pheonix

What a shame you did not quite finish Dennis. This was one of the lead builds in this GB in my opinion - an excellent example of scratch building. I am looking forward to seeing this completed and in the RFI section as I am sure that the numbers and base can be relatively easily finished. P

Sorry to be late again Adrian but I have only just returned from a holiday break. Excellent new fuselage - that is a very large moulding and yours has come out extremely well. I know who to ask if I need one that size in future....! I too will be following your WIP thread as there is so much to be learned from this conversion. P

Thanks gentlemen for the very kind remarks. I am going to be offline for a couple of weeks so will catch up on the last completions when I get back online hopefully early in the new year. Seasons greetings to one and all. P

This type was completely new to me so I have been very interested to follow this build. A very impressive model indeed - and I too really like the sea surface. P

Oh dear Steve - I usually do that sort of thing when I do not want to make a serious modification! Let's hope that you can at least present a completed model by Sunday - but thet will be too late for me as I have to go on my travels on Sunday morning and will be off-line for the following two weeks. P

1/72 Scratch built Blackburn TB (Twin), RNAS I o Grain, 1916. In 1915 the British Admiralty issued a specification for a long range Zeppelin interceptor which could operate over the sea at night. It was to be armed with Ranken incendiary steel darts which were to be dropped over the side of the aircraft which was expected to fly above the target. The Blackburn Aircraft Company was already building BE 2c trainers and Sopwith Cuckoo torpedo bombers, but the T.B. or Twin Blackburn was the first indigenous design to be submitted by the company. Construction was conventional box girder fuselages with a rotary engine at the front of each, joined by a 10 foot centre section and common tail unit. The wings were three bay with a large overhang and the fins and rudders were slightly modified BE 2 c units. The original intention was to power the aircraft with two 150hp Smith radial engines which offered a very low weight to power ratio and low fuel consumption. However production units did not prove to be reliable and so 100hp Gnome Monosoupape or 110hp Clergets were fitted instead. The resultant lower powered aircraft were in fact seriously underpowered and the performance of the aircraft fell far short of the operational requirements. There were some other problems which made the type lanes than optional too. When one of the early production types was being tested the flight test observer recorded that while the pilot sat in one cockpit with all of the controls, he sat in the other with just the engine starting handle. When the Gnome engine was primed a pool of excess petrol formed on the float and ignited when the engine was fired. The observer was expected to lie on the lower centre section and put out the fire on the pilot’s side with a fire extinguisher and then climb into his own cockpit to start the second engine. The fire extinguishing performance had to be repeated and then the observer could clamber back into his own cockpit ready for take off. Once airborne the test pilot found that the mainplanes flexed to such a degree that all lateral control was lost. This was rectified by adding king posts and bracing to the wing overhangs, but then the relative movement between the fuselages caused the pilot further problems with stability and control. Communication between the crew was by hand signals which meant that co-ordinating any attack on an airship at night would be been close to impossible. The lack of power from the engines meant that the total offensive load was restricted to 70 lb and the rate of climb was such as to make it doubtful whether the aircraft would ever be able to intercept a target. Although a total of 7 of the 9 aircraft built were sent to RNAS Killingholme they were hardly used and were eventually struck off charge, a fate shared by the two remaining aircraft which were never taken from storage. The odd design of this aircraft was to be repeated many times by the Blackburn Company which has a justified reputation for aesthetically unpleasing aircraft, many of which were designed and built for Admiralty purposes, and none of which could reasonably be described as highly successful, even if they were reliable. Thanks for looking. P

