PCM Hurricane Fabric wing

[dennismcc]

Still plugging away though it is getting easier.

Got the seat belts/harness sorted, though it needed some mods as it was meant for a Spitfire, I like the RB ones better.

Painted up the kit seat, looks better than the GMF one though that one is probably more accurate.

The seat fitted into the frame nicely, though I had to remove one of my struts to get the harness though the seat.

Glued the side console into the fuselage half, the instruction would have you attach it to the frame but I wanted to use it to attach the frame to the fuselage.

And finally the cockpit frame attached to the fuselage side, this was a big relief for me as it was a difficult job on the Tempest, note the scrap plastic attachment points.

Now back to the Tempest.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[dennismcc]

1 hour ago, MARU5137 said:

Dennis,

 

AWESOME start.

Love the work on your Cockpit.

SUPERB. 

 

 

Thank you very much Maru, though things have not gone to plan since I last posted, I must update this thread.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[mozart]

29 minutes ago, dennismcc said:

.......though things have not gone to plan since I last posted, I must update this thread.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

Yes please do Dennis, I also have the rag and metal winged PCM kits to do at some point, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.

[dennismcc]

6 hours ago, mozart said:

Yes please do Dennis, I also have the rag and metal winged PCM kits to do at some point, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.

OK Max I'm just downloading the photos now.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[dennismcc]

OK time to bring this one up to date.

The fuselage halves were joined and the seams cleaned up, this went very well, then I fitted the aft fuselage undersides I was a bit cautious about this but it fitted well and sanding it down I did not lose much (if any) detail. I've just noticed the CA smear on here, it's gone now.

Then I started to thin down the resin wheel well top, this was to clear the bottom of the cockpit frames.

All taped up and test fitting, sanding/scraping and more test fitting.

The part just below the fuselage is a spreader bar to push the sft section of the wings up to match the fuselage wing roots.

Then as I had seen on some other builds I attached the top wing sections to the fuselage, I had to do this in stages to to get the wing section to conform to the wing root on the fuselage. I have never tried this method before as I have always worried about the match up with the lower wing section.

Offering up the taped up wings I found this.

But on the other side there was this.

This is not too bad but the raised fabric wing details did not match up, if the wing was metal I could have redone the panel lines and lived with it but I was not happy with what I had so it was back to the drawing board. I detached both wings and will do it the same way that I approach this problem on 

old SH kits, I will make up the wings and fill the wing root gaps with slices of plastic sheet.

Just to add insult to injury the cockpit tub fell out with all the handling but that is an easy fix, I will use the opportunity though to make 100% sure that the cockpit bottom rails do not touch the resin wheel well.

So I am back to this

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[dennismcc]

A quick dry fit shows this.

The wing centre section is flat and the outer wing dihedral looks good.

Some sanding required here.

This looks better.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[mozart]

And that always seems to be the major problem area with this kit Dennis doesn’t it, those wings and how to attach them! 

[monthebiff]

Its definitely a tricky area isn't it Dennis, I've only built the metal wing version but didn't have these kind of massive fit issues you have experienced here. I'm intrigued to see what I get when I start my rag wing version.

 

Regards.Andy 

[LSP_Kevin]

Looks a challenge, Dennis! I'll have to remember this when it comes to building mine - though it's the metal wing version, so perhaps not exactly the same beast. Could you not install a couple of spreaders inside the fuselage to push the wing roots out a bit?

 

Kev

[mozart]

I wonder what the result would be if you glue the lower wing to the fuselage first, then add the uppers afterwards? Would it give you more control over the fit? I think Kev’s idea of spreaders is a sound one too. 

Edited March 19, 2021 by mozart

[dennismcc]

13 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Looks a challenge, Dennis! I'll have to remember this when it comes to building mine - though it's the metal wing version, so perhaps not exactly the same beast. Could you not install a couple of spreaders inside the fuselage to push the wing roots out a bit?

 

Kev

That is something that I might try Kev, though I did read one build thread where they tried that but it looked odd so they backtracked but it is something that I could try.

12 hours ago, mozart said:

I wonder what the result would be if you glue the lower wing to the fuselage first, then add the uppers afterwards? Would it give you more control over the fit? I think Kev’s idea of spreaders is a sound one too. 

Attaching the lower wing first would be a great idea, that was the method that I used on the Tempest and it worked well and that was a 5 piece wing.

The other thing that I was aware of was making sure that the centre section was flat and the outer wing dihedral was correct as I had a problem with that on the PCM G55.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[MikeMaben]

I stuck a spreader in mine mainly to get a fit on the ventral piece.

Haven't tried to fit the wings yet. Maybe it'll help there too.

 

 

 

[dennismcc]

4 hours ago, MikeMaben said:

I stuck a spreader in mine mainly to get a fit on the ventral piece.

Haven't tried to fit the wings yet. Maybe it'll help there too.

 

Thanks Mike will have to have a play with that one, strangely enough the ventral part on mine fitted perfectly.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[MikeMaben]

I guess I should mention that the long chunk of sprue got snipped off after the glue dried.

[dennismcc]

My modelling enthusiasm took a bashing with the failed attempt of joining the fuselage to the wings but I'm slowly getting back to it.

I decided to complete as much as possible before making another attempt to join the wings to the fuselage.

I'll use the same method that I used on my PCM G55 which required quite a bit of fettling to get it right, it needed plastic card spacers on both side of the fuselage as shown below.

So first up fitting the top and bottom halves of the wings, first up I lined up and taped the front of the top and bottom of the wing and glued the trailing edge, once done I applied some clamps.

This was allowed to set, not long as I only use CA on my builds, then I glued the front seam.

Next up I fitted the "spreaders" to make the top wing halve rounder fit to mate up to the  wing root better.

Once done I sat back and realised that I had not installed the landing light inserts, I was so distracted by solving the wing to fuselage joint that I forgot them entirely.

Never mind the kit inserts are solid and the area around the light on the real thing was open inside the wing, so with some tricky ship in the bottle type work I installed some plates inside the wing to take the lamps.

These plates were then painted matt black, while this dried I started to hunt for some lamps, I have a box of 1/32 Spitfire spares and in there I found some landing lights from the Hasegawa Mk V, these were then cut to fit and the backs painted silver.

Next up was the wing leading edge gun inserts, these were a good fit, though rather than spending a lot of time sanding the leading edge back I sanded the back of the inserts until they were flush with the wing and glued them in place.

Then all the seams were sanded and polished.

Then I turned to the fuselage, the kit has an option to build an early Hurricane without the "keel" on the lower section of the tail so for building a latter version there is a plug to fill the tail wheel bay, this would have probably been easier to fit before the fuselage bottom but it fitted fine as it was.

A quick dry fit of the "keel" showed a good fit.

The hole to fit the tail wheel into the keel was quite shallow so after checking the drawings I drilled it out a tad.

So happy with that a line of CA was spread on the keel position and it was dropped into place, once set the resulting gap was filled with Mr Surfacer and the excess was removed with a cotton bud dipped in Mr Color thinner.

The kit provides two lower rudder sections depending on which version you are building so I fitted the longer piece, and filled the resulting gap with Mr Surfacer, though looking at it there is still dome standing to do, on another build that I read here on LSP the builder cut the rudder off completely from the rudder post and joined it separately, this may be an easier way of doing it though too late for me.

 

More soon

 

Cheers

 

Dennis