A