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A Brace o' Fairey Flycatchers, Scratch-Build in 1/72


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I've had a soft spot for this little beastie since back when I first had the Putnam book of Naval aircraft. I know there is a resin kit in 1/72 out there, but I like scratch-building, and had been thinking to do a Flycatcher for a long time. What ticked it over was the MMP number on the type, with photographs of Flycatchers on the China Station in the late twenties.

 

I have already done the two motors, at least mostly: exhausts I think it best to do later, and one will have the spinner, and so not need frontal crankcase detail, but I have not decided which. Here is how the motors stand now...

 

f0ca3bec-3449-4566-bf8c-da1796815aa2_zps

 

(a U.S. penny is about 18mm in diameter)

 

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These were done as a stand-alone project, with another motor, and how they came to this point can be found in this thread:

 

 

 

Work has now been begun in earnest on the fuselages. While straightforward in general, the Flycatcher fuselage is not simply shaped. It is almost as if the designer had been instructed to see to it as little as possible was square to the line of flight, and to choose, whenever faced with the choice, the oddest of internal proportions available. It took some thought to figure out how to start.

 

The bottom of the rear fuselage is where I began. It is a piece of 1.5mm sheet, cut to the guide of a template trimmed from a copy of my Grainger drawing. It is sanded to some curve in section, and tapered down for and aft in profile.

 

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Next a stern-post of 1mm square rod was attached at the very end, and sides of 0.5mm sheet attached. These were a bit high, and over-long...

 

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They were trimmed down to proper height, and cut off on the line where the fabric covering meets the metal panels at the cockpit. Some spacers were put in for safe handling. The cockpit floor (and attachment point for the lower wings) was added. It is of 1mm sheet, and cut a bit over-size.

 

IMG_9140_zps98rm5h1y.jpg

 

 

Rear portion of the cockpit sides were then added, made of 0.5mm sheet. The nearest fuselage shows these, and the floor, all trimmed down to size, the furthest shows them in their raw state.

 

IMG_9141_zpsshcurszp.jpg

 

At this point, the rear turtle-deck application was begun. First a sheet of 0.5mm sheet was put over the top. Then the front former (and backing of the seat) was attached; it is a piece of 1mm sheet, square to the bottom piece.  I added a bit of color for the inside of the fabric, which might be seen looking straight down into the cockpit, and black tube (0.6mm rod) where appropriate.

 

IMG_9143_zpsu6w3czef.jpg

 

I got a bit ahead of the photographing here. A triangular 'spine' of 2mm sheet was put in down the center from the cockpit rear to the stern-post, The turtle-back of the Flycatcher is unusually deep, working out to 7mm at its highest point in scale. My usual method is to just put in a solid piece of plastic and sand to shape, but this is too much for any single thickness, or even horizontal laminate. I thought to use long, triangular 'planks' of 2mm sheet (two on either side of the spine), but when I got the first ones on, the gap between them and the spine was so narrow I just started filling it in with shims and trimming them down. At the point of this photograph, the turtle-back is only roughly shaped.

 

I went a little more regularly on the second. I stood planks of 3mm sheet alongside the spine, then put pieces of 2mm sheet alongside these....

 

 

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Here are both fuselages with the turtle-backs shaped and smoothed. One of these will be a machine off HMS Hermes on China Station, on floats, circa 1926, one will be a machine off HMS Courageous in the Mediterranean, on wheels, circa 1929

 

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Next step will be further extension of the cockpit sides, and interior work....

 

 

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Brilliant work on the engines, OM, and a great start on the fuselages! They already look like they belong to a Flycatcher. Reminds me that I must get back to my old Aeroclub kit at some point, now that I've gathered all the wayward parts together (they had become separated over the period of a couple of decades).

 

Regards,

 

Jason

Edited by Learstang
Corrected spelling.
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9 hours ago, invidia said:

looks good. i have an old impact/life like kit in the stash. 

 

Thank you, Sir.

 

I have one of those as well, even though it is in 1/48. I bought it years ago, when I was not even modeling, simply because it looked so lonely in the window of a run down candy store still lingering in the neighborhood. It's actually a pretty well-done kit.

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8 hours ago, Crossofiron1971 said:

Wonderful craftsmanship sir...

 

Thank you, Sir.

