IAR 80

[One-Two]

Seatbelts finished, I glued the seat to the cockpit floor.

[One-Two]

Not much spare time lately, only managed to install cockpit and IP on the right fuselage half.

Dry fitting ok, soon I will close the fuselage.

Edited February 22, 2018 by One-Two

[One-Two]

Fuselage closed and sanded, some panel lines rescribed.

The fit was tight in the IP area, but thanks to the heavy preparation work, it was just ok in the end.

 

Thanks for looking and cheers,

[Biggles87]

That's looking good, it looks like a tight fit for the pilot though.

I wonder if the horizontal frame below the IP was necessary for structural rigidity, it must have made getting out in a hurry a bit difficult.

 

John

[Gorby]

The cockpit looks exceptionally good.

[One-Two]

Thank you very much guys.

 

John, the horizontal shelf from the cockpit servef as a cross-brace and also support/base for the instrument panel.

 

From what I read, this horizontal shelf did not restrict the the pilot's movements in case of bail-out. At least this was not the main complaint of the pilots.

The real problem in bailing-out, especially with the early models of IAR80, was actually the lack of a proper canopy jetissoning system. In the early machines there was no such thing and the pilot was supposed to just slide back the canopy and then get out of the plane.

However it was no way so simple, since the aerodinamic pressure on the canopy made it impossible for the pilot to open it at any speeds in excess of 250 km/h. 

The problem was partly corrected at later models of the IAR80 with the installation of an emergency canopy release pneumatic ram, which was supposed to assist the pilot in sliding back the canopy at high speeds. 

The system worked as long it was not damaged (like combat damage) and was retrofited to many of the early machines also...but the pilots demand for a jettisoning mechanism (like the one from Bf109) was never solved.

 

Regards,

[One-Two]

Ok so now that the fuselage is closed I focused again on the wing/wheel well area.

I made some tests with the landing gear leg and its retraction mechanism and I discovered another important mistake of Hobbyboss.

The arms for the landing gear retraction mechanism are way too short and their contact point with the wheel bay roof is completely wrong positioned.

I just marked on the picture bellow the issue I'm talking about:

 

So in order to solve this issue I used some brass tube and elongated the landing gear retraction arms.

 

Then of course, I had to make new holes in the wheel bay roof, to accommodate the elongated retraction arms.

The end result looks like this and I think that this issue is solved:

 

Thanks for looking

Cheers.

[One-Two]

I started the work on the engine, too.

The engine is a pretty simple affair...just two rows of cylinders (each of them made out of two separate halves), on the back another row with the back of the engine and individual air pipes for cylinders (no exhaust pipes, though) and in the front of the cylinder rows another ring with the pushrods (only for the front row cylinders) and then the cylindrical cover for the engine crankcase (on top of this the propeller should be mounted).

 

The pushrods are far too thick...and only for the first row of cylinders...and erroneously positioned anyway, for a IARK14 engine (which was a licensed and modified copy of the French Gnome-Rhone K14 engine). So away with the original pushrods, I will scratch some new ones.

 

And this is how the engine looks for now...

 

The next step is to scratch new pushrods and engine wiring.

Cheers, 

[Martian]

There is some fine work going on here and you are gradually selling the type to me as an addition to the stash.

 

Martian

[DJJunis]

Wow this is excellent modeling!

Very ell done.

All the Best!

Don

[One-Two]

Thank you Guys!

 

Last evening I installed some new pushrods and some basic wiring for the engine.

I installed cables only for the sparkplugs located on the front side of the cylinder heads, since the ones situated on the backsides would not be visible anyway.

The cylindrical-shaped cover from the front of the engine is not glued yet.

 

Regards,

 

[One-Two]

Engine painted and weathered.

 

[Terry1954]

1/48 is not normally my scale but build threads like this are great. I'm really liking what I see and will enjoy watching this one to the end. Its like a build master class!

 

Well done, great thread and great build.

 

Cheers

 

Terry

[One-Two]

Thank you Terry for your kind words.

 

Not much spare time lately, so I was only able to add some small details here and there.

First of all, in the wheel bay I deleted some details that were erroneously molded in positive and just replaced them with some new panel lines made with the scriber. 

