1/48 Roden Gladiator - Norwegian Style

[Crimea River]

Having just finished "Hairless Joe", my next project is Gloster Gladiator #433, a uniquely painted aircraft that was one of 12 Gladiators that served with the Norwegian Army Air Service up to the time that Germany invaded Norway on April 9, 1940. 433 was flown at the time by Finn Thorsager who, after spraying bullets at various attacking German aircraft on 9 April, 1940, landed the aircraft on a frozen lake 12 miles east of Oslo where it was left abandoned. He was picked up by car and driven back to base on the same day where he rejoined his squadron. After the German occupation, Thorsager escaped from Norway and made his way to "Little Norway", a training field for expat Norwegian pilots in Toronto, where I was born. Thorsager's route from Norway was via Sweden, Moscow, Vladivostock, Yokohama, and California! He went on to become CO of 332 Squadron RAF and then went to Ferry Command in the closing months of the war. He survived the war and died in 2000.

 

I started a separate thread here at BM to discuss the interesting camouflage scheme on this bird and, rather than repeat it all here, I'll add a link and one of the pics:

 

 

 

I understand that Norway received their Gladiators in two batches. The first batch of 6 Mk I's was later supplemented by a further 6 Mk IIs. I ASSUME that 433 is a Mk I, given the two bladed prop though I've not seen any pics of Norwegian Gladiators with the 3 blade props that I think would distinguish a Mk II from a I.

 

I'm using the Roden Gladiator Mk II kit which does include both props but only the Mk II instrument panel so I'll need to make a decision about what to do there when I get to that point.

 

Anyway, here we go. The first thing I assembled was the cowl which, for some reason, is provided in 3 pieces. One is a full semi-circle and the other two are quarters so why the latter two could not have been made as one piece is beyond me. None of the pieces have locating pins so it's a matter of slip-slidin' the pieces together until they kinda line up. Lining up the parts is not made any easier given that the thicknesses of the mating parts vary. At any rate, here's what I ended up with before tackling the seams:

 

 

One reviewer mentioned that he found that the small troughs for the machine guns on the sides of the cowl opening (seen in the pic below) didn't line up with the troughs in the fuselage. Heck, I don't even have those so I'll need to cut these into the plastic once I get everything lined up.

 

 

The engine isn't too bad and is made up of 4 major pieces: the cylinder heads, push rods, crank case, and intake pipes. There's a prominent piece that is not featured and that is what I believe to be the oil sump that sits between the lower two cylinders. This, along with some piping, is something that I'll want to add. All of the parts go together reasonably well, though I had trouble fitting the crank case to the push rods as the hole in the former was too small. I ended up having to file down the flange on the push rod assembly and relied on the Tamiya glue to soften everything so that it would press together firmly. Now here's the thing: there is no positive means of locating the crank case relative to the cylinders so you have to carefully eyeball the piece so that the straight part on the top is perpendicular to the vertical axis of the engine. The two intake trumpets were also drilled out - still trying to figure out what these are.

 

 

Now, a similar issue occurs when fitting the engine to the firewall. Again there is no positive means of centering the engine so I marked the centers and used my Mk I eyeball to make sure the top cylinder ends up vertical.
 

 

The same thing will now happen again with the cowl and I'll need to make sure that everything lines up visually.

With the cowl cured, I started to work on the seams and things are complicated by the amount of detail that one has to avoid removing. The seam I'm working on below runs between the raised rectangular details and you can see that, despite trying to take care with my file, I managed to flatten the high point of one of the cylinder head bulges.

 

 

Sprue gates are plentiful, often large, and oddly placed. The one below behind the cockpit sits half way on top of a raised panel. Go figure.....
 

 

Not being too familiar with this type, I'll welcome any and all help from the knowledgeable members here if you see me going astray in my thinking or execution. In the meantime, thanks for looking over my shoulder and not spilling your tea on me!

 

Andy 

Edited February 4, 2020 by Crimea River

[Crimea River]

Oops, just realized I posted this in the RFI area. Is it possible to move it to the WIP area? Sorry about that.

[dogsbody]

Looking good, Andy. Those two trumpets are, I believe, oil cooler intakes, the same as you would see the the side of a Blenheim Mercury. And that thingy between the two lower cylinders is the oil sump.

 

 

 

Chris

[Crimea River]

Thanks Chris. Nice to have confirmation. Just after posting this I discovered another link that confirmed the trumpets. They also take in air to heat the cockpit, the oil cooler/air heater being integrated.

