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Dornier Do 18-D *Finished*


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Tony dear, I hope you paid for the cheapest of those Archimedean they all come from China when they are ready in the same big steel box atop a deck

 

And they all break

 

I have three sets

 

Guess what?

 

About 60% broken though the sets !

 

Still it is lovely to dig out a hole so quickly, shame the drill self sacrifices in the process

 

I will never tell which of my models carries infinitely small bits of metal in their structures

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20 hours ago, keefr22 said:

I like that home made prop jig Tony, excellent practical solution!

Ta for that Keith. :thumbsup2:

I must confess to a smug glow at re-using something that would have been dumped in a skip. This can be taken to extremes however: we still use a metal saucepan in the kitchen that Mrs. B rescued from a skip in Belfast back in 1990. I can only assume it's made from Titanium as it is indestructible and continues to give excellent service boiling up large quantities of pasta.

19 hours ago, giemme said:

I'm probably going to have a jaw paralysis (from keeping on dropping it) before the end this build, I think ...

Does you medical insurance cover you for such a class of injury Giorgio?

yKohmzU-rSdCqtWHNZ5T9_oO6HvdELlziYhIi0Ez

If not I shall have to ask you to leave the thread for your own safety...;)

18 hours ago, JWM said:

I have found nice photo taken from from rear which shows some details of "side walk" on the top of fuselage and flaps.

An excellent photo Jerzy - I haven't seen that one before. Thank-you!

15 hours ago, limeypilot said:

Very nicely done Tony. And yes, there is a more elegant way of doing the props...Cue @CedB the toolman.........

Ah noo it! Ah just noo there'd be one of them new-fangled bits of jiggery-pokery and that the Tool God would have one...:winkgrin:

15 hours ago, pheonix said:

Lovely pair of propellors there - very elegant method of manufacture too. I always use the simplest possible jigs - they are effective, less likely to go wrong but easy to correct if they do. Modelling does not have to be difficult if we do not want it to be and the results can still be very good - as you have just demonstrated.

Like yourself Mr.P I am a great believer in Occam's Razor as a guiding maxim. That's not to say of course that my more libertarian side can't be swayed by a piece of custom kit.

 

Brace yourself bank balance.

Incoming...

storyblocks-arrow-down-isolated-icon-des

14 hours ago, CedB said:

I have to resort to new tools like the (ta dah) PropMasterTM from UMM,

Promise you'll bring my wife and children to visit me in debtor's prison once a month Ced? 

:doh:

I don't immediately need one of those now ergo I covet it shamefully - just for the feeling of comfort it would give to know it was there....

14 hours ago, CedB said:

'02' little scriber

Ah now I have the 01 from thoseguys and growing to love it more with each new line..how to get that one through on during the Christmas spend will require a level of moral finesse bordering upon outright deceit....:hmmm:

Ironic that I'm currently reading about Goethe's Faust.

What could possibly go wrong eh?

14 hours ago, hendie said:

I was just biding my time... I knew it was coming.

:rofl2:

12 hours ago, jrlx said:

Thanks for your interest, Tony. I relaxed a bit after the exam. Now I have to get up to speed with the Hausaufgaben für nächste Montag

Some music to help you with that Jaime:

I saw her back in May - one of the most powerful live shows produced by a single person on their own I'm ever likely to witness.

5 hours ago, bbudde said:

Nena

Please explain to me the meaning of 99 Luftballons Benedikt. I want to put a name to my suffering....

4 hours ago, Fritag said:

One thought.  Seems to me that that could have been  a classic job for resin casting.  Make one blade and cast several identical copies.  Resin work would be a walk in the park for a man of your calibre Tony.

You know that 'situational-awareness' thing that you Princes of the Air were trained in Steve? 

Well, I got 'situational-contrariness' it seems as look what got delivered a few days back, tucked away in the Gulag region of the bench and promptly forgotten about in the excitement of getting splitting headaches from making it all by hand:

37784238684_a1e9082d48_c.jpg

:doh:

T'would have been a perfect excuse to broach those bottles!