 

I took three or four runs at the motors before I got them to this state. The fuselage is not that hard, once analyzed. I'm looking forward to doing the cockpits.

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8 hours ago, Learstang said:

Brilliant work on the engines, OM, and a great start on the fuselages! They already look like they belong to a Flycatcher. Reminds me that I must get back to my old Aeroclub kit at some point, now that I've gathered all the wayward parts together (they had become separated over the period of a couple of decades).

 

Regards,

 

Jason

 

Glad you looked in, Sir. I was going to send you a link. The rest of this is pretty straight-forward. On the 'El Sonora', the wheels have been giving me fits. I'll be doing the wings of that this coming week. I saw one of the Aeroclub Flycatchers built up recently, in our 1/72 forum on HyperScale. A nice kit, as those generally are. I have one of the VeeDay 'doubles' pairing a Flycatcher and a Gamecock tucked away somewhere....

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7 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

Great start! This is going to be a fascinating thread!

 

Martian :popcorn:

 

Thank you, Sir.

 

I shall do my best to provide spectacle. Along with a few tips that might prove useful to someone sometime....

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Thank you for the detailed descriptions of your build process. It is wonderful to see how you tackle the challenges. I may never build these exact aircraft but the way you go about it is fascinating and instructive. 

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23 hours ago, Sprueloose said:

Thank you for the detailed descriptions of your build process. It is wonderful to see how you tackle the challenges. I may never build these exact aircraft but the way you go about it is fascinating and instructive. 

 

Thanks for the kind words, Sir. I consider myself pretty stone age, come down to cases. A lot of what I do is work-arounds to avoid carving wood and plunge-forming. Most of it would not translate well to larger scales, I expect.

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12 hours ago, John D.C. Masters said:

Nice motors!  Jaguar or Jupiter?

 

Jaguars, Sir. Jupiter was a nine-cylinder single-row, and I would much rather do one of those than a fourteen cylinder twin-row....

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9 hours ago, TheBaron said:

This is sure to be insightful stuff. Excellent.

Tony

 

Thank you, Sir. Scratch-building is, I will always maintain, more a matter of nerve than skill --- summon the nerve, and the skill, you will likely find, is already there, or will quickly develop f you keep at it. It helps to look at things in the manner of a cubist painter. Try and reduce things to the simplest shapes: a fuselage is hard, but a tapered rectangle and half a cone and a cylinder all put together, that's something else entirely....

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17 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

Thank you, Sir. Scratch-building is, I will always maintain, more a matter of nerve than skill --- summon the nerve, and the skill, you will likely find, is already there, or will quickly develop f you keep at it. It helps to look at things in the manner of a cubist painter. Try and reduce things to the simplest shapes: a fuselage is hard, but a tapered rectangle and half a cone and a cylinder all put together, that's something else entirely....

I like that description. I like it a lot.

Tony

Ps. I've bookmarked your engine thread for this build. That too is pretty awesome in terms of shape and form in space.:thumbsup2:

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They way you described scratch-building OM sounds a lot like creating objects in 3D graphics programmes. Conceptually it's the same; you take a bunch of geometric shapes, then modify them and put them together until you get the model you want (the term 'model' is also used in 3D graphics to describe objects). I once created a 3D model of the Roman Pantheon, and it basically consisted of just spheres, rectangles, and cylinders. I tend to dabble in both plastic modelling and 3D graphics.

 

Regards,

 

Jason

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4 hours ago, Scimitar said:

Although not something I would build I will watch and learn.

Thank you for the detailed descriptions.

Richard

 

Much appreciated, Sir.

 

I know the period is not widely popular, but I find it fascinating. The Flycatcher in particular has a lot of character, and was indispensable to the old Fleet Air Arm.

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4 hours ago, cngaero said:

The Flycatchers are off to a good start.

You've done a cracking job on the engines.

 

 

Thank you, Sir. I may put up a picture of my 'swear jar', into which all the bits and pieces of the first few attempts at making the motor were put, it's a medium size spice jar with a lot of plastic in it. I do like what I ifnally managed to produce.

