Royal Aircraft Factory Fe2b in 1/144

[Brandy]

I have to constantly remind myself how small this is. I work in 1:72 and would be very happy to achieve the sharpness of something like that Pfalz engine. 

Outstanding!

 

Ian

 

[pheonix]

Very impressive indeed. The Fee will be a little stunner when finished. The Pfalz is also looking very good - I admire your patience in reworking the engine too.

 

P

[SafetyDad]

Everything about this build is so impressive! Your construction techniques, patience, improvisation and attention to detail are inspirational.

 

And this from me who prefers 1/32, WW2 Luftwaffe and can't really scratchbuild to save his life!

 

This is just sooo good.

 

And, as others have said, completely bonkers 🤪

 

SD

[Marklo]

Amazing work. I’m even more impressed now that I’ve tried my hand at 1/ 144th with the Horsa. (I’ve pretty much determined that I like the scale, but only for big things so I’m contemplating an overstrand to company the Horsa company) 

[Alberto Estrella]

Hello I love your work . how did you build the cockpit from scratch please !

Edited April 9, 2020 by Alberto Estrella
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[Alberto Estrella]

I would love to build one please !

[Putty Animal]

On 10/04/2020 at 03:01, Alberto Estrella said:

Hello I love your work . how did you build the cockpit from scratch please !

 

Hi Alberto.  First thing to do is have a day job that really stresses you out  😰

After that the cockpit is mostly made from styrene sheet and sprue.  It helps a lot to try and find the real-world dimensions for the interior fittings so you can scale them down effectively. 

 

*******************************************************************

 

Gosh it's been a while since we blew the dust off this thread...

Recently I got back into the build after getting burned out by it and not a little intimidated either by some of the trickier details like the undercarriage and intricate tail booms.  Thankfully it is now moving forward however, so I'll try to give you the highlights to bring it up to speed:

 

Here's where I picked things up again a few weeks ago.  Almost two years to the day from where I left off.  Some of the tasks ahead of me seemed almost insurmountable back then.  But I've managed to finish a few other projects in the meantime and each one helped me come up with solutions to various problems.

The first thing was the cabane struts.  These are more decorative than structural as the wing struts are already nice and solid.  I ended up doing them in styrene rather than brass or silver.  One handy thing I discovered when test fitting struts on my earlier Pfalz and S.5 builds:  dip the ends of the struts in water when you are doing the test fits - the capillary action helps hold the strut in place and lets you move it about without having it fall to the floor all the time! 

 

 

I also could not think of a decent way to do the vertical struts on the booms properly.  Previously I had inserted some .2mm rod down some .5 or .6mm tube and flattened it to make the aerofoil section.  The extreme ends of the tube bit into the rod however and caused one of them to snap after it was soldered to the booms.  Grrr!

I had a eureka moment the other day and realised there was an easier solution.  My strut stock is sterling silver wire that has been flattened to the right proportions. So I cut them to length and did a saw-cut line down each end with a jeweller's saw fitted with a No.7 blade.  This created a notch that the .2mm wire could fit into.

 

 

I soldered the .2mm wire into each end then shaped the struts to give them a bit more a taper. The scary bit was threading them into the location holes that I had drilled in the booms back in 2019 and finally soldering them in place. To my surprise though, the slot which held the .2mm wire acted like the nib of a fountain pen. As soon as I touched the soldering iron to it, some of the solder in the slot remelted and ran up the wire to locate it to the boom.  Phew!

 

 

Some more shaping needs to be done, but the main assembly is actually pretty strong considering how fine it is.  I don't want to tempt fate too much though, as the two horizontal struts that complete the box assembly are only butt joined.  Best not to overhandle it...

