billn53

I have to agree with you. The new sticks looked fine beside the kit items, but after I installed them, I had a “hmmm…” moment. Oh well, not everything can be perfect.

I should have mentioned how I built them. The throttle bodies were shaped from styrene strip & the magneto switches cut from half-round stock. The shafts are wire and the round ends are tiny drops of UV-activated gel, applied with a toothpick.

My allergies have me under the weather today, so I skipped classes and spent a few hours at the bench building tiny, tiny throttles and magneto switches for the Jenny. Here's the result of my toils: The throttles go on the right-side of the cockpit (although, I've seen some photos where they are on the left side), and are physically linked together: The magneto switches are mounted under the rail on the left side. I haven't been able to determine if they are linked like the throttles, or instead wired independently: My next mini-project is the instrument panels. This is what is in the kit: Surely, I can improve on that! As an aside, I've been reading Howard Morey's biography: and he has a few stories of barnstorming in this Jenny (around 1925-26). Amazingly, people would come to him wanting to do wing-walking in his air shows, and claiming to have experience. When he took them up for the show, it was obvious that they had never wing-walked before! There were a couple of scary incidents, but fortunately no tragedies! I mention that because I ran across this photo (not of Morey) and thought about all the crazy things people did with airplanes back in the day!

It’s a major accomplishment to get those booms in place and properly aligned. Congratulations on that!

I like the attention to detail you are giving this model. Also, I’ve not seen that particular way of making wingtip lights (melted clear sprue) before, I’ll have to try it sometime.

The ugly duckling becomes a swan. Lovely result!

That does look nice. I find the salt chipping technique to be hit or miss. You’ve scored a hit!

I do believe I'm finished with the cockpit flight controls and their linkages. All I have left to do in the cockpit are the instrument panels, throttles, and visible parts of the fuel tank in front. I found this diagram of the Jenny's controls, which I find interesting from a design viewpoint: Here's my version, admittedly simplified in some areas: My links terminate at the end of the rear floorboard -- I anticipate the rear seat will hide everything aft of that. In fact, one will be lucky to see much of my work at all, looking down through the cockpit openings! Oh well...

I added mounts to the floorboards for the rudder bars, and drilled holes for the control sticks: I shaped strips of styrene to create the rudder bars: Here they are mounted to the floorboards: I bent styrene rod to replace the over-thick control sticks: And made mounts for the control sticks. These are only rough approximations of the actual mounting hardware, but should be adequate at this scale: Control sticks glued into their mounts, painted, and waiting for a coat of oils to simulate wood:

I feel your pain. (Hoo boy, do I).

I managed to get a little more work done this morning, before I must leave for classes. I made the two floorboards from a piece of wood veneer, and glued them to styrene strip to give them height: Here they are, test-fitted & glued to my false fuselage bottom and painted with a mix of Tamiya yellow and orange clear: Next, I will work on the various control-related items that attach to the floorboards.

Now that you mention it, I guess I do. Perhaps complete with the Pennco Hangar?

This is looking great! And, I love your aircrew!

One of the nice benefits of being a senior citizen in Madison is that one can audit classes at the university for no cost. I've signed up for three classes this session, which is a bit of a handful and eats up a few hours each day that I could otherwise use for modeling. So, my building rate is quite a bit slower than it has been in the past. Nonetheless, I am making progress... I installed the side frames in the cockpit area, then used a very-thinned-down gray to apply some shadowing to the interior. I also made a "false" bottom for the fuselage, where the floor boards and control items (rudder bars, sticks, and their associated linkages) will go: Next, I added the interior rigging (made from 10 gauge guitar wire) and the seat rail: This photo gives an idea of how much (or, how little) will be visible through the cockpit openings: On a different note, after class today I took a pilgrimage to the site of Pennco Field (later re-named Royal Airport), on the south side of Madison. The only evidence that an airport was once there is a small historical marker: The other side of the marker commemorates Charles Lindbergh's visit in 1927: The Spirit of St. Louis landing at Pennco Field: If not for the marker, one would never suspect that this site was once at the forefront of Wisconsin aviation:

test Sorry, but for some reason the prior post didn't show on the forum until after I made this one. Carry on!