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Liberated during quarantine -PB4Y-1


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Have been trying to stay busy while not at work, my B-17D conversion has hit the wall, waiting for things to come in the mail, can't do any 3D drawing for printing until I go back to work...So I went into the storage room and brought out the Hobbyboss monster B-24... I've been putting off dealing with the wing issues, the root being the wrong cross section and the incident being off as well, also the thickness of the wing out to the tips and the wing tips needing to be more horizontal.  I think I finally got it to a good place, a ton of cutting ,sanding, gluing , cursing and forced twisting.... The wings look nice and thin now out towards the tips and the roots look more like a Davis airfoil now.

 

 

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The wing tip is thinned way down, doesn't really show here, but the tip is about half the original thickness of the kit wing now, and if you look at the rest of the wing in the background you can see how much more horizontal the tip is in relation to the root.

 

ogT7YdF.jpg

 

The root of the wing has  been increased in thickness about .125" on the top , about 2/3rds the way towards the leading edge, I cut  all the molded in wing ribs, on the top and bottom wing halves and left only the upper wing's main spar and some of the wheel well bay locating ribs, I made a new profile styrene "root rib" and glued it into the top half of the wing after some persuading "cold" forming of the upper wing halves without the ribs in them anymore, I also re-profiled the end walls for the landing gear bays to match the re configured arc of the upper wing . I had to also remove material from the bottom/front of the main kit spar in order to change the angle of the wing, bringing the center of the leading edge up about .125" from where the kit wing was located. The pencil lines on the fuselage in the following photos are where the kit wing was suppose to locate compared to the relocated and reshaped wing.

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Also I need to make fillets for the tops of the wings to take up the gap created by changing the tilt/incidence of the wing.

rYfVTJ5.jpg

 

 

 

 

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6 hours ago, wpierson said:

Have you considered making copies of your corrected wings? People could order correct wings. Look at the amount of frustration and horror you would save us mere mortals.:D

Unfortunately this is only going to be a one up, when I started last week I knew that I was either going to make it work or it was going in the trash....

Sorry that I didn't take photos of what I did internally, I was just so caught up in trying to figure out how to pull this off without making  a major mess of it !!!

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The attach photos show how much cutting down in thickness to the outer wings, I am holding the original thickness kit aileron in place as a comparison  of change.

This view is the wing tip with the kit aileron behind it.

 

ZpAQfR2.jpg

 

This is a view of the aileron where it meets the flap.

 

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Almost all of the thinning to the wing was done to the lower wing halves, the trailing edge in particular, doing this helps make the wing tip raise upwards at the back which is what it needed to do. I sanded the rib on the trailing edge at the tip where the aileron lives down to zero and sanded a constant taper on the rib all the way to the outer side of the wheel well box.

Also the remaining spar on the upper wing halves have to be sanded, started at leaving about .040 where the aileron starts(I cut the spar off where the aileron starts at the tip) and sanded a constant taper to the wheel well box.

Edited by patricksparks
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1 hour ago, brahman104 said:

Great work Pat! I can't believe the difference in thickness once you put up the original aileron next to it. Amazing the change you got from sanding and cold forming, really incredible stuff!

 

I'll be coming back to you for notes when I do mine!

 

Cheers,

 

Craig

Thank you, great work on your B-17 as well !!!

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5 hours ago, CATCplSlade said:

Great effort, but too much for my skill level. I will build mine OOB and hope no one visits who is familiar with the plane. 

 

Which is very likely considering the only other WWII nut in my neighborhood is totally into armor.

Glad to hear your still going to build it, much to my surprise the kit as is fits together very good, the interior has good detail, the waist section is really nice that Hobbyboss molded the upper interior walls separately so that the stringers and ribs all look correct and the parts fit really good !!! I like it !

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I just had to come back for a second look! Amazed at the transformation. What BS/BG are. You going to do?

 

I keep wanting to build my one from my Great Uncle’s squadron in the 461st BG, 15th AF. Was doing research recently and there were 2 different missions that I know what aircraft he was in, and out of 30ish aircraft in the group, 10 or less came back... makes one shudder to think.

-Peter

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