Seriously, I have to wonder about my attention levels sometimes; presumably I'm on the spectrum of something, as we all seem to be these days...

 

4 hours ago, perdu said:

I have three sets

 

Guess what?

 

About 60% broken though the sets !

I figure if I order enough cheap sets I'll eventually break my way to having a single complete set.

It's a kind of Zen-thing...

or something....:mental:

4 hours ago, perdu said:

Still it is lovely to dig out a hole so quickly, shame the drill self sacrifices in the process

 

I will never tell which of my models carries infinitely small bits of metal in their structures

Tsk, tsk....surely you mean those metal implants deliberately used to strengthen the structure?:D

 

Lunchtime at the moment so I'll take this opportunity to fill the keyboard with crumbs and post a few pics.

 

Epoxy only went on late last afternoon so was still too tacky to conduct any tidy-up on the props earlier, necessitating a move onto another job - flaps and ailerons.

 

You can have a squint at the region in question here in the photo that Jerzy posted in such timely fashion above:

18 hours ago, JWM said:

do18-13.jpg

There's a number of fittings shown in that photo so by way of explanation here's the relevant details based on one of the maintenance manuals (which has a great tutorial on removing the ailerons and flaps):

37784240714_a9662c4f05_c.jpg

The kit part as you see is a single piece, whereas in reality there are two sections - the outer Querruder (aileron) and inner Landenklappe (landing flap). Matchbox also moulded the flap with a narrower chord than it should be (you can see above the step on the kit part where flap and aileron meet, whereas in the photo you'll observe flap and aileron are the same width at that point.

 

Both flap and aileron are joined to the trailing edge by a series of lager (hinged supports), seven in all, and three hebel (actuators, one for flap, two for aileron). 

 

Here's what you get in the box. Not Matchbox's finest moment:

24627280578_04d9d7da53_c.jpg

I tried sanding-down the kit parts to get rig of that uber-ribbing on the moulding but if anything, getting rid of the surface relief made it look even worse than in the raw state:

24627281108_cd4a8292af_c.jpg

An unconscionable act to place this on a plane of such quixotic grace, so out with some 1mm plasticard:

37784242214_20fdb08b48_c.jpg

A grinding-disc of the Dremel made a perfect guide for cutting the end of the aileron:

24627282738_df350f1467_c.jpg

Sandwiched for some sihrsc action to get both shapes the same:

37784244324_504f22261c_c.jpg

Aftyer poncing about with the Dremel on a couple of test pieces, the most straightforward way of getting an aerofoil shape was a Stanley blade used to plane it down:

24627283648_8b71f9365d_c.jpg

This is the kind of mad stuff @limeypilot does on his biplane spectaculars...Held in the hand like that gives plenty enough information through your fingertips to control the process to a decent tolerance at this scale. Once the required cross-section was roughed-out, into the water tank (well, lid off the Dremel box) for some wet sanding:

37784246354_2986292da3_c.jpg

Once smoothed down, dried-off and marked-up with all the necessary hebel and lager points:

24627285088_f420e6135a_c.jpg

There is so little evidence of the ribbing on those aileron/flap sections in the various photographs I've looked at that I'm more than content to live without a physical surface-relief for them at this scale; if it becomes an issue later I've a PCP1 to deal with this matter at the painting stage...

 

There might be more this evening, we'll see how the afternoon goes.

:bye:

Tony

 

1 Potential Cunning Plan

 

 

 

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Please explain to me the meaning of 99 Luftballons Benedikt. I want to put a name to my suffering....

