Lockheed PV1 and Lodestar in 1.48 (Civil) )

[rob Lyttle]

There's been some progress sorting my way through the 2nd Lodestar kit. All the windows have been made and installed. Some decoration carried out inside the cabin with a stretch sprue line above the windows, white paint to the ceiling and blue beneath the line.

 

Cockpit installed with that modified doorway. My alternative support for the crew seats is visible in white plastic.

Rear bulkhead is in, complete with washroom door, and a handle to facilitate entry through the main passenger door. Experience tells me that it's easier done at this stage.....😉

The hatchet job on the rear seats is there too, to let me get a bit of space between them for an aisle.

Knowing the level of visibility inside the closed fuselage, that's where I'm leaving it. No point faffing with details that won't be seen.

The bomb bay has some additional structure added to help in the fabrication of a nicely rounded "tummy" that will blend with Dennis's shaped forward section. The passenger floor sits neatly on top of the bay, and the wing brace slides in, between rows 1 and 2 

My best way forward now is to close up this main section and then get the front piece and the fabricated tail section attached and all blended together..

 

I've also piled into the wings big time. Definitely advantageous to have done the process once already.

Again it's 2 layers of 6mm balsa between 2 discs of 1mm styrene to make the nacelle bobbins. Tops of nacelles carved from the kit pieces. I can install the metal tube shafts to protrude forward and take the engines, holding them at the required position,and the engines will carry the cowlings.

The flaps are getting done on this one.

 

 

An inner nacelle side has been done and the smaller nacelle end built onto the flap surface. And the erroneous dogleg extension on the flap, done to match the dogleg extension on the wing top, has been removed.

So,all busy on the Lockheed front 😎

[rob Lyttle]

There's other builds on the go as usual, but it's always worth having a little bit of Lockheed time as the opportunity arises.

I've done the fuselage join up.

Plenty of dry runs and preparations beforehand, so in the end things went fairly well. There's plenty of fillings and smoothing to be done, especially around the blanking plates for the turret and Astrodome.

Then I had a look at the tail end. The vacform assembly produced by @DMC Dennis is pretty sound overall. To aid assembly and add some extra strength to what is basically a butt joint I fixed a couple of "fishplates"into the tail piece that can fit into the fuselage end with glue. A crossbar is fixed across between them for stability. (It doesn't have to be pretty....😊)

 

And on it goes.....

 

The tailplane itself is just dry fitted at this stage. The horizontal alignment has to be established here since the tailpiece has no automatic location .

Not bad considering.... but a zoom in on the joint shows where the vacform white plastic is a little bit "bulge" style....

The top line is looking good, it's down under that things get a bit dippy. Nothing that can't be filled and sorted. Going back several pages -and months - to my efforts with the tail on the 1st conversion, this is a definite improvement on the fuselage modifications.

 

I'll take a look at the front fuselage and what was the bomb bay area next, I guess.

Soon....😎

[rob Lyttle]

,I took a couple of pictures before attaching the fuselage front piece. They help to illustrate what we were thinking about the boxiness of the Ventura's nose on the underside. And how the Lodestar seems to be different and more rounded.

Here's the nose piece on the left with Dennis's replacement bottom panel (in white), and on the right is the kit part with aiming window blanked off....

And just stacking one on the other for comparison....

Anyways, I ploughed on with fitting the nose section to the fuselage.

 

Among the various parts of vacformed plastic I figured out two that Dennis had made for the bomb bay area. It took some cutting, hacking, filing and abrasion to get them to fit but I got there in the end. The alternatives were either to use the 4 bay doors in a modified form, or to plank in strips and sand the heck out of it until I got the shape.

The kit doors tend to continue that boxy style underneath, probably to give a usable bomb loading space, and likely wouldn't have been happy fitting over the formwork installed in the bay.

The vacformed pieces need a little bit of finesse but I'd say they're my best option .

So that leaves one section to cover. The front subassembly had that section attached but there was no way I could persuade it to fit the fuselage. It had to come off. And I can see now that it was too narrow for the fuselage.

So I'm going to have to blag my way through the final section by some means. I've got the shape at the front and the shape at the back and the general sweep of the profile underneath.

I'm sure I'll come up with something......😶🧚

 

One other thing came to light as I was addressing the filler and sanding on the top around the turret blanking area. There's a couple of reinforcement plates reproduced on the surface details,in front and behind the turret opening. These need to come off for the Lodestar airliner.

The one to the rear showed itself during the abrasion process, just before it disappeared 😎

See it there??

Like a big D right over the top. Easy to miss until the painting process, and then you'll be cussing.....🤭

[rob Lyttle]

Brief update.... A bit of old-school planking with 1mm stock over the final section of underside.

It's something to work with.

