David Harrod

What method do you use to determine the reference, in this case the halfway point horizontally of the fuselage? Do you mark it or just rely on the outermost contacting teeth of the guage?

I've been trying to model some frames to create the radio rack in the rear of a spitfire fuselage. The method I've tried to use to determine the dimensions is something like this: 1. Mark a piece of tape at 5mm intervals and stick it where the rib will sit 2. Use a caliper to determine the actual distance between the reference edge and the marks (usually less than half a mm out). 3. Using a straight edge across the fuselage Half's use a caliper to measure the depth at each marked point. 4. Use these measurements to determine the points in cad and strike a curve through them, mirror it, extrude to get a part I can print. I managed to get something that looks about right but isn't the correct profile when printed, I was expecting some tweaking but not that much. It's printing to the measured dimensions so it's. It a scale issue. Any ideas how I can improve the method or something I haven't thought of?

Is there any interest in a paint compatibility chart? I was thinking a quick reference of what a type of paint is, i.e. acrylic or enamel, and what the next layer should be to avoid reaction and what cleaner/solvent you can use to clean up weathering or make washes. What do you think?

Made some more progress on the wheel bay, pipes installed and a coat of yellow zinc chromate applied. Picked the pipes.out in silver with black for the flex couplings. Quick pinwash and it's close, a bit more work to do. I then moved on to the instrument panel. No decals or PE as it's an overtrees kit, might get some aeroscale decals for the next one but quite happy with how this came out. A small detail brush helped! And finally a start on the interior.

Got hold of a bunch of Eduard overtrees at a great price, two spits and two P51. As I've got some 1:48 RAF P51 xtradecals left over its RAF livery all the way! Quick start on the wheel wells this evening, first real attempt at busying up with some copper wire. Straight bit of 0.5mm to represent the linkage in the back, then a 0.8mm hole drilled into the floor and into some styrene rod to create a bulkhead adapter. Humble beginnings, but the kit looks amazing and hopefully I'll do it justice!

This looks like it will soon outgrow a spreadsheet and would suit putting into a database with a web frontend. You can then run any query you like on it. It also becomes scaleable, you can add any information you like such as individual aircraft serial numbers linked to the exact layout of that aircraft. Happy to help if you want to look into it further.