mozart Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 (edited) Those are shots that I took of our Tiger Moths at Henstridge Paul, you’ll find more in the Walkaroundssection of LSP. As Kev says, there are subtle variations regarding the wood stringers but the details of the linkages for the aileron controls are always the same. Edited October 13, 2022 by mozart Archimedes 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archimedes Posted October 13, 2022 Author Share Posted October 13, 2022 OK so what’s happening now… I now know that I’ll need to sand off the rest of the underside details and sort those out so a fuselage repaint is on the cards. The cowling panels are sprayed as is the propellor: YOu can see in the shot below just how much orange-peel is on the engine cowling panels. I have since gone over these with Micromesh and they have comE out better. So the underside panel was glued in and the front panel was glued to that. All looks rosy until (as you can just see on the photo above) the curved engine cover comes up rather short (about 2 mm in fact). Now either the lower panel is in at the wrong angle or the engine bearers are too long (maybe). Having looked at a few builds this appears to be a common feature of the kit. This shot of Patrick Barratt’s build of G-AMNN shows the engine top cover maybe 1 mm short at the back (Patrick if you are reading here; this is no comment on you as a modeller just an observation about the kit.) Kenneth Mckenzie’s lovely build here on LSP of his DH82a Floatplane does not appear to have the issue however. https://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/article.php?aid=1523 My build does so the question is what to do about it? For now that will be filed under ‘fuselage fixes’ and I will leave you with a dry fit assembly shot of where I am up to. I am getting so close to the reason I am doing this build: rigging! Bye for now. Paul LSP_Kevin, Landrotten Highlander, geedubelyer and 4 others 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mozart Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 Your top cowling looks slightly out at the rear end in the three quarter view above Paul, and the problem with this nose assembly is that each part depends on the accuracy of fit of all the others. I’d start by checking that area, I remember Kev had a problem with this too. Archimedes 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted October 13, 2022 Share Posted October 13, 2022 21 minutes ago, mozart said: I remember Kev had a problem with this too. Indeed I did. In fact, I had a terrible time getting all those wonky panels to agree on alignment, and ended up having to shim each side panel: I managed to get them to fit acceptably in the end, but it wasn't fun! Kev geedubelyer, Archimedes, Rockie Yarwood and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archimedes Posted October 14, 2022 Author Share Posted October 14, 2022 (edited) @mozart and @LSP_Kevin thanks once again! Good to know it is not only me! I had concluded earlier that I would have to shim at least the curved top cover but, after Blu-Tacking the side panels on I think they too will have to be shimmed. Verdammt. Max - you are right about the 3/4 view: the cowling was sat up a bit in that shot but will sit down. Even then however it is about 2 mm short. I am debating whether to a) take the entire engine mounting off and shorten that a touch. b) take a rasp to the front of the engine to get the front panel to sit back (I'm half joking here). c) shim out the side and top panel. Kev: thanks especially for the photos of yours: it shows the issue perfectly. Well done on your solution Readers may be thinking that this is causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth from me but weirdly I just find the challenge getting more interesting. it led me to think about how much we grind our teeth about fit and finish on various kits. Over the weekend, just for fun, I pulled my 1/72 Airfix Blenheim out of the stash and used it as a mule for improving my glueing technique. That part went well as I used Humbrol Liquid Poly and a 000 brush to get glue to flow using capillary action. A by-product of the exercise was to see how well the kit fitted together straight out of the box. 8 year-old me would have been thrilled (yes I was in a swoon working with sky-blue plastic for the evening). Yes, the kit is inaccurate in the massive raised rivets (which I could sand off), yes the frming of the glazing is grisly (which I could sand down, repolish and use masks and paint to show the framing in that scale) but you know what? The parts fitted together beautifully. It is an object lesson in not making assumptions about old kits. But back to the matter in hand: I shall take a look at how to solve the nose alignment issue on the Tiger Moth over the weekend and (I hope) mask up and get the white stripes painted on the floats. Cheers for now and thanks for the continuing support @LSP_Kevin and @mozart (Max - I hope you are continuing to enjoy the golf in Spain!) Kind regards, Paul Edited October 14, 2022 by Archimedes Rockie Yarwood, geedubelyer, LSP_Kevin and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mozart Posted October 14, 2022 Share Posted October 14, 2022 Cheers Paul, Spain is great fun both on and off the courses, and pretty warm at times! I like your experimental approach and if I was in your position (which of course I have been) I’d be pragmatic and hack the internals about to achieve the best external fit. If all is closed up, why fit the engine bearers, and chop bits off the engine willynilly so long as you’ve got the bit left for the exhausts to fit on to! Archimedes 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archimedes Posted October 19, 2022 Author Share Posted October 19, 2022 Thanks for all of the encouragement and kind words guys. I am away from home on business for three weeks now so normal service on this build will be resumed when I am back! I will, course, be haunting the forums looking at your work and enjoying the debates in LSP discussion. Bye for now! Kind regards, Paul LSP_Kevin 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archimedes Posted December 20, 2022 Author Share Posted December 20, 2022 (edited) Well, I am back after several weeks away in Europe and reorienting