Hello Tony. First of all it was also a hit in english but the lyrics in english differ:

99 Jahre Krieg
ließen keinen Platz für Sieger
Kriegsminister gibt’s nicht mehr
und auch keine Düsenflieger
Heute zieh’ ich meine Runden
seh’ die Welt in Trümmern liegen.
Hab’ ’nen Luftballon gefunden
Denk' an Dich und lass' ihn fliegen
 
99 years of war didn''t left space for winners. No more war ministers anymore and also no jets. Today i pull my rounds and see the world  devastated. I found a ballon there, thinking of you and let it fly.

vs:

99 dreams I have had
In every one a red balloon
It’s all over and I’m standin’ pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here 
And here is a red balloon
I think of you and let it go.

The story told is more or less the same. I guess 99 could also be 150 , which is also a longer word than 100 in german and you can sing this better. Background to that was a Stones concert in West Berlin, where they let masses of ballons fly. Nenas lead guitarist was there and imagined, how it would be, if they crossed the east berlin border causing heavy paranoid actions by the east german/ russian generals. This was the birth of the lyrics in this song. The message was the end of the civilisation during the cold war (Nato Doppelbeschluss/ Pershing II 1983 and the following  peace movement here) caused by hystercial generals in a chain reaction after fatal misunderstanding / arrogance and interaction of more and more surrounding governments.  See also Sting's Russians. This is how would I explain. Cheers

PS: That's my favorite Nena one and a really no popular one. I like the sound and the lyrics for al lazy sunday ( I stay in bed):

 

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1 hour ago, bbudde said:

This is how would I explain. Cheers

My thanks for that Benedikt.:thumbsup2:

 

The melody to that song used to drive me demented I have to confess, yet also forms part of the memories of a Cold War childhood...

 

Only a little more to relate now tonight at the Baronial Flugzeugwerk. Work starting on the hebel fixtures. To start with some sacrilegious grinding on the wings with the Dremel extension and a diamond dust disc:

38471001672_1fe870cbb5_c.jpg

This needed doing to make slots for some 1.5mm Slater's Microrod to sit into at an angle:

38447446316_f4ec31dac2_c.jpg

Setting them into the wings like this is a bit more time-consuming but does give a larger surface area to glue and avoid the embarassment of theflaps and ailerons falling off the wings if knocked later on:

38471002272_c4dff72ffe_c.jpg

I filled resulting trenches underneath with epoxy for a strong bond and will use Humbrol fillers as a final skim coat to make those grooves flush again once the glue has cured:

38447447516_72559d0c60_c.jpg

Those angled shrouds will then be drilled out to 0.6mm for brass actuators to be inserted, which I'll make from 0.4mm brass tube inside 0.6mm. The bits for that job are already cut but I'm too tired to do anything that delicate now this evening:

38447444296_1517521208_c.jpg

:bye:

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Does you medical insurance cover you for such a class of injury Giorgio?

:D:D:D I'm gonna have to check, but I'm very much prone to take the risk and keep following :coolio: - great job with ailerons and flaps, BTW :clap:

 

Ciao

 

 

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Mad? Mad??? I'll have to consult Eric, my pet halibut, on that one.....

 It is definitely worth the effort though! I have a feeling diesen Landenklappen will be wunderbar!

 

Ian

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8 hours ago, TheBaron said:

and lager points

 

I'm almost astounded and have to say a little bit disappointed that no-one has made a joke of that yet.  I've come to expect better from this thread.

 

 I think you chose the best option making the flaperon/flaptuators from scratch, though once again, a bit disappointed that you didn't cut a whole series of ribs and skin them. 

 

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13 hours ago, bbudde said:

Hello, the NDW and Krautrock in the 70/80 was a funny time. I preferred more Kraftwerk, Rheingold, Nena, Ideal etc. But there were also some really stupid bands / songs around. The more fancy, the more popular was the name otf the game then. Cheers

Hello Benedikt,

Sooo what about this one ???

It's been a hit in Belgium... Mit Schnip shnap Shnappy !!

but my favourite one is this one

Sincerely.

CC

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2 minutes ago, corsaircorp said:

Sooo what about this one ???