 

Do you know how I can move this thread or does a mod need to do it?

[Hobo]

This is going to be an interesting build. Looking forward to the finished model.

[dogsbody]

2 hours ago, Crimea River said:

Do you know how I can move this thread or does a mod need to do it?

 

As with a lot of things in this life, I haven't a clue. Maybe contact @Mike or @Julien.

 

 

 

Chris

[Crimea River]

Thanks or moving the thread guys!

 

Most work to do with the engine now will need to wait until the fuselage is together, since there is no way of telling where I need to hollow out the gun troughs in the cowl until I ca trial fit it to the fuselage. I therefore started on the cockpit and, the more I look at it, the more I'm inclined to leave the canopy closed and finish what will be some semblance of a cockpit. First off, there are no details on the side walls, save for the machine guns and the squarish moulded framing. I've also now confirmed that the only IP provided is for the Mk II and I think I need the Mk I version for my rig. And then there's the seat:
 

 

Well, that looks nothing like the seat in any Gladiator pic that I've seen, so out with he sandpaper, drills, scrapers, and files:
 

 

There should be the rectangular hollow in the bottom of the seat but I'll cover that with some belts and not bother with replicating that detail. The control column and moulded spade grip is pretty nice though, as good as any aftermarket resin part:
 

 

What should be an opening below the windscreen has an odd, very thin layer of plastic, almost like flash. This was cut out with a scalpel.
 

 

The machine guns are tiny but I did manage to drill out the flash cones....

 

 

...and stick them into the opening from inside. Again, no locating aids are provided so one's deductive powers need to be engaged.
 

 

The barrel does seem to extend too far into the trough, however the butt end is as far back as it can go. I'll need to look into that further.

 

That's all for today. Thanks for looking in.

 

 

[Stew Dapple]

Nice work so far mate, should be an interesting camo scheme when it is done  

 

38 minutes ago, Crimea River said:

The barrel does seem to extend too far into the trough, however the butt end is as far back as it can go. I'll need to look into that further.

 

Could it be the Norweigians used MGs without the flash-suppressor? From what I've seen of the Belgian Air Force ones they did not have them, but I've not seen enough pictures of Norweigian Gladiators to say. Would the length of the suppressor account for the difference?

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Marklo]

Nice work so far. I have two of these in my stash, one earmarked to be a gauntlet, so will be watching with interest.

[Beazer]

Good to see a gladiator,  looks like a complicated build but will probably look great once she’s done.

[Grey Beema]

I built the Roden Sea Gladiator.  TBH I found it a bit of a mojo destroyer. Got most together fine but the upper wing was a PITA and led to the model spending over a year on the naughty step.  I don’t know if you have thought this far ahead but a jig for the upper wing assembly is essential.

[Mike]

14 hours ago, Crimea River said:

Do you know how I can move this thread or does a mod need to do it?

Where do you want it?  It's a Mod job, so ask away

[corsaircorp]

Hello CR,

Promise to be a great thread, may I follow if you don't mind ?

Spilling tea on your shoulder ? Impossible.... I don't drink tea !!

I appreciate your way to deal with the details !!

I also have 2 or 3 gladiators and of course, Sea Gladiators

Sincerely.

CC

6 hours ago, Marklo said:

Nice work so far. I have two of these in my stash, one earmarked to be a gauntlet, so will be watching with interest.

Great minds always  !!

Tell me when you start you Gauntlet.... 

Nozy CC

 

5 hours ago, Grey Beema said:

I built the Roden Sea Gladiator.  TBH I found it a bit of a mojo destroyer. Got most together fine but the upper wing was a PITA and led to the model spending over a year on the naughty step.  I don’t know if you have thought this far ahead but a jig for the upper wing assembly is essential.

Faith ? Hope ? Charity ??

Or another one ???

Do you have a RFI for that one ??

CC still curious...

[Crimea River]

10 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

Nice work so far mate, should be an interesting camo scheme when it is done  

 

 

Could it be the Norweigians used MGs without the flash-suppressor? From what I've seen of the Belgian Air Force ones they did not have them, but I've not seen enough pictures of Norweigian Gladiators to say. Would the length of the suppressor account for the difference?

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

Thanks Stew. Actually I was looking at modern pics WITH the flash cone and comparing those with what the model depicts. So far, it's just a feeling and I'll need to look closer and make a determination of what to do if it's way off.

 

 

8 hours ago, Grey Beema said:

I built the Roden Sea Gladiator.  TBH I found it a bit of a mojo destroyer. Got most together fine but the upper wing was a PITA and led to the model spending over a year on the naughty step.  I don’t know if you have thought this far ahead but a jig for the upper wing assembly is essential.