myself on the nose issues. I think in every build there is a low point. Right now is probably mine. Having wrestled the cockpit into submission I was hoping that the nose would be somewhat easier. So, if you recall, I had fastened the engine to its bearers and attached those to the firewall (I didn’t fix the ugly crack that the original builder had created when they snapped the firewall off as it is not going to be seen). That is when I began to notice that none of the nose panels fitted. I don’t mean slightly off but by 2 mm off. Ugh. Max was totally correct. So, I removed the offending assembly back to the firewall and, at that point noticed some horrible sink marks in the top cowl ahead of the front cockpit. Out with the sanding sticks and more ‘Mr Surfacer 1000’. I shortened the engine bearers and dry fitted all of the engine cowlings several times until I had them fit. But at this point several things looked wrong (Let’s ignore the orange-peel on the engine cowlings for a second ). Something on the nose looks off. On a real Tiger there is a continuous curve that starts ahead of the front cockpit and ends at the propellor. So, I sat the fuselage on a level surface at the correct angle for level flight and put a ruler at 90 degrees up against the mating surface of the propellor boss: Then I realised what the issue is: The join that is formed by the mating surface of the side cowling and the curved top cowling on the model points upward and on the real aircraft it would be parallel to the horizontal line of the cockpit doors. This feature of the kit can also be seen quite clearly in the pictures posted of LSP Kev’s RAAF Ambulance build (I guess I should have spotted what the issue was much sooner). So, in the words of Prof James Moriarty; “That is my problem now. The question is what to do about it?” More to follow once I work out my answer to that. I suspect what I should have done is put a thick shim into the back of the curved top cowling as the photo showing the gap has a nice level line with the cockpit door at the bottom of the curved top cowling. I’ll have a think about that before returning to the issue this week. Kind regards, Paul Edited December 20, 2022 by Archimedes Landrotten Highlander, Jim Barry, MikeMaben and 1 other 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted December 20, 2022 Share Posted December 20, 2022 Yeah, my build has that awkward kink along the top too, but I had so much trouble getting all those engine cowling pieces together that I elected to let that one go. At least on mine the large hump to the rear should distract viewers from it! Kev Archimedes 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archimedes Posted December 20, 2022 Author Share Posted December 20, 2022 25 minutes ago, LSP_Kevin said: Yeah, my build has that awkward kink along the top too, but I had so much trouble getting all those engine cowling pieces together that I elected to let that one go. At least on mine the large hump to the rear should distract viewers from it! Kev HI Kev, thanks for confirming that. It does at least confirm I am not going completely mad! I am currently face-palming because I think I had the answer when I put the top cowling on originally. I probably should have done a thick shim at the back of that and shimmed the back edges of the side panels. C’est la vie - I shall ruminate on how to fix it: I have all of the underside to fix yet on the fuselage so there is room for more surgery yet! P.S. The rigging advice in both of the KLP publications I bought yesterday (Albatros DVa and Felixstowe F.2a is top notch). it will be most useful when I get to that part of this build. Kind regards, Paul LSP_Kevin 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mozart Posted December 20, 2022 Share Posted December 20, 2022 That nose certainly has its issues, something fundamentally wrong with the Matchbox design. I think I shimmed mine quite heavily, that top line was my ‘datum’ and everything else below was altered accordingly. Archimedes 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archimedes Posted December 20, 2022 Author Share Posted December 20, 2022 (edited) 8 hours ago, mozart said: That nose certainly has its issues, something fundamentally wrong with the Matchbox design. I think I shimmed mine quite heavily, that top line was my ‘datum’ and everything else below was altered accordingly. Thanks Max. Well, it's time to pull it apart for the second time and shim it. Looking at the underside the bottom of the nose assembly then looks off but I think I will marginally shorten the front cowl to lift the underside a little. I don't want the front end to look like it has sagged once the top datum is right. And to think this was intended just to be a rigging mule in the beginning! Kind regards, Paul Edited December 20, 2022 by Archimedes LSP_Kevin and mozart 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archimedes Posted December 26, 2022 Author Share Posted December 26, 2022 And now, A Nose Job… In our next installment of “Would @tomprobert Laugh at This?” I am fixing the nose shape. I put a stack of 2.0 mm square styrene stick in between the firewall and the rear of the top cowling. As @mozart noted this enabled the line at the top of the nose to be reastablished from the front cockpit to the propellor mounting. While that was setting I ground off the fictional elements present on the underside and began putting more realistic parts in place. Then it began to get ugly as I reshaped the styrene shim (yes a full repaint is now on the cards) and filled the resulting seam with Mr Surfacer 1000. I have left that to cure and will finish off the underside details while it does. I am pleased that the nose looks more like an actual Tiger Moth. Side panels and their shims, sand, polish, prime, paint to follow… In the meantime I hope everyone had a great Christmas! Best regards, Paul scvrobeson, Fanes, Gazzas and 3 others 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted December 26, 2022 Share Posted December 26, 2022 Excellent work, Paul! Kev Archimedes 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mozart Posted December 27, 2022 Share Posted December 27, 2022 Proper job Paul! Archimedes 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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