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1:72 Sikorsky Ilya Muromets, Maquette/scratchbuilt - the beast is back!


Brandy

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 I did a little more on the fuel tanks today, but they needed a little touching up so I've had to put them down until that dries. 

I used .010" brass rod for the vents and level indicators (calling them gauges is perhaps being a little optimistic!). they have been fitted and painted as necessary. When the touch up on the brass is dry I'll dirty them up a little and attach them to the side pieces. Then I can attach the whole lot to the fuselage and rig it all.

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 I also started to take a more detailed look at the rigging, and creating a plan for it. Harry Woodman provides some very useful diagrams in his Datafile special, but these are for the later blunt nosed Veh. The sharp nosed one had some extra wires (MORE? Really?) in the inner bays. There were two more double wires, one from the top and one from the bottom of the inner engine struts to the bottom of the cabane struts (both front and rear), and the inner two bays had single cross bracing wires on the lower halves for and aft, presumably to aid the engineer if he needed to clamber out and fix the engines in flight. I've marked the extra wires on the diagram....

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 If i'm going to do all that, I might as well do it correctly!

Ian

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Thanks P! I'm ok with actually doing the rigging, it's drilling all the bloody holes I'm not looking forward to!

 

I added all the support wires to the tanks using 1.5lb monofilament...

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(yes, it is there!) then attached them to the side panels.
 After that there was only one thing to do...attach the assemblies to the fuselage and finish them off. That meant adding the support braces under the tanks, attaching the support wires, and rigging the centre section. For that I used 2lb mono as it is a little thicker. The rigging on the real thing consisted of single wires, and double/triple wires taped to batons to stop any broken wires fouling the props. I will use these 2 sizes of mono, plus thin strip for the larger 3 wire assemblies, to give a better sense of the variation in the rigging.

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 Unfortunately there's more touching up to do. I clamped some scrap plastic against the sides while attaching the cabane panels, to keep them vertical and aligned with the fuselage, I then used a little PlasticWeld and some must have crept under the scrap. When I removed them some of the paint came away too....Other than that I'm pretty happy with how it's coming on!

Thanks for looking in!

Ian

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Looking very,very nice Ian, I admire your patience!

I reckon you going to need to train up a friendly spider to assist with all that rigging though.

I'd call him Igor. Igor the 8 legged riggers mate :rolleyes:

 

Cheers

 

John

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6 hours ago, Viking said:

Looking very,very nice Ian, I admire your patience!

I reckon you going to need to train up a friendly spider to assist with all that rigging though.

I'd call him Igor. Igor the 8 legged riggers mate :rolleyes:

 

Cheers

 

John

Cheers John! Actually it's Boris, Igor's older brother and esteemed Who fan. He's waiting eagerly for his chance.....

 

I have now left the building on account of the fact that I've been drillin' 'oles all day. Normal (?) service will be resumed  after a pint or 3!

Cheers!

Ian

Edited by limeypilot
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Thanks Sarge!
 Not much to show this time around but I have been busy...drilling holes! All the rigging holes have now been done (I think!) and for the sadists out there here's the count:

Lower wings: 32 each side
Upper wings: 42 each side
Centre section and fuel tanks: 20
Fuselage: 8
Horizontal stabiliser: 8 each side
Elevators: 7 each
Ailerons: 9 each
Rudder: 8
 A total so far of 232 holes at a cost of 3 0.3mm drill bits killed in action! A pretty good rate! (The 10 additional holes in the fuselage for the control cables were done much earlier and haven't been included in this count!) :hypnotised:
 That of course does not include all the holes I'll have to drill in the struts and undercarriage when I make them........

I feel a beer coming on! :drink:

See you all later.....

Ian

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Adrian, there are double, and even triple rigging lines. However they were all bound to wooden batons to prevent broken wires from fouling the props. Because of that, I will use thicker line for the double wires, and thin strips of plastic for the triple wires. These don't require holes so that at least saved me some drilling! I thought about using double wires and somehow "joining" them, maybe with Mr Surfacer or similar, but I don't want them coming apart later, so I'll just represent them with the thicker line.

 

Ian

Edited by limeypilot
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Thanks OM, now the holes are done, I'm looking forward to it a little more!

 

 I also had an "aaargh!" moment when looking at the pics to sort the rigging out. All the plans, as I said, are for the blunt nosed, later Veh, and it was those I had been using. Upon more careful analysis, I noticed that the upper wing attachment was different on the earlier sharp-nosed Veh. You will notice from previous pics that I have squared off the rear of the centre section, and the wings butt-join against it to give a squared off rear edge.This is wrong! The earlier wings joined the cabane framework further inboard. There is no centre section frame butting against the wing, and the wing overlap at the rear is slanted. Hopefully the pics will show you what I mean a little better.....

Here is the extra piece of plastic I added to the rear inner wing edge...

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This gives the overlap I need, and the slant to the inner edge. I then filled down the rear edge of the centre section, but only that part of it directly behind the opening as there was simply a shaped piece of wood between the rear wing spars, where the wings were bolted on......

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 This is what it looks like now. You'll see the new wing joint is level with the front inner edge of the fillet I just added, not where the kit wings actually join the centre section (that is where the later wings joined!).... A dry fit to see that it all works.....

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Thanks for looking in!

Ian

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It can be a real b...... when you discover these differences - small bu important. I am pleased that yours was only small and you found it before assembling the wings and not after.

 

This is beginning to look even more spectacular than before - really looking forward to seeing the wings on.

 

P

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Well spotted and corrected! Those can be heart sinking moments.

Good to hear about Boris standing by to assist with the rigging. FAA licensed arachnids are getting harder to find these days.

 

Cheers

 

John

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Excellent save, Sir.

 

It's easy to overlook bits in such a huge and complex project. Especially when you are juggling photographs and drawings that aren't all for quite the thing you're building.

 

What are the dimensions on this thing, anyway?

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