Anyone care to help me check this wing alignment?

[dylan the rabbit]

I just glued the wings onto my Revell Spitfire this afternoon, but as the fit's not great, I'm convinced they look on the piddle.

I've taken a dead on shot, but when looking at it in Photoshop (using gridlines) it looks more or less ok.

Can anyone confirm:

a) It's lousy.

It's fine.

Cheers,

Nick

[Cornish]

a) the right one looks a little low

[Cornish]

No it's ok

[macgregor]

No expert in Spit wings but Ive checked in PS as well & looks pretty damm near to me.

macgregor

[AnonymousFY21]

Nick, I think it's just an optical illusion because of the rear of the moulding just in front of the wing being different on both sides. Its sort of skewed on the left, which makes the right wing look low . Just cover it up with your finger and it looks square .

Looks spot on there mate.

rich

[dylan the rabbit]

Thank Gawd for that, coz I glued it together with a sprue/glue mix, so there ain't no prying that apart!

Cheers fellas!

[Deanflyer]

When I do my walk around checks as part of a preflight, I always look at the plane head on and tail on to make sure everything's square.

Put it this way...I'd be happy to fly it.

Failing that, do what I do - put the undercarriage legs in place (with Blu-Tak if necessary), stand it on them, and measure from the table top to each wingtip light to make sure the height is even. Your eyes can be fooled by uneven shadows and so on, but a steel rule won't lie to you.

Cheers,

Dean

[T-Tango]

Looks spot on to me Nick.

[spitfire]

Looks good to me.

Cheers

Den

[AnonymousDFB1]

Looks good to me.

[The Hooded Claw]

Don't think you're head on there matey, look at the relationship of the vertical surfaces to the prop shaft. The two should be on the same line. Once you have achieved that I think you'll find that the left wing is low.

THC

[Deanflyer]

Don't think you're head on there matey, look at the relationship of the vertical surfaces to the prop shaft. The two should be on the same line. Once you have achieved that I think you'll find that the left wing is low.

THC

Agreed that the shot isn't dead head on, but if you yawed the aircraft to port to line up the fin with the prop shaft, that shouldn't make any difference to the wingtips which are in the rolling plane. From my measurements in photoshop the (admittedly obscured) fin appears vertical, and a line drawn perpendicular to this datum touches both wingtips at the same point.

Still looks ok to me, for what it's worth. Try the undercarriage thing I suggested... the wings relative to the ground is more important to the overall look of the model.

Dean

[dylan the rabbit]

Agreed that the shot isn't dead head on, but if you yawed the aircraft to port to line up the fin with the prop shaft, that shouldn't make any difference to the wingtips which are in the rolling plane. From my measurements in photoshop the (admittedly obscured) fin appears vertical, and a line drawn perpendicular to this datum touches both wingtips at the same point.

Still looks ok to me, for what it's worth. Try the undercarriage thing I suggested... the wings relative to the ground is more important to the overall look of the model.

Dean

Cheers guys.

Did try the blu tack thang. Couldn't get the buggers to stand up at the time though! I'll try it later, AND try to take another shot with the fin and prop lined up (will need a tripod as I shot this pic hand held)

[Leigh]

The wing looks like they're on the same plane but the fuselage doesn't look vertical to me, so yeah they'd be out of whack. Best way to check is up on it's gear with a ruler. You can adjust the gear accordingly. I go through this with every bloody model 'cos I know competition judges are going to check, now you know why I'm building tanks these days!

[AnonymousFY21]

I think the fuselage doesn't look vertical because of slight misalignment at the top of the fuselage. The lower part lines up with the line Cornish drew, so I still think it looks pretty good.

Rich

Edited August 15, 2008 by richc

[buccymad]

if this is a re-issue of the hase kit ,then it does look wonkydonky,even if everything seems square ,it still FEELS wrong? don't know why ,cant put my trotters on it but its just not right ,so much so that i binned mine because it didn't look right ,still don't give up like i did ,yours might just turn out a peach and you just might inspire someone to give it a try,might give another one a bash myself soon!!

[billb]

If you ignore the wings themselves & just look at a flat line running along the bottom of the centre section between the radiator & oil cooler it looks to me as if the centre section isn't flat (right side low looking from front to back). This is probably what is making your mind think it 'doesn;t look right'. It's further exacerbated by the plate that you glue the bottom of the nose to which is also moulded slightly off square.

Unfortunately if you square the centre section up to the table you might find that the wing tips aren't level

Hope not though.

[dylan the rabbit]

Cheers for all the advice.

I'm convinced it's not squared off properly. The fuselage just looks almost tilted to the left as you look at it, so I'm just going to remove it and try again.

Now then, how to remove a glued in fuselage from the wing assembly?

[dylan the rabbit]

Right, the old girl's just come out of major surgery, and everything's ok. The wings are off, and she'll be fine after a bit of glueing, sanding and rescribing.

It's weird. It's almost as if the fuselage will have to be shimmed higher on one side in order to sit vertically in the wings. I'll then have to sand the buggery out of one side in order to get the wing root flush.

I must have bought a warped kit, as I've never come across this before.

Anyone got any smart ideas on how to set up a home made wing alignment jig to make sure I set it right this time?

Cheers,

Nick