So, Trio was a bit of nihilsm. I can only quote  The Dude: "He's a nihilist". "Oh,  that must be exhausting"!

Schnappi is really not NDW! It's a .... what..... a .. 90???????.... Ahh, no What the f**ck is that?

Nina Hagen  hat den Tonfilm vergessen, so she is not my favourite one for NDW ever, although she is generally.

There are several other strange:

 

 

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45 minutes ago, Martian Hale said:

I suppose no-one here will be surprised to learn that Fred von Jupiter is in the Martian record collection?

 

Martian the Predictable

Not really, I won't hear that:ignore:

 

Why Fred vom Jupiter and not everything else? Your choice in neon 80th:

 

Edited by bbudde
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17 hours ago, TheBaron said:

and that the Tool God would have one..

Tool GOD??!! :shrug: Too kind Tony, but...

17 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Promise you'll bring my wife and children to visit me in debtor's prison once a month Ced? 

If you're right that there is a tool deity then I assume you'll be sacrificing some of your children on the bench and this promise will be less arduous as time goes by.

 

Great work on the flappy things Tony, more amazing micro-engineering going on. Admirable. :coolio:

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18 hours ago, giemme said:

I'm very much prone to take the risk and keep following

Protective clothing is available.;)

1920.jpg?1444398261

16 hours ago, limeypilot said:

I'll have to consult Eric, my pet halibut, on that one..

You have noooo idea how close that came to starting a lamentable and entirely predictable series of flatfish puns....:hmmm:

Thankfully this isn't that kind of thread.

Oh wait.

I stand corrected:

16 hours ago, hendie said:

I'm almost astounded and have to say a little bit disappointed that no-one has made a joke of that yet.  I've come to expect better from this thread.

:doh:

Normal service is now resumed I see:

15 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

I suppose no-one here will be surprised to learn that Fred von Jupiter is in the Martian record collection?

Fred von Jupiter?

That first video of them that Benedikt posted above is absolutely superb! They're like a world-weary Bananarama late at night in a Weimar-themed arts centre in Scunthorpe. In a positive way.

Most hummable and a style of dancing I can relate to.

7 hours ago, CedB said:

If you're right that there is a tool deity then I assume you'll be sacrificing some of your children on the bench and this promise will be less arduous as time goes by.

S02E03-FlGsm4l4-subtitled.jpg

7 hours ago, CedB said:

Great work on the flappy things Tony, more amazing micro-engineering going on.

Cometh the tool, cometh the - 

no wait. that's just so totally like going to be misinterpreted girlfriend.

Forget.

I mentioned it Ced.:lol:

 

The Sabbath then began merely as a small tidying-up operation that developed some serious mission creep. 

 

Compared to plan views of the aircraft in the manuals, the gondola rear needs to extend backwards a couple of millimtres in order to provide better clearance for the rear propellor. A 6mm disc punched out of 2mm plasticard was added and will be smoothed into the countours later on:

26743760929_8dc38fb155_c.jpg

In a similar fashion, discs were also added at the base of each propellor as well as the kit doesn't extend  the spinners back far enough behind the barrel mountings:

38487695352_0599702dde_c.jpg

Those features too will have some filling and smoothing later.

 

I'm growing increasingly enamoured with the material qualities of 24hr epoxy (ta for switching me on to this Bill!) bot in terms of bond-strength but also the way you can carve back into it. To this end it was a natural choice to reinstate and strengthen the rear parts of the propellor blades where they were drilled out previously and were lacking also a little in diameter as a result:

26743761809_908cd4ff05_c.jpg

Those should sand back now to a nice round (strong!) cylindrical shape once cured.

