Howard Morey's Pennco Flyer (JN-4D "Jenny")

[Andwil]

Now you have a reason to build a Spirit of St Louis, if you haven’t already.

 

AW

[billn53]

3 hours ago, Andwil said:

Now you have a reason to build a Spirit of St Louis, if you haven’t already.

 

AW

Now that you mention it, I guess I do. Perhaps complete with the Pennco Hangar?

[billn53]

I managed to get a little more work done this morning, before I must leave for classes.

 

I made the two floorboards from a piece of wood veneer, and glued them to styrene strip to give them height:

 

Here they are, test-fitted & glued to my false fuselage bottom and painted with a mix of Tamiya yellow and orange clear:

 

 

Next, I will work on the various control-related items that attach to the floorboards.

 

 

 

 

 

[billn53]

I added mounts to the floorboards for the rudder bars, and drilled holes for the control sticks:

 

I shaped strips of styrene to create the rudder bars:

 

Here they are mounted to the floorboards:

 

 

I bent styrene rod to replace the over-thick control sticks:

 

And made mounts for the control sticks. These are only rough approximations of the actual mounting hardware, but should be adequate at this scale:

 

Control sticks glued into their mounts, painted, and waiting for a coat of oils to simulate wood:

 

 

 

[dnl42]

Excellent work on this. I'm fairly confident you won't have a single as-provided bit of plastic on this build and quite a lot more scratch-built than kit-provided parts.

 

On 9/15/2021 at 4:28 AM, billn53 said:

Now that you mention it, I guess I do. Perhaps complete with the Pennco Hangar?

If you do, the Revell kit is quite nice--unlike this model. They provide standing and sitting Lindbergh figures.

[billn53]

I do believe I'm finished with the cockpit flight controls and their linkages. All I have left to do in the cockpit are the instrument panels, throttles, and visible parts of the fuel tank in front.

 

I found this diagram of the Jenny's controls, which I find interesting from a design viewpoint:

 

 

Here's my version, admittedly simplified in some areas:

 

My links terminate at the end of the rear floorboard -- I anticipate the rear seat will hide everything aft of that.

 

In fact, one will be lucky to see much of my work at all, looking down through the cockpit openings!

 

Oh well... 

[RichieW]

That's a great job on the flight controls. Enough of your work will show to make it all worth the work. Actually if I've had fun adding them I never mind if details don't get seen.  

[clive_t]

Fantastic work so far Bill, those offices look a treat to the eye

[bigbadbadge]

The cockpit details look wonderful , you will see enough to satisfy I am sure when all zipped yo, besides you know it's there 😉

Great job

Chris

[billn53]

My allergies have me under the weather today, so I skipped classes and spent a few hours at the bench building tiny, tiny throttles and magneto switches for the Jenny. Here's the result of my toils:

 

 

 

The throttles go on the right-side of the cockpit (although, I've seen some photos where they are on the left side), and are physically linked together:

 

 

The magneto switches are mounted under the rail on the left side. I haven't been able to determine if they are linked like the throttles, or instead wired independently:

 

 

My next mini-project is the instrument panels. This is what is in the kit:

 

 

Surely, I can improve on that!

 

As an aside, I've been reading Howard Morey's biography:

 

 

and he has a few stories of barnstorming in this Jenny (around 1925-26). Amazingly, people would come to him wanting to do wing-walking in his air shows, and claiming to have experience. When he took them up for the show, it was obvious that they had never wing-walked before! There were a couple of scary incidents, but fortunately no tragedies!

 

I mention that because I ran across this photo (not of Morey) and thought about all the crazy things people did with airplanes back in the day!

 

 

 

 

 

[clive_t]

Great work Bill, your switches and throttles look wonderful. 

Some of the antics these barnstormers got up to were just insane!

[billn53]

7 minutes ago, clive_t said:

Great work Bill, your switches and throttles look wonderful. 

 

 

I should have mentioned how I built them. The throttle bodies were shaped from styrene strip & the magneto switches cut from half-round stock. The shafts are wire and the round ends are tiny drops of UV-activated gel, applied with a toothpick.

