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Gee-Bee air racer


hacker

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Yesterday the wife went out to the local dollar store to find some Christmas decorations to flush out the living room. She came back with a Lindberg 1/32 Gee Bee racer.It was only $4 dollars she said. Talk about the steal of the week! Now l mainly do miltary aircraft but always wanted to do this one. The kit is pretty basic so l will detail it up to bring it up to snuff. Here lies the problem l need interior and structural details. Is there or do any of you gents have info? With all the info l have and l do have tons not one on this particular plane

 

 

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You lucky chap - that is one unusual aeroplane! 

There is a potentially useful cutaway drawing here. You may find the rest of the site useful as well. 

 

I suspect that if you try to recreate the cutaway at 1/32 you could be in for a long spell at the bench! 

 

Good luck, 

Brian

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the cutaway is good but l need something that l can use to make bulkheads and framing with

 

 

Edited by hacker
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The Williams Brothers kit has some generic framing in the cockpit area. As far as I can tell, it had a rectangular section fuselage framework with fairings and stringers around it to give it the proper aerodynamic shape. You'll need to fill and sand Lindberg's horrid "starving cow" treatment of the fabric sections, and if you can get the Williams Brothers generic Pratt & Whitney radial engine it'll be miles better than that horrible lump Lindberg gave you to put in the cowling.


You can use a contour gauge to give you the fuselage cross section so you can put your bulkheads around the fuselage frame. This replica was done using steel tube, but you can see how the circular fuselage cross section is achieved:

Screen+Shot+2014-11-05+at+2.08.06+PM.png

Edited by Jessica
Forgot the link. Oops.
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51 minutes ago, Jessica said:

This replica was done using steel tube,

 

That's exactly my understanding - the construction of the modern GB was on the basis of "how can I make a modern airworthy interpretation of that shape?" rather than "I shall copy the original construction".

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  • 2 weeks later...

The R2 replica was built about 15 miles from me and I watched its progression with great interest.  Except for a couple items like modern brakes it was built as close to accurate scale and construction methods as possible.  The means of steel tube framing with formers and stringers was very common in that era so reinventing the wheel was not needed and would have been a LOT more work to change things. There was help from one of the Granville brothers as well as Bob Hall if I remember correctly which made this one a bunch easier than the Model Z as there were no plans for that one.  When the R2 superstructure was finished and all painted red it was a wonderful work of art and a shame to cover it up with all the framing and skin.  Exceptional craftsmanship and a work of love and I feel very privileged to have seen it happening.  I was also blessed to see the Hughes Racer being built as that was only about another 10 miles down the road.

 

As for building your model please allow me to make a suggestion.  Build the Lindberg model as it is for practice and get the Williams Brothers kit for better details.  They can be gotten easily off of Ebay and I would recommend getting the model made of the yellow plastic instead of the white plastic kit.  Also if you do the R1 it has a slightly bigger R1340 motor and will be marginally easier to do detailing than the smaller R985 motor.  If you finish it or do progression photos please send me some of them.  It happens that the Z is my all time favorite plane.

Edited by GeeBeeZ1931
left stuff out.
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On 12/13/2016 at 0:33 PM, GeeBeeZ1931 said:

The R2 replica was built about 15 miles from me and I watched its progression with great interest.  Except for a couple items like modern brakes it was built as close to accurate scale and construction methods as possible.  The means of steel tube framing with formers and stringers was very common in that era so reinventing the wheel was not needed and would have been a LOT more work to change things. There was help from one of the Granville brothers as well as Bob Hall if I remember correctly which made this one a bunch easier than the Model Z as there were no plans for that one.  When the R2 superstructure was finished and all painted red it was a wonderful work of art and a shame to cover it up with all the framing and skin.  Exceptional craftsmanship and a work of love and I feel very privileged to have seen it happening.

 

GeeBeeZ1931, are you talking about the Delmar Benjamin / Steve Wolf R2 replica? It had the truss fuselage structure painted red, like you describe. If so, what a privilege! If you're in touch with anyone from that team, I have some questions for you. In the mean time, here's a photo of my Amodel R1/R2 under construction.

 

geebee-02.jpg

 

Rob

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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...

The Lindberg kit is Gee Bee R1, race number 11, a winner of  1932 Thompson Trophy Race flown by Jimmy Doolittle.

Here is a basic drawing of the R1 with fuselage frame works and cross sections.

Hope this is what you are looking for.

0000152.jpg

Jun in Tokyo

https://www.flickr.com/photos/horaburo/albums

 

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