Poles Apart - a PZL 'In Foreign Service' Tri-andem ride for your amusement! *2 down, 1 to go*

[clive_t]

On 7/27/2021 at 5:09 PM, TheyJammedKenny! said:

That looks sweet!  We'll put you to work for Falcon of NZ soon!  According to the 'net, there was a set of Los replacement vac canopies, but it appears you have things well under control.  Funny about carving from balsa.  That may be your recourse on the nose!

Thanks Mr Kenny, I've not had much chance to progress the Los, apart from a test fit of the vac-form canopy:

 

 

It looks quite reasonable, even though it was a bit fiddly to cut to shape - I messed up my first test piece by cutting too much off the bottom of one side, leaving a huge gap!

 

Still, no real harm done, I still have the master so I can easily make another. I will probably do that anyway so that I can cut the hinged portion from one, and the fixed wind-shield part from another.

 

Having looked at the many raised panel lines adorning it, I am inclined to leave those as they are. I will however attempt to apply some nominal rivet detail as I did with the Karas.

 

I am not gonna lie, though, the PE is starting to terrify me!

[clive_t]

So last Friday was a good day all round: I was able to attend my first IPMS Portsmouth club meeting for 17 very long months, which was a joy in itself; secondly, I was given a couple of blocks of material by a fellow member who, for his living, gets to make industrial sized vac-form masters!

 

 

It looks like some kind of composite plastic material, and is fairly hard but otherwise straightforward to cut with a saw or craft knife.

 

Over the weekend, I have managed to fashion something looking quite close to the desired shape, i.e. the canopy nose:

 

 

My hands now have an impressive array of blisters, but other than that I was happy with how it turned out. The question, though, was, how would it fare in the vac-former:

 

 

Answer: not too badly! This was never intended to be my finished article, it was more about learning what I might need to do in order to improve the end result. In this case, there was a minor crease in the acetate, but it was in the section that would be cut out anyway so I didn't worry about that.

 

I applied masking tape to it in order to delineate where I needed to cut out the section I didn't need:

 

 

Finally, for now, here's how my vac-form piece stacks up against the kit part:

 

 

I think I need to seal the master somehow as the vac-former has faithfully reproduced the very faint grain in the master material. I also need to mark on the master where the cut is meant to be made, so I don't have to go through the nause of masking the next one(s).

 

Still, it's looking promising!