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3 hours ago, Learstang said:

They way you described scratch-building OM sounds a lot like creating objects in 3D graphics programmes. Conceptually it's the same; you take a bunch of geometric shapes, then modify them and put them together until you get the model you want (the term 'model' is also used in 3D graphics to describe objects). I once created a 3D model of the Roman Pantheon, and it basically consisted of just spheres, rectangles, and cylinders. I tend to dabble in both plastic modelling and 3D graphics.

 

Regards,

 

Jason

 

I expect it is at that, Sir. The other mental break-through, at least for me, was realizing that you're not making up a kit to assemble. That took a few builds to get through my head. A few people do that, Mr. Gabriel Stern is one who comes to mind, make pieces which they then assemble, and I have a tremendous respect for that. But I have found it is a lot easier to 'work the model' as a whole and build it on itself, so to speak.

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Took a serious run at constructing the bottom and sides of the rest of the nose, and putting in cockpit elements this past weekend.

 

The bottom of the nose is a fairly complicated shape, going from flat to well-rounded while slanting a bit upwards, and its rearmost portion is involved visibly in the cockpit interior. After some thought, I decided the best way was to use some 3mm sheet scrap I had left from doing the second turtleback; the piece had twisted a bit when broken on its score-line, and the angle was pretty close to that it ought to have for mating with the existing fuselage assemblies.

 

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So I laid out the measures for two nose bottoms, and set to work: it's a lot easier to cut plastic out of an interior area when the piece you ant is still part of a larger piece (in fact, that's true for a lot of shaping and trimming of small parts).

 

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Here is one with the interior removal done, before it is removed from the 3mm piece with a razor saw. The flat bit is a continuation of the cockpit floor, and I tried to match the interior dimensions of the existing assemblies.

 

 

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Here the first piece has been cut off, and marked for sanding to proper section.

 

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I sanded away a bit too much on the matig surfac, and didn't get the interior match quite right either on the tis first go, so I filled in on the sides with thin shims, and 'capped' with a bit of 1mm sheet. I wound up having to shim the port side as well. The second one went much better, though the 'cap' struck me as a good idea and I repeated that on the second one even though the interiors on it matched up pretty well.

 

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Here are both pieces attached to the existing fuselage assemblies, and blended in with sanding and here and there a bit of CA gel for filler.

 

 

 

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Here are the sides attached; as before, oversize pieces of 0.5mm sheet are attached and trimmed down. In this instance the 'panel line' does not co-incide with the seam, but follows where 'round meets flt' on the bottom piece, and will have to be scribed in....

 

 

 

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Here is the interior, with the structural tubing in....

 

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First interior component was the pilot's 'perch'.. This was attached by a complex web of tubing, none of which would likely be visible from the cockpit opening, so I simply cobbled together a quick pillar and base. The seats are constructed from four pieces each of 0.5mm sheet (seat, back, and sides), tinnefd down from the outside and given a 'bead' of CA gel on the edges. The foot-guides are strips of corrugate sheet, the 'stirrups' on the pedals are split 'o' bits shaved off 2.4mm tube.

 

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Here are some component bits put in; ammunition box and feeds (more to brace the sides for future work than because they will be much seen, a throttle and a 'crank thingie' and a holstered flare gun....

 

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The throttle quadrant was made by cutting a 'V' into one end of a 2mm x 0.25mm strip, then trimming out the 'V', then putting in a curve in th end of th same strip with a half-round needle file, trimming it off, gluing it to the 'V', then rather carefully doing a bit of finish sanding to shape and thickness. Bits of 0.25mm round rod were added, and given 'knobs' of CA gel.

 

Here is the 'pilot's perch' painted and installed....

 

 

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eat belts are strips of foil from Ferrero Rocher candy, with has a nice bit of texture, with extra bits of 34ga beading wire.

 

Here is how things stand now, with cross-wise structural tubing in at the front, and sundry other bits in place....

 

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'Wheel' at starboard is tail-place incidence control, silver bit in the center of forward framing is the wing camber control crank, bit of wood at the starboard front will be topped with the compass.

 

Next step will be putting in front of the fuel tank (up against the cross-tubing in front), the instrument panel, and topping up the nose....

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Those engines are works of art, and the fuselages certainly looked bent enough for Flycatchers! Lovely work, as always!

 

Ian

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I like the way these are going a lot. So much so in fact that I will probably end up going to Evilbay to see if I can score a 1/48 example and it will all be your fault!

 

Martian the weak of will.

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