The cockpit canopy is on and a very nice fit. No complaints about that....😎

Ali tape strips are used to do the framework around the windows. Cargo hatches cut from very thin styrene according to the side view plans I have. Nothing cut open for these on this airframe. They can be sanded away to almost nothing if the effect is too prominent.

And of course this area underneath is perhaps the least visible part of the whole plane once the wings, engines and nacelles are in place 😉

 

A bit more shaping, sanding and filling and the Lodestar fuselage is in the bag 

[marvinneko]

Wonderful to watch this conversion progressing. Amazing attention to detail. Interesting techniques.

[rob Lyttle]

Thanks Marvin, glad you're enjoying the show 🤩

I've had a go at the tailplanes, just for a change. Dennis had already glued the fin pieces together so rather than doing battle with them in trying to get them apart, I'm going along with it and there will be no deflection on the rudders on this one.. But the elevators are being separated off and deployed.

That simplifies the whole procedure somewhat but I'm still going to fit the bigger tabs into the ends of the horizontal tailplane so that they push right through the slots in the fins. They bridge that internal gap created by the hollow fin pieces and add structure to the assembly.

 

Because the rudders are fixed and unmoving, the little offcuts can just be glued onto the protruding white plasitic and against the inner face of the rudder..

So this reduces the parts count considerably and simplifies the whole tail end procedure.

I haven't been foiling any of this airframe and I'm thinking about doing a paint job on it rather than the bare metal finish. No decision made yet but soon would be a good idea....!🤭

[rob Lyttle]

I've been looking through a load of photos online for a suitable civil paint scheme - I haven't really settled on one yet. 

But I found the perfect reference shot to illustrate the flap situation I've been rumbling on about. 

Namely that the flap does not have the extension on the trailing edge to match the wing shape, but is simply an ordinary flap, parallel front and back, as found on the L14 /Hudson. 

The dogleg extension is a flat plate attached to the top of the flap runner rails. 

Always nice to get some clear photo reference material, and pictures like this are few and far between. 

An excellent view of the nacelle shape underneath, and the rounded nature of the fuselage bottom as well. Obviously not suitable for fitting a flat bombaiming window, like the Ventura 

😎

[rob Lyttle]

I've had some time off from the Lodestar project and making other stuff, but decisions have been tentatively made along with some progress. 

The real issue is concerning the final decor. Which airlines, window lines, roof paint etc are all much easier to sort before the fuselage is encumbered with wings, engines, tailplanes. 

While the previous Lodestar is basically all metal finish, I want to try something different with this one. 

There are plenty of North American and European versions, Australia and New Zealand too, but I'm rather taken by some planes that were with the East African Airways. All the period photos are in black and white but looking through the evolution of the airline's livery styles, I came to the conclusion that the window band is a dark blue and the roof is white, and there's a band of bare metal above the blue band to the height of the row of vents. 

The few photos available online all seem to be "owned" by some body or other so I won't be pasting them here. But I'll take a few pics of my attempts and progress and do an update. 

It's not that I'm a stickler for historic accuracy at all costs, but I'd like to make some kind of a job of it 😊

[rob Lyttle]

Quick photo update, this is the starboard side so far.... 

Big reg lettering behind the emergency door on the bare metal and a tapering end reaching to the tail. 

I've done this on the nose, which is definitely wrong.... 

There's no pinstripe in white or metal between the blue and the antiglare triangle. In fact I think it may be blue right across the top of the nose and not black. 

The roof is getting there after several undercoats and rubs.... 

I know right well that any attempt at gloss finish will pick up each and every flaw. 

The white primer is just humbrol matt white thinned and brushed, and letting it build and rubbing it back 

[Dogleg]

Great work - loving the look you’re going for there. 👍🏼

[marvinneko]

Very cool. Africa is an enormous continent but we rarely dig into it. I've been roasting Ethiopian coffee for years so I'm interested in the region but don't know a huge amount.

[rob Lyttle]

British East Africa comprised of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika including Madagascar, so this was all very much in the days of the British Empire. The Lodestars were ex-BOAC aircraft I think. I need to do some more reading up. 

I do have a bit of progress. It's the engine installation, and I stalled at the engine cowling stage. Well, I'll ditch all the failures and just do the happy highlights. ☺️I think I've got something.... 

 

 

 

It's all done a bit as an experiment to try out an idea, so I haven't documented the process but I'll take a few pics as I do the other one. 

What we have then is the resin radial engine fitted with a slightly enlarged front ring and balsa wood assembly to o the rear, all on an Ali tube central shaft. By means of the metal shaft the whole thing can be put in the chuck of the cordless drill and worked like on a lathe. Check out the considerable pile of dust and shaving 😇👍

But it can slide onto a completed wing, and that wing can be fitted onto the fuselage and checked for "rightness". The most important check right now is the forward placement of the propeller as viewed against the fuselage.... 

 

Final checks are needed (and I've already got a completed Lodestar for comparison) but I think I'm in the zone with this 

😎