This is an example of the epoxy carved back flush on the underside of one of the hebel mountings for the starboard wing:

26743762089_844903757e_c.jpg

That should need very little filler to make good there, and should do a decent job on the blades likewise:

26743762689_4fd60c3bec_c.jpg

That should have been it for today really but I had a bee in my bonnet about making some more progress on the variouws attachments for the hinges and actuators on the wings due to the large number of parts involved. To this end I marked out a 6mm recess back from the trailing edge and extended the existing kit insets to a more accurate depth with Dexter:

26743763229_c0b746ac45_c.jpg

There are six of those cuts to each wing.

 

My initial plan for thse control surfaces was to make the actuators we'd started work on yesterday out of brass (to act as the main load-bearing components) for flaps and ailerons, and to build these hinges today out of plastic.

 

A brief perusal of the Evergreen collection was enough however to dissuade me from such folly.

 

Metal for sharpness of definition at this scale.

 

Has to be. Whilst I've yet to access the brass equivalent of Slater's microstrip9does such a thing exist?) I do have a sheet of 0.3mm brass, so a strip of about 1.2mm width was cut-off with scissors, producing this lovely brass ringlet:

26743763779_a3074a6ac5_c.jpg

Hmm. I need straight bits though.

:hmmm:

After roughly straightening this between flatheaded pliers in various dimensions I wrassled it down to this:

26743764239_6669f60ca2_c.jpg

And after the earth had rotated a little further, managed to extract some straight 6mm long brass lengths:

26743764989_030b80d06e_c.jpg

Everything today is coming in 6mm intervals. Did Dornier use occult ratios in their designs?

These components are to form the wing-side of the hinges like so:

38487701392_baf3975bf8_c.jpg

Twelve of the blighters - count 'em!

26743765779_7abc615526_c.jpg

Gluing them into place (with CA) was oddly therapeutic however:

38487703212_28e2e999d1_c.jpg

The next stage is to make them more secure with some - you guessed it - blobs of Araldite on the undersides, but that will wait until the week as family time beckons now.

 

Hope you've enjoyed progress over the last few days.

:bye:

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

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Tony, you are doing an absolutely magic job in bashing the Matchbox kit into shape.

Fine work on those props sir. And the rest of the build too.

 

On the subject of "seeing aids" , I purchased an "Opti-Visor a few years ago to help my fading eyes.

One of the best buys I have got for the hobby, I even got one for my good lady (She builds kits as well)

I would post a pic but the internet is playing up at the moment (so slow uploading or downloading, it`s a pain).

Hope that they can get it sorted out this week.

 

Still, at least I can still post I suppose.

 

Carry on the the great work mate.

 

Simon.

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Excellent job on the flaps, ailerons and metal supports/hinges. Inspirational, as always!

 

Thanks for the Laurie Anderson video. I must confess I didn't know she even existed... I stopped following the pop/rock music scene in the 80's...

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

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Surely the great grandfather of all plastically resinous substances hasn't taken you this long to find it Ced

 

Hmm, boy that will be 500 lines on my desk before you go home tonight...

 

 

But never ever trust cheapo supermarket 5-minute epoxies, they will essentially break your heart

 

Gummi does as gummi do, horrid things

 

Even the genuine Araldite five-minute-epoxy is at best, unreliable do go full spectrum epoxy adhesive.

 

Here endeth my only free advertisement for CIBA

 

 

Didn't they make the epoxies for Mosquito fighter/bombers during a war quite a long while ago?

 

I think they did

 

Tony I am loving the painstaking ability to ignore these here speed merchants round here

 

Even more I'm loving the detail work you are getting on with, looks like you still have about six weeks

 

Even I could stop being nitpicky now the painting draws so obviously near

 

Great stuff

 

I am studiously trying hard not to get drawn into the musical interludes the boys are chucking at you

 

But I might soon have to

 

😨😨😨😨😨

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On 11/19/2017 at 9:02 AM, TheBaron said:

Whilst I've yet to access the brass equivalent of Slater's microstrip9does such a thing exist?)

 

I use these guys quite a lot, particularly on my train carriage build.  They offer brass strips as small as 1.5 mm x 0.8 mm and some incredibly useful I-Beams & C Channels etc.