Evening All, My thanks to all of you who have wished me well and left positive comments about the model. I have been struggling with a cold/cough - the latter developed into a mild form of bronchitis which I am pleased to report has now almost gone, but it completely stopped me from modelling for a few days. I have a personal deadline as well as the GB deadline to keep to, so I have rushed a little to finish the model and put it on a base. I will do the necessary tidying up and finishing at my leisure after the seasonal upheavals are past. In the meantime here are some notes on how I finished the model and made a base for it - there will be more photos and some historical notes in the gallery later. I just want to finish this before I am overtaken by the GB deadline! The first task was to rig everything. This was straightforward as it is basically a standard biplane rather than an early monoplane or pusher which tended to have rather more wires. I used rolled 40 SWG copper wire attached at the ends with CA. I am not sure about the tail control wires as I cannot see them on photos and they are not on any of the drawings so I have added what I consider to be the most likely pattern. The propellors which were carved from wood were fitted last so that they did not get in the way and thus knocked off. The base is a piece of painted hardboard with an attempt to represent a strip of grass and a muddy track which is visible in the photos of the aircraft when it was at Grain. I will add some more weathering to the concrete base later - I will probably weather the Hansa- Brandenburg base at the same time. The trestles were made from 20 x 30 thou Evergreen strip and the wheeled units under the main floats were from scrap: all are based on those seen in the photos alluded to. This has been an enjoyable build of an unusual type and I am pleased to have participated in this GB. My thanks to Jamie for being such a good moderator and to all of you who have been following along and offering support. P.

Super finish for the fabric. Rigging looks very good too. First class scratch building. P

Getting the correct dihedral on the lower wings of these biplane flying boats has invariably proved difficult for me, no matter which procedure I use. I think that yours looks perfectly acceptable - and I defy any critic to build one of these flying boats and make a better job of it. Good modelling Steve. P

Very delicate struts - but very close to scale so very realistic. P

If the top wing is strong enough that you can invert the model and rest it as per the photo, it should be strong enough to handle while rigging. You may be surprised to learn just how strong such a model can be - I know from experience and was surprised myself. The model is looking better with each post - with rigging it really is going to be a stunner. P

Evening All, Thanks to all of you who commented on my last update - I should have replied sooner but even as I was posting the distraction on how I put struts into multi-bay biplanes I was beginning to get some aches and pains associated with a horrible bug/cold which has made modelling life somewhat difficult. It also meant that my intention to leave a response was shelved: I apologise for not having commented and thanked you all sooner. Adding the floats while in a state of incomplete concentration and having a shortage of patience has been a lesson in itself - next time I will wait until I am feeling a bit better....but the deadline looms! The rear pair of floats were fixed using 20 thou rod cut to length: first one side was fixed and then the other was made so that it matches from the side and longitudinally. The struts are not vertical so this operation would have been tricky even if I had been feeling normal. As it was it took three attempts to get the second float properly aligned. The struts were painted after I had calmed down. That left the two large floats at the front. These too had to match both from the side and be properly aligned longitudinally and again the struts are not vertical with respect to the bottom of the fuselage or thrust line. There is also a cross strut between the forward and rear pairs and there were fixings on the floats to allow the angle of incidence to be changed - this was an experimental type. Knowing from experience that fitting one float would be relatively straightforward I decided to tackle one side and then wait until I felt better before tackling the other. I will not give a blow by blow account but Burns' memorable lines about "best laid plans of mice and men" assumed significant proportions while I was trying to get even the first float properly aligned. The second finally submitted after a real struggle: I have not had such problems that these presented for a very long time. But they are there now....and the aircraft is a tail sitter! But I have a cunning plan - to which I mean that I intend to mount the model on small carriages and trestles as per the photos of the machine represented by the model when it was at RNAS Grain in 1916. And before anyone comments I have still not properly softened the cockades on the upper wing: I have not had the patience left to deal with that yet! When I am feeling considerably better I will rig this model and add the final details. In the meantime I am making a small base and the carriages and trestles which require much less concentration and can be picked up and put down easily. Thanks for looking. P.

I agree with Charlie that it does look odd - but then I do like the odd looking aircraft as I find them far more interesting. Cracking model BTW. P

Looking very impressive indeed. P

That looks very impressive. Getting those exhaust stubs in looks as though it was a real fiddle but that engine assembly really does look good. The floats are good too - in fact a fine piece of scratch building going on here.

