/C bay......... followed by finally closing up the fuselage halves together........ Very happy with progress, now time for some careful filling and sanding followed by a re-scribe of the damaged panel lines. Regards. Andy jgrease and Jan_G 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alaninaustria Posted August 12, 2016 Share Posted August 12, 2016 Very nice work so far bro!! monthebiff 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turboprop4 Posted August 13, 2016 Share Posted August 13, 2016 Hi Andy, Great work so far. It's a fantastic kit. I built one last year when they first came out and really enjoyed it. I noticed that you cut off the steel rod that extrudes from the landing gear and interferes with the main wheels being attached. I was wondering how you were going to keep those gear forks from collapsing under all the weight. I assumed when I built mine that that rod extension was intended to be inserted into the main wheel in order to transfer load from the wheel through the gear and into the nacelle firewalls. I'm interested to see how you handled this area as it was one that was a little bit of a head scratcher to me. In the end, you really couldn't notice the rod inserted into the each main wheel (I'll try to scrounge up a pic) but it did make getting the wheels to sit properly kind of a pain. Keep up the great work! Chad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_K2 Posted August 13, 2016 Share Posted August 13, 2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monthebiff Posted August 13, 2016 Author Share Posted August 13, 2016 Hi Andy, Great work so far. It's a fantastic kit. I built one last year when they first came out and really enjoyed it. I noticed that you cut off the steel rod that extrudes from the landing gear and interferes with the main wheels being attached. I was wondering how you were going to keep those gear forks from collapsing under all the weight. I assumed when I built mine that that rod extension was intended to be inserted into the main wheel in order to transfer load from the wheel through the gear and into the nacelle firewalls. I'm interested to see how you handled this area as it was one that was a little bit of a head scratcher to me. In the end, you really couldn't notice the rod inserted into the each main wheel (I'll try to scrounge up a pic) but it did make getting the wheels to sit properly kind of a pain. Keep up the great work! Chad Hi Chad, thanks for dropping by and welcome to the forums, While building up the nacelles I went for strength over aesthetics with all the internal parts, the hardest part was making sure I had the main strut square and once I was happy with this I initially used cyno to hold everything in place followed by 2 part epoxy carefully applied to give each joint strength. With regards to the rod extension I decided to remove it as I just didn't want it on show on the finished build but if I do see signs of weakness when finished I do have a plan B to fall back on. Regards. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Peterpools Posted August 13, 2016 Share Posted August 13, 2016 Andy WOW, fantastic progress and a nice solution to the nose weight situation. Keep 'em coming Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikeew Posted August 16, 2016 Share Posted August 16, 2016 Looking good so far Andy. I second your opinion on the need to plan ahead. Re: undercarriage reinforcements. I chose to remove them from the main gear but not the nose leg, its hidden quite nicely on the nose wheel but I was not sure it would be very easy to align the wheels flat spots on the main gear if I had left the metal rods in and tried to drill holes into the main wheels at the correct point. I chose to drill through each main wheel and and add brass tubing as axles for strength. I used stiff florists wire for the nose gear axle. TorbenD, Out2gtcha and monthebiff 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Ray Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 Oooh, that looks good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monthebiff Posted August 17, 2016 Author Share Posted August 17, 2016 Looking good so far Andy. I second your opinion on the need to plan ahead. Re: undercarriage reinforcements. I chose to remove them from the main gear but not the nose leg, its hidden quite nicely on the nose wheel but I was not sure it would be very easy to align the wheels flat spots on the main gear if I had left the metal rods in and tried to drill holes into the main wheels at the correct point. I chose to drill through each main wheel and and add brass tubing as axles for strength. I used stiff florists wire for the nose gear axle. Mike, firstly, what a superb job you made of this kit and using your build review in MAI as a helping hand on my build and so far seem to be experiencing the same issue's that you came across which for me is good as I must be going in the right direction! With regards to the main wheels, like yourself I also felt getting the flats of the wheels aligned correctly with the support rod was going to far to difficult and far to easy to get wrong, that coupled with a portion of rod on show made me deviate from the instructions and remove it. Regards. Andy Out2gtcha and mikeew 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monthebiff Posted September 14, 2016 Author Share Posted September 14, 2016 With the summer holidays over, kids back at school and some normality back I've managed to get some time on this one again, I began with finishing the rear cockpit and adding the radar consoles, the side panels were etched and to my surprise these were far to wide so out with the file followed by a paint touch up and all was well........... Followed by fitting the forward I/P combing in readiness for the windshield............ Talking of the clear parts this is the main canopy prior to clean up............ This is a massive piece of clear casting and it is just crystal clear, just amazing !! Regards. Andy Jan_G 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClumsyDude Posted September 14, 2016 Share Posted September 14, 2016 Andy, this is looking really crisp. Keep it up! Jim monthebiff 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monthebiff Posted September 18, 2016 Author Share Posted September 18, 2016 Time to marry the big Jumo's to the wings today and pretty happy with the fit........hats of th HpH on this........ In general a really, really good fit with the exception of the foreword nacelle to wing joint........... Also added the windshield which needs some serious blending in.......... Some steady progress this weekend but in the meantime its out with the filler. Regards. Andy Jan_G and Chris Wimmer 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 (edited) good work so far !.......Harv Edited September 18, 2016 by Guest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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