I do realize that being in the colonies, these guys are of little to no use to you, but if that sort of stuff is available here in these backwaters, I'm guessing someone, somewhere over there has similar offerings?

 

I have in the past resorted to using a razor saw on thin brass, though only for small sections.  However, you'd be surprised how effective taking a standard scalpel blade and using the reverse edge as a skin knife can be in cutting thin brass. - Like styrene, you only need to score it a couple of times, then bend it and it will break right off.   I keep a broken blade just for that purpose, and I think I've 'cut' up to 0.5mm thick brass with that.  A quick rub with wire wool will remove any sharp or ragged edges. 

You might also pick up some good tips from this guy over here 

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On 11/19/2017 at 3:04 PM, bbudde said:

That looks absolutley fabulous and state of art

Thanks Benedikt!

The limited time remaining for the GB means I'm having to analyze carefully now what needs doing and in which particular sequence....

On 11/19/2017 at 4:01 PM, Spookytooth said:

Tony, you are doing an absolutely magic job in bashing the Matchbox kit into shape.

Thanks for that Simon.:thumbsup2:

 

I couldn't work without a magnifier now (and wonder in fact how I ever did!):lol:

On 11/20/2017 at 9:00 AM, jrlx said:

I stopped following the pop/rock music scene in the 80's...

I must confess these days to not knowing my Lady Gargler from my Tailors Sweat with increasing frequency.

 

Am rather partial to Lorde however at present.

Bless her.

 

On 11/20/2017 at 9:07 AM, CedB said:

Araldite eh? Carve it back can you? Hmmm. On the shopping list.

 

On 11/20/2017 at 12:34 PM, perdu said:

But never ever trust cheapo supermarket 5-minute epoxies,

Wot the man says Ced. I've tried that five min stuff - alright as a denture-fixative perhaps* but the Araldite 24hr stuff is the necessary business.

On 11/20/2017 at 12:34 PM, perdu said:

Didn't they make the epoxies for Mosquito fighter/bombers during a war quite a long while ago?

 

I think they did

:nodding:

https://books.google.ie/books?id=RmR-BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=de+havilland+epoxy+glue&source=bl&ots=MKQlpdV76j&sig=3ZipTdXii8r1Ta8DWs_B3BAP7BI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis7M_Cuc_XAhXKDMAKHSpuCAsQ6AEIOTAG#v=onepage&q=de havilland epoxy glue&f=false

 

Also rotors for the Lynx - which I didn't know about...

https://books.google.ie/books?id=RmR-BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA278&lpg=PA278&dq=structural+adhesive+joints+in+engineering+lynx+epoxy&source=bl&ots=MKQlpeM09m&sig=oAR9_aCC5p619bhi4ZQ2_8tVHuM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwin3p_hus_XAhVJC8AKHU6TAXAQ6AEISzAG#v=onepage&q=structural adhesive joints in engineering lynx epoxy&f=false

On 11/20/2017 at 12:34 PM, perdu said:

looks like you still have about six weeks

:worry::fingerscrossed:

20 hours ago, hendie said:

 

I use these guys quite a lot, particularly on my train carriage build.  They offer brass strips as small as 1.5 mm x 0.8 mm and some incredibly useful I-Beams & C Channels etc.

 

14 hours ago, CedB said:

How about these people?

Hendie, Ced: Great links both of you - my thanks!

 

In a b it of a heavy-metal frenzy last evening I found a supplier in Poland for cheap sheets of brass in sub 0.5mm thicknesses plus a very nice gentleman in the Isle of Man who specializes in ship-related supplies and does brass strip at most reasonable rates. As a consequence of the latter website I'm seized with profane urges to build something without wings (Shurely some mistake? -Ed.):

3295166881_26317f8463.jpg

or even to add (rotary) wings to it:

Goodwin-Lightship.png

 

More preparatory jobs done whilst the epoxy in the wings is curing.

