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Wingnut Wings 1/32 Bristol F.2b Sunbeam Arab - FINISHED (at last)!!


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Right upper mainplane redone and incurred a bit of decal damage along the way, which I think I'll keep: a happy accident giving me a nice bit of wear and tear!

 

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Wing undersides with 'trompe l'oeil' wing ribs showing through the linen:

 

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This evening, sadly after there was any decent light available I managed to get the lower mainplanes drilled and all the Bob's Buckles eyelets glued in, ready for rigging. Lower wings are now glued in position and so I dry-fitted the uppers and took a few photos. Apologies for the quality - it's feeling like late autumn tonight and my camera doesn't do artificial light very well.

 

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With luck I can get the struts in, top wings prepped and glued in tomorrow night: then the final bits of rigging. I shall miss doing this one too. 

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Inner bays rigged!

 

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And the tail finished too:

 

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So just the outer bays, top & bottom wing control runs and a few minor pain touch-ups to do. The Bob's Buckles/Uschi vd Rosten rigging system takes time, and my method with the wings was to install all eyelets, glue the wings in place and then rig. I did find however that some of the fuselage-to-wing attachments were difficult to get at (a bit like painting your bathroom door with a long pole through your front letterbox while viewing proceedings from the kitchen window), and so if I did an F.2b again I'd attach those lines at the fuselage end before putting the top wing on. It takes time - maybe a couple of hour-long sessions per bay, but it's very satisfying. The Uschi rigging line takes superglue very easily and sticks pretty much on contact. That helps a great deal because for my first few attempts I was fully expecting the line to come unglued when I released the tweezers. So far no major mishaps and I should also say that it's pretty robust: I've stuck my fingers into various bits of rigging so far and none of it has broken.

 

I think my only regret is that I maybe should have gone with RAFwires after all because even the 0.005 Uschi line is very fine. What do you think?

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I think it looks absolutely magnificent - and that includes the rigging.  Like all of us towards the end of a build, you are so close to the model that you are noticing tiny differences and wondering whether (for instance) you should have gone for the RAF wires.  But the rest of us, looking in, are just saying "Blimey!  That looks amazing!"

 

I have a trio of WnW kits in my stash (predictably, all Naval - a Tripehound, Pup & Ship's Camel), and I have been taking copious notes, especially about your experiences with rigging.  If mine end up looking half as good as this, I'll be chuffed to bits!  And I'm not planning fundamental changes to the kit, like a completely different scratch-built engine...

 

Fab.

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When I first looked at your picyures - the close ups - I thought that they had been taken in a museum! That is simply superb in every way. I do not think that most people looking at this would even notice the rigging wire shapes....

 

P

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I'm not aware of anyone who has ever done RAF wires to their satisfaction, they all regret trying! Especially the PE ones. What you have done is top notch and about as good as you'll get it!

 My only suggestion would be to tone down the ribs where they cross the white of the roundels. They look a little too stark to me.

 

Ian

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3 hours ago, limeypilot said:

I'm not aware of anyone who has ever done RAF wires to their satisfaction, they all regret trying! Especially the PE ones. What you have done is top notch and about as good as you'll get it!

 My only suggestion would be to tone down the ribs where they cross the white of the roundels. They look a little too stark to me.

 

Ian

Glad you said that - my thought too but I was going to leave it! I think I'll blow over it with a light shade (is that an oxymoron?) before putting any wires on the top wing.

 

:yes:

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4 minutes ago, Sabrejet said:

How's yours going Andy?

not too bad - I managed an hour after work this evening, I've attached the wires to all the difficult eyelets on the lower wing & the upper wing is fitted. I'm hoping to get the struts, the upper ailerons, roundels & aileron control wires fitted tomorrow.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Apologies for the brief hiatus in updates: had a bit of a major mess-up and subsequent period of "just leave it for a bit and calm down".

 

I decided to go ahead with toning-down of the rib effect on the upper wing roundels (as suggested by #limeypilot and fully agreed by me). "Easy" I thought - just mask off the upper wing and blow over it with some thinned-down pale colour. Masking was complicated by avoiding the rigging that I'd done, but all went OK:

 

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Then the "easy" bit - just blow on some very thinned pale colour and build it up around the roundels in a subtle manner. Except that instead of doing a trial spray on some coloured card first (which I ALWAYS do!!), for some bizarre reason I decided to go ahead and spray it straight on. It's thinned 10:1 so what could possibly go wrong? Er well quite a lot as it happened. Instead of the subtle (maybe even invisible) first coat, to my horror I got a massive band of opaque white, which covered the whole wing and made it look and absolute mess!

 

I was so distraught that I didn't take a photo of that mess, but did take a photo of the subsequent masking-off of the decals to try and rectify the situation. You can see how daftly, stupidly pale that top wing is:

 

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Thankfully, having taken a break while I decided whether to strip the top wing and start again, I airbrushed a light coat of Olive Drab (Mr Color), followed by a further light coat of thinned black, but with the ribs masked off. And yes I did do a trial run with the black before spraying the model! Thankfully when I took the masking off the roundels I was reasonably happy with the result, with quite nicely toned-town roundels (that's the effect of the sun on it during the very hot late summer of 1918 I shall be saying), and despite taking many steps to get there!!!

 

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So I'm not sort-of back where I was two weeks ago, and with minimal negative impact. I really hope I can finish this in the next week or so because my mojo is back and I feel the enthusiasm again. One thing's for sure - I am not touching that wing again! 

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  • Sabrejet changed the title to Wingnut Wings 1/32 Bristol F.2b Sunbeam Arab - FINISHED (at last)!!

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