The engine and cradle look very good to me - I especially like the radiator. I also like your method of ensuring that the rigging wires crossed at the horizontal bars - works every time!! P

Thanks Ian. You are quite right - this has been pointed out on another website too and I have started to address the problem with some setting solution. P

I developed this technique as a result of trying to build pusher biplanes and have used the method since with success. Here are some examples of my method from earlier builds: This was an FE 2b conversion: the photo shows clearly the outer struts only were put into place because the upper boom was supposed to rest on the rudder: what happened was that the expoxy holding the booms to the upper wing failed and the boom dropped off! However the top wing stayed in place because the struts were secure and I was able to re-attach the boom. The cabane and remaining interplane struts were added afterwards. Another conversion - this time the DH 1A and I used the same method of attaching the outer interplane struts and used the rudder as the third support. Adding the cabane and remaining interplane struts was very straightforward. In both of the above cases the assembly was strong enough to be handled easily and gave no indication that it would fall apart while extra struts were added. This is a scratch built Ago which had twin booms joined by a single tail unit so I had to assemble the wings first. Here I did put in the cabanes with the outer interplane struts because the structure would have been too weak without them. Jigging this was easy as the struts are vertical so a simple jig kept everything in line while the cement hardened: The method can also be applied to kits where necessary, but always give the cement plenty of time to harden and use at least 4 attachment points so that when you want to handle the model it has sufficient rigidity to be lifted and turned at high angles. These are examples of where I only used the cabanes as fixing points: Avro type D biplane (1912). Maurice Farman Longhorn: note that the tail struts help this structure but only the cabanes hold the wings. All of the above are multi-bay types. Hope this helps. P

That is a really well finished model - super colour scheme.It was also finished in a fraction of the time that I normally take to make a model so well done on that score. Some of those flying boats really were enormous - difficult sometimes to comprehend just how big they were/are. P

Oh the joys of mounting an engine on a raised platform and then adding more cabane struts to the top wing! I would have mounted the engine on the platform, then the top wing via the interplane struts and finally the cabanes - as per my other flying boat builds. However you seem to have come out of this well so far and I am sure that any slight mis-alignments will be well concealed beneath the top wing. This will certainly be an excellent addition to your collection Steve. P

OK as you asked here are some. Please remember that this model is nearly 50 years old and resided in a box in the roof of several houses for many years. It is a conversion from the original Airfix Auster Antarctic, moulded in yellow plastic and came in a plastic bag with a paper header. I used an article by Alan Hall in Airfix Magazine from the late 1960's - I cannot remember the exact date. The main changes were the engine nacelle (carved from balsa), new canopy top (in my case a piece of perspex sanded and polished), new undercarriage legs (card), and some interior details to fill that large empty and highly visible space. Basic but good fun at the time. P

I have been wondering where this had gone to.....and then I saw your well deserved gong and understood that you had been making something far more important and interesting! For which many congratulations. If this one turns out half as well as the gong winner (and it is already well up to that standard), then I can see another gong in the offing for 2020. P

Just found this and like some others this brings back memories for me.... Considering the age of the moulds and your relative inexperience with WW1 types I would suggest that you are making an extremely acceptable model. The rigging is most impressive and I note the you have also achieved the distinctive curve of the top wing - something I was never able to do with my models from this kit. P

My you do work quickly Mark. Excellent start on a completely new type for me: and I am very interested in your methods of construction so will be following carefully. P

Catching up again Tony and what a transformation from last time I looked in. This really is a model of which many of us dream... well I do at least. The details over which you have spent so much time are simply wonderful and being brought together as they now are, they are even more remarkable. Your photographs probably do not do the model full justice, but they alone show a level of craftsmanship which I rarely see in any models. I am really looking forwards to the RFI pictures and will keep a close eye out for them. P