 

 

The B'1 codes under the wings had me stumped too.  There was nothing remotely like them in my spares box and was uncertain as to how I was going to do them. In the end I thought I would have to leave them as black dots and hope something came along later when the rest of the model was finished. I've become less reliant on ready made decals of late however, and I suddenly realised the other day that I could just print the blummin' things myself.   I found an image of the Wingnut Wings decal sheet online and scaled this down in photoshop, using it as a guide to draw my own. This was printed out on an A4 piece of paper. Then a bit of clear decal was taped over the spot and the paper fed back into the printer again. Which gave me this:

 

 

The printed decal is black with the B'1 portion in clear. To get around this I cut a slightly smaller disk of white decal and put it down first. Then placed the black decals over the top.  Was pretty pleased with that.

 

 

 

After that I was able to get the undercarriage assembled.  A mere 15 parts   
I had spent a week or more fussing over these bits back in the day, so it was nice to have them drop into place with only a small adjustment needed to one of the supporting struts.

 

 

 

 

The gravity tank and some of the rigging will be next.  I'm hoping to get most of the front end done before the booms get attached. 

It's good to be back.  I'll add more as it happens.

Cheers!

[pheonix]

First class scratch building. Glad to see that you are back with this.

 

P

[Putty Animal]

Thanks pheonix.  I'll do my best.

Here's Day #1 of the rigging. I'll do most of the wings before attaching the tail (that way I'm partially covered if anything goes horribly wrong).  

 

I'm using this stuff for the wires. I roll short lengths of it out flat then cut them to length. Each ones get a wash of grey paint to take the shine off before they are glued in with some watery PVA.  It supports itself quite well under its own weight and does not sag or perish over time.  There is a lot of repetition in the wire lengths too, so it helps to speed the process up.

 

[matti64]

6 hours ago, Putty Animal said:

Thanks pheonix.  I'll do my best.

Here's Day #1 of the rigging. I'll do most of the wings before attaching the tail (that way I'm partially covered if anything goes horribly wrong).  

 

I'm using this stuff for the wires. I roll short lengths of it out flat then cut them to length. Each ones get a wash of grey paint to take the shine off before they are glued in with some watery PVA.  It supports itself quite well under its own weight and does not sag or perish over time.  There is a lot of repetition in the wire lengths too, so it helps to speed the process up.

 

is this wire flat like RAFwire ?

[Putty Animal]

Unfortunately no, it is regular round wire.   It is probably just as well though, as flat ribbon wire would be a nightmare to straighten out.

[matti64]

1 hour ago, Putty Animal said:

Unfortunately no, it is regular round wire.   It is probably just as well though, as flat ribbon wire would be a nightmare to straighten out.

I mwondered because I have had a look at getting some of this type of wire  online but didnt know what it was like to handle

[Putty Animal]

50 minutes ago, matti64 said:

I wondered because I have had a look at getting some of this type of wire  online but didn't know what it was like to handle

 

Ah I see what you mean.  I find it's very user friendly, but be sure to get the "Ni" Nichrome wire though.  They also do stainless steel wire, however it is a bit too springy and doesn't straighten out well.

I straighten mine by putting it on a flat metal surface and rolling it with a piece of clear acrylic (clear, so I can see when it is straight).

[RichieW]

More earth shattering, miniscule brilliance. I do enjoy your projects!

 

Richie

[thorfinn]

I remain in awe of the persistent, mind-melting insanity this stunning project demonstrates. Like others who have weighed in, I can scarcely imagine doing this in any large scale...but 1/144 is demonstrative of serious judgemental disorder!

 

All by way of which to say you have the soul of an artist, the skills of a jeweler...and the good humor that makes it all palatable for we lesser mortals.

 

Truly a delight! (Plus, your description "It meets the challenge of practical aerodynamics like a drunken hooligan, charging a hedgerow.  Head-on, arms outstretched...." shows a literary bent worthy of Chaucer, Dante...or even that much-over-rated fellow, what's-his-name, from Stratford-Upon-Avon.)

 

Cheers

[Putty Animal]

Aw thanks thorfinn.  You made my day! 

 

I just realised that I didn't post any pictures of the work on the gravity tank.  I thought I had done so earlier and was thinking: geeze... tough crowd... 

 

Here's a shot of the tank in place.  It's just a 2x2mm bit of styrene sanded to profile with a sprue cap and some feet from thin strip.  But for some reason I'm rather proud of it.  I found some walkaround shots of it online and the WNW instructions that were very helpful.

 

 

I almost copped out of doing the feeder pipe that runs down from the tank and along the cabane strut to the engine.  I imagined it being a real contortionists trick, but in reality it wasn't that bad at all.  I fitted it from behind the wing. Much easier than from the front, which was what I had originally planned.  Before glueing it in I gave it a light coat of dark brass/copper coloured paint to take the sparkle off it.

 

 

 

I also did a bit more shaping to the struts in the boom to give them more of a taper. The whole shebang was etch primed and given a top coat of MRP sail colour and a mix of  raw umber and ochre artist oils to hopefully suggest a wooden look.  

 

 

 

[Melloguy]

Are you sure it's really 1/144th? 🤪 That looks absolutely amazing. Nice work!

[Murdo]

Great to see this wee, absolute beauty back on the production line!

 

You've shown incredible skill & ingenuity and I've learned a lot from what you're doing here.

 

I love these wee 1/144 planes (fighters / small military transports, not tubeliners) and I'm building quite a collection which includes an Airco DH.2 

 

If I can learn to scratch build what I want then even better although I've had quite a fight with a 1/144 Valom Sopwith Pup using PE struts and Ushci thread. The superglue just isn't strong enough to hold the struts. I think I'll try your vaping wire method.

[Putty Animal]

Here's a bit more progress.  I added the control horns for the elevators to the sides of the nacelle.  These were a bit of a milestone, as they were the last thing to be added before doing the rest of the rigging.  They are made from a thin piece of sterling silver wire that was hammered slightly flat then shaped with files.  A .2mm hole was drilled in the centre and a piece of wire soldered in.  I mixed some PC10 colour and metal primer as a base coat, then stuck them in place with diluted PVA.  A thin top coat of PC10 finished them off.

 

Full speed ahead on the main rigging now.  I used bits of my favourite Albion Alloys .20mm wire as templates to establish each length.  Then labelled each and used them as a guide when cutting the repetitive 0.05mm pieces for each bay of the wings.  I did this when rigging the Pfalz scouts that you can see on the previous page.  It speeds things up considerably.  I've added some pics of those below too, to show how they turned out.

 

Here's the Fee.  I added the matchstick again so the WNW boys don't go kicking sand in my face.    The doubled up RAF wires were an endurance test. 

 

 

And here are the Pfalz D.III and D.IIIa.  You can see what I mean about the pieces of straight .2mm wire that are labelled and used as templates for the rigging.

 

 

 

More later!

 

 

[RichieW]

Awesome!

[Putty Animal]

Calling it a day for this weekend.  48 wires in place and perhaps only 6-8 more to go between the wings before I can start thinking about attaching the booms.

 

 

[Bandsaw Steve]

I can’t believe you modelled the dual rigging wires! 
 

I couldn’t face that job on my Avro 504, and that was 1/32 scale! 😱

[Putty Animal]

Hi Steve, I know what you mean!  On the one hand, I was like:  well if I know what length the wire is there's no reason not to cut another one and put it alongside it.   While the other half of me was going: Noooooooo!!! 

 

I want to do my best though.  I added some more rigging to the wings during the week and turned my attention to the booms today.  These had chord bindings around them at regular intervals between the struts.  A mere 76 of them according to the WNW instruction manual.  I did them the same way Sir Peter intended too, and sprayed some decal sheet and applied them as little strips.  It took about three hours and when they were finished they were all but invisible.  A tiny wash of artist oils was needed to pick them out.

 

Once that was done I was able to nervously coax the booms into the slots in the wings and sit back in my creaky chair to take a look...  😮

 

 

 

 

 

[europapete]

Just seen this. WOW! AWESOME!  and any other awesomeness words one can think of !!  Well done. Regards, Pete in RI

[Brandy]

Absolutely stunning. The Pfalz were impressive but this is a huge leap further. Fantastic work.

 

Ian