 

The stummel are stuck on at last!

38527473242_b9bc0b42de_c.jpg

I'd taken the precaution of marking-out any necessary lines for scribing and other fixtures on them prior to sticking them to the fuselage, in order to make sure that both pieces were marked out symmetrically in relation to each other.

 

Seam lines masked-off and Milliputian magic applied:

24686808208_5242265acb_c.jpg

I figured it best to whip the tape off after 10 minutes whilst the paste was still malleable, due to fears of it causing problems with the tape later on if left until the Milliput was hard:

38527474192_d80372f2ab_c.jpg

A bit neater than my usual 'badly-buttered toast' approach to such tasks...

 

Other preparations included giving better definition (with scribing tool and scalpel) to the small Ruderausgliech (rudder balance) on the trailing edge of the rudder:

24686808638_169c0a30f4_c.jpg

The kit moulding for this is good enough to keep, just needing some deeper incision around the edges of it to give a greater sense of being a separate part.

 

There's also another stirrup-like affair that spans the gap between this rudder and the Seitenflosse (fin):

38527474932_16639616f0_c.jpg

As you can see there I've drilled out the elongated holes that the part - called the Ausgleichbugel (balancing/levelling frame/gimbal) fits into on each side of the aircraft.

 

I also wanted to get cracking on sorting out the replacement canopy that I'd vacformed for the aircraft back in the early days of the build. Test-fitting revealed that it in terms of shape it looks fine when seen in context, but as you can see here further trimming was necessary in a few places in order to reconcile it to the cockpit profile:

24686808898_6eee16455d_c.jpg

Despite the dust and my fingerprints smeared all over it, I'm quite pleased by the clarity of how that turned out, in terms of what it allows you to see of the cockpit interior through it:

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Additionally, about 45% of the canopy as you see it there will be cut away to have the windows open and slid back, so even more will be visible at the end:

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I'd harboured a little trepidation about this part for a while, in terms of being able to fix it securely in place; luckily however there are a number of decent photographs floating around the webs that reveal this aircraft to have quite heavy framing for the glazing - have ein squint at this for example:

do18-5.jpg

As you can see for yourselves, that should let me use some plastic strip to give greater security to fixing the canopy in place later on when the fuselage has been closed-up.

 

One last detail finished is to have got the unit emblem tidied up and scaled correctly in Photoshop to use as a decal:

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In actuality, the swans in that design need to be pointing in the opposite direction (towards the front of the aircraft), so either the graphic I 'borrowed' from Barry Ketley's Luftwaffe Emblems 1939-45 has been reproduced in the wrong orientation, or else this is the one from the port side, pointing forward correctly...:hmmm:

The only photos I've got of aircraft with this unit emblem are all taken from starboard, so was the port one a reverse of the forward-pointing starboard one (i.e., swans pointed backwards to port) -  or did both pt. & stbd. point in a forward direction on both sides of the gondola...?

 

 

*Please don't anyone, I'm clearly not a dentist.

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5 hours ago, TheBaron said:

The only photos I've got of aircraft with this unit emblem are all taken from starboard, so was the port one a reverse of the forward-pointing starboard one (i.e., swans pointed backwards to port) -  or did both pt. & stbd. point in a forward direction on both sides of the gondola...?

 

I cannot answer that definitively, but I can say that on my Wessex build, I had the same question and eventually found that the demi-Pegasus on the tail did actually face forwards on both the port and the starboard side. 

I would hazard a guess that you's be fairly safe to have your swans looking where they were going.

 

very nice work on that canopy Mr Baron sir. 

 

 

5 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Also rotors for the Lynx - which I didn't know about...

 

...and the support framing for the engine access door on the Alexanders ALX300 SLF (no, not Stiff Little Fingers!) bus!   ('cos customers didn't want lovely lines of rivets ruining their adverts on the buses back end)

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