[AdrianMF]

Smashing cockpit Bill!
 

I like the no-nonsense aileron control cable run. I did one for a BE2 last year and realised that there’s about 80 feet of control cable to drag around! I know (in my head) that it’s the same for monoplanes of a certain age too but in early biplanes you get to see it all hanging out there.

 

Regards,

Adrian 

[Brandy]

Lovely work on the interior!

I would say that the control columns are still overscale, but much better than the originals!

 

Ian

[billn53]

2 hours ago, Brandy said:

 

I would say that the control columns are still overscale, but much better than the originals!

 

I have to agree with you. The new sticks looked fine beside the kit items, but after I installed them, I had a “hmmm…” moment. Oh well, not everything can be perfect. 

[billn53]

Instrument panels are done. I looked at a lot of Jenny cockpits on-line and no two had the same instrument layout. So, I designed a representative layout of my own.

 

I used styrene sheet for the panels, which got the oil paint treatment to simulate wood. Instrument faces are from my decal box, bezels are PE, and for the clear face I used UV activated acrylic.

 

Forward cockpit (top), rear cockpit (bottom):

 

 

(The "white spots" on the wood are reflections off the glossy surface. I may need to go over the wood areas with a satin or matt coat.)

 

I also added a compass in the rear cockpit:

 

 

I was so impressed with Clive's technique for replicating surface textures that I ordered a batch of Siligum off Amazon. It arrived today, so of course I had to give it a try. My goal was to fix this disaster:

 

 

 

Following Clive's approach, I mixed up a batch of Siligum and pressed a piece of metal mesh onto the surface, then let the Siligum set up:

 

 

My first attempt was a abject failure -- I had pressed the mesh too hard and the Siligum had extruded through the openings. Consequently, the Siligum tore when I removed the mesh.

 

 

Having learned how NOT to do it, my second try came through like a champ:

 

 

I layered sprue gloop onto the Siligum mold, let it set up, and cut out a piece to fit the radiator face:

 

 

Here it is test-fitted to the radiator. I've painted the face piece black in preparation for "dry-brushing" with powdered metallic pigment to bring out the mesh texture.

 

 

 

 

Not bad for a day's work!

[dnl42]

Nice work! I've not seen that before.

[billn53]

2 minutes ago, dnl42 said:

Nice work! I've not seen that before.

 

Clive gets all the credit.

[Brandy]

Wouldn't it be easier to just glue the mesh straight to a piece of thin card?

 

Ian

[clive_t]

Terrific work on the rad, Bill.

Those instrument panels look pretty damned good too!

[billn53]

4 hours ago, Brandy said:

Wouldn't it be easier to just glue the mesh straight to a piece of thin card?

 

Ian

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, of course. I did it this way mainly because I was curious to try Clive’s method, which was new to me. 
 

Before anyone reports me to the SPCA, I swear I have no personal knowledge of cat-skinning, and that no felines have been harmed in the making of this model.

 

Bugs, however, will be ruthlessly hunted down and terminated!

 

 

[Vesa Jussila]

Impressive work. Nice to follow this!

[clive_t]

3 hours ago, billn53 said:

...

Bugs, however, will be ruthlessly hunted down and terminated!

 

 

Excellent, I love a fly passed...

[billn53]

The little bugger photobombed me during my last build 😡

 

 

[billn53]

I hadn't originally intended to, but I spent the better part of today's bench time detailing the engine.

 

My initial plan was to replace the kit's bare-bones engine with a resin one from Engines & Things. However, when I took a close look at the resin part, I was left unsatisfied:

 

 

Better than the kit but lacking detail, especially on the cylinder heads (which is all that will be visible with the cowl in place).

 

Clive did a great job detailing the kit pieces on his build, so I thought I'd give it a try. A few hours of work later, and this is what I came up with:

 

   

 

 

 

I could have gone further, especially if I wanted the option of removing the cowl. But, that's not in my plan so I focused on the cylinder heads, valve actuators, and spark plug wiring. Even that modest goal took quite a while to complete, but in the end it was time well spent!