I also added two small openings in the wheel bay roof, which were used in order to visually inspect the gear locking mechanism, as I read.

Having made these modifications, the work in the wheel bay area is mostly done.

 

In the cockpit area, behind the instrument panel, I also installed some supports that were visible through the windscreen. 

They were also used as gun sight supports.

That's all for now.

Thanks for looking,

Cheers

[One-Two]

Ok so next step was mating the wings with the fuselage.

Decent fit, but it could have been better.

In order to get everything aligned properly, I had to insert some plastic bits here and there.

[stevehnz]

Some very nice work on display here, & good tips on what to watch out for when I build my smaller scale one.

Steve.

[One-Two]

Thank you very much Steve.

 

After mating the wing with the fuselage, some problems on the underside of the plane must be solved.

The IAR80 airframe had some sort of longitudinal reinforcement strips installed on the underside of the rear fuselage. These longitudinal reinforcement strips are represented by Hobbyboss, but in an uneven way, given that they are molded on two different items (underside of rear fuselage and part of underside wing insertion). Anyway, they do not look like a continuous strip, if I leave them as they are.

Therefore, I decided to completely eliminate the reinforcement strips and to fix all the problems related to fuselage-to -wing  joint (re-scribe all affected panel lines, etc.)

Then I installed new reinforcement strips, made out of evergreen.

I will probably have to sand down a little bit the new reinforcement strips, because they look kind of too obvious now, but I think they look better now than before.

 

That's it for now...thanks for looking and cheers:)

[One-Two]

Ok so I returned to the cockpit area a little bit, since I had to finish with the armor plate for head and shoulders and the related head rest.

Now, probably for the sake of simplicity (although I suspect that it was rather a cost problemJ), HB choose the mold the pilot seat and the head armor/head rest in one single piece.

The result is highly inaccurate in shape and dimensions, especially for the head armor and head rest, which were completely different in reality.

So my approach was to separate these pieces and treat them as completely different items, as they were in reality.

Once separated from the seat, the original head armor was used as a template to make a new armor plate, out of plastic sheet.

Then, on the head armor plate I used Milliput in order to create the shape of the head&shoulders rest.

While not perfect (especially for the head rest), I think that the result is much better than the original arrangement.

Thanks for looking and cheers,  

[One-Two]

Now onto the tail controls...I separated the horizontal rudder from the stabilizer and also made the necessary cuts for the horizontal and vertical rudder hinges.

Also added some details for the vertical trimmer controls.

[Col.]

Nice touches of progress. Sorting out these various details help take the model to a different level 

[One-Two]

I installed the stabilizers...starting to look like an airplane by now:)

[One-Two]

Now I turned my attention again to the power unit…which consist of 4 sub-assembles/pieces: engine cylinder rows, the cylindrical-shaped cover for the engine crankcase, propeller and propeller hub/cover.

They should be assembled one on top of the other…and in this case the propeller would be impossible to move:

Now of course that normally this should not be a problem, since this is a static model which will just sit on a shelf or something.

But that part of me which wants to take the model in hand and move it around the house, making engine-like and machinegun-like noises and blowing air over the propeller just to watch it turning like the real thing, just doesn’t let me to leave the propeller immovable.  I mean static model it is, but at least the propeller should be functional!

After analyzing a bit I concluded that the cylindrical-shaped engine crankcase cover is the problem. On the real plane, the propeller disk was independent of this cover and free to move, but on the kit the propeller disk and engine cover are in one piece.

So I just sliced the cylindrical cover and cut the propeller disk free.

Then I covered both the resulting sections with plastic disks – now I have a separation between the 2 pieces and the propeller support is free to move:

I installed a propeller axis, made out of brass tube…then I adapted the propeller for this axis.

And voila, now I have a fully turnable propeller

Thanks for looking and regards,

Edited March 30, 2018 by One-Two

[Gorby]

22 minutes ago, One-Two said:

at least the propeller should be functional!

I agree completely.

[Biggles87]

Me too.

 

John

[usetherudders]

Some excellent and lovely work here.

Following with interest as I have one in the stash.