 

Good to know Grey and thanks for the suggestion. I'll need to watch the mojo after just finishing the wonderful Tamiya Mosquito kit. The seat was a let down already and I've made several attempts at dry-fitting the fuselage together without success. It's amazing how we take locating pins for granted!

 

3 hours ago, Mike said:

Where do you want it?  It's a Mod job, so ask away

 

Already done Mike but thanks for asking. I mistakenly started this thread in the RFI area at first and it's now been moved to the WIP by the secret service! 

 

3 hours ago, corsaircorp said:

Hello CR,

Promise to be a great thread, may I follow if you don't mind ?

Spilling tea on your shoulder ? Impossible.... I don't drink tea !!

I appreciate your way to deal with the details !!

I also have 2 or 3 gladiators and of course, Sea Gladiators

Sincerely.

CC

 

Do pull up a chair CC. I'll need you guys to keep me on track here.

 

One of the things that is puzzling me is the instrument panel. Based on what I've read so far on the topic, it seems to me that the Mk I Gladiator had the flat instrument panel and that the Mk II was fitted out with an updated panel that featured the standard black blind flying panel in the center.

 

 

The kit I'm using contains only the Mk II panel above. My pea brain also distinguishes Mk Is from IIs by the two blade prop. However, the Shuttleworth Collection's Gladiator has both a two blade prop and what I'll call the later style instrument panel. So, did all Mk II's get a three blade prop or were some still fitted with the 2 blade versions? Did some Mk I's get the later instrument panels?

 

It would be great if I could comfortably use Roden's Mk II panel along with the two blade prop  that I know was carried on this Norwegian #433. Anyone?

[Marklo]

4 hours ago, corsaircorp said:

 

Tell me when you start you Gauntlet.... 

Not sure when, I am sort of planning to do an IAC glad and the gauntlet conversion side by side, but I already have a lot of wip ( hmm let’s see, the DH4a, the walrus, the j1, DII, hp O/400, 262, campini and the Schneider) and gb commitments ( a Stuka and a spitfire) so will be a while, I will post a wip on the forums. I do have scale plans and of course the glad. I’m assuming (rightly or wrongly) that the glad was developed from the gauntlet and as such it won’t be too difficult a conversion.

Edited February 5, 2020 by Marklo

[Grey Beema]

5 hours ago, corsaircorp said:

Faith ? Hope ? Charity ??

Or another one ???

Do you have a RFI for that one ??

CC still curious...

 

No build thread I’m afraid (the great photo bucket debacle sorted that out) but here is the RFI.  I’m sure it’s not a patch on how Crimea Rivers will turn out but it filled an important gap in the collection...

 

 

 

[John_W]

Good luck with this, mine has been stalled for a few years. The wing struts are/were a nightmare to fit a d one collapsed under the tension of rigging.

 

[ragnarec]

16 hours ago, Crimea River said:

My pea brain also distinguishes Mk Is from IIs by the two blade prop.

I'm pretty certain that all Norwegian Gladiators, including the Mk IIs, used two blade propellers. I have no idea regarding the instrument pannels, though.

[Crimea River]

Thanks for that. I dug a little deeper into this and, according to the Warpaint Series No 37 on the Gladiator, Norwegian #433 is a Mk II diverted from an RAF contract. So, I'll use the 2 blade prop since it's clearly evident in the pictures and I'll go with the updated instrument panel provided with the kit.

[Hewy]

You did a terrific job of the mosquito, I'm sure this will be a stunner, i like the gladiator👍

[Crimea River]

Thanks all.

I have some cockpit work to show you today. Another omission from the kit is the bulkhead behind the pilot seat. Whether the cockpit is posed open or not, this is an important feature that would easily be seen so I set about making one from scratch.

Work started by cutting out a piece of styrene card and shaping one side until it fit properly against the contour of the inner cockpit wall.
 

 

Once the shape was correct, the centerline was drawn on the bulkhead. I did this by measuring the distance from the fuselage seam to the inner cockpit wall along the lower edge of the bulkhead. The line was drawn and adjusted a couple of times by placing the bulkhead in the fuselage and looking straight down the aircraft axis from the nose until the drawn centerline lined up with the top and bottom fuselage seams. I then placed the bulkhead on my work surface and stuck some tape on the back so that the edge of the tape lined up with the centerline (below).

 

 

The tape was then cut along the edge of the bulkhead:
 

 

Then it was peeled off and stuck to the front, aligning the tape edge to the centerline. In this case, I actually moved it out a little to given me some wiggle room for adjustment - better to cut the piece too big than too small.
 

 

The first trial fit revealed that the bulkhead was too wide at the top so I began making it narrower using a file. I was careful to remove the same amount from both sides so that the part stayed symmetrical.
 

 

After a couple of trials, I realized that the fuselage halves were actually both a bit warped and that this was messing with my adjustments. I was risking cutting the bulkhead too narrow so I assembled the halves together using tape to hold everything (not a simple task with no locating pins!). I continued to adjust and check for proper fit again, this time with the rear canopy piece dry-fitted as well to make sure everything would line up properly.
 

 

Once I was satisfied, I cut the upper part of the bulkhead to the proper shape and CA-glued it securely to one side. Details were then added.
 

 

That's today's episode. Thanks for following along.

[GREG DESTEC]

Very nice, neat and accurate work, which will make a noticeable difference  to the completed cockpit.

 

Looks great 👍

 

 

[Crimea River]

Thanks all. A bit more work was done over the last couple of days. The structure behind the cockpit was built up with card and the basic kit radio was added. Before I got too far ahead, I painted what was there. The closeups, as always, show some areas that could be cleaner and I'll see what I can do about those.

 

 

I forgot to mention that in the last pic above, the moulded diagonal brace was scraped away and a new piece was added to replace it further inboard. I'm using as a reference the excellent pics posted in the below thread, which is driving me to add more detail than I had originally intended!

 

 

[Hewy]

👍 little details

[Crimea River]

Thanks everyone.

 

Work continues on the cockpit and the instrument panel was next. The kit decals for this have nothing but black discs so I wonder what the philosophy of the clear panel is supposed to be? Option 1 is shown below. I decided to try painting blobs of white on the back of the panel and then scratch away where I want the black to be, leaving a semblance of dials and numbers. Result: FAIL. The Tamiya white, being acrylic, came off in flakes, plus the clear plastic is so thick that the back of the instrument would be barely visible, even if I painted the faces perfectly.

 

 

Option 2 entailed painting the front of the panel Tamiya Rubber Black and working with that. So much for the need for a clear panel.

 

I didn't take any further pics until I finished the panel but here as what it looks like now. I have an old sheet of Mike Grant instrument decals for jets that has many different modern instrument faces and I selected those that appeared to be close to the RAF WW2 instruments. They were cut out individually, placed into the bezels and several drops of Future were added over time. The throttle assembly is the kit part with an extra control rod and knob added. Edges of the panel were traced with a silver pencil and placards were simulated using white paint.

 

 

The cockpit floor was modified and then painted. The floor panels next to the seat were cut out as this area was open. Straps were added to the rudder pedals using aluminum foil tape. There's also an extra strut that was added just in front of the seat using round rod.

 

 

After all this was done. I trial fitted the floor into the fuselage and found that the area forward of the pedals was visible. There was a large fuel tank there so I went ahead and added that using rod and card.

 

 

On the fuselage sides, an abundance of reference pics made it hard for me to ignore missing detail so I built what would be seen. Below you can see the start of the added detail on both sides.

 

 

And here are the finished sides:

 

 

Fitting the instrument panel involves some fussing and fighting but, after a lot of trial and error, I found out that the key is to allow the side panels to sit on the horizontal framing on the walls and forget about trying to line up the upper edge of the panel with the coaming. This is the only way that it will fit properly. One reviewer had trouble here and ended up trimming the panel to fit but I don't think it's necessary. That said, I did cut off the extreme lower corners of the IP, not because they caused fit issues but rather because they weren't there on the real aircraft according to reference that I used.

 

 

In the above pic, there's one more detail to add just above the throttle. There is some kind switch that needs to go there and it's an easy add.

Because of the gap that's created at the top of the panel, I made sure to paint the exposed face of the locating ridge on the other fuselage half black as this will be impossible to get at when the fuselage is buttoned up. I painted the one in the above pic after I took the picture.

 

 

Back to the bulkhead behind the seat, closer looks at the reference pics revealed that what I did there wasn't quite kosher. The lower portion of this bulkhead is actually open to the rear. Rather than tear it all out, I made some additional framing and painted the in-betweens black. This is a decent compromise I think as, once everything is buttoned up, this should look just fine.

 

 

For the seat belts, I once again decided to make my own rather than wait 2 weeks for Eduard ones to get here so that will be covered in my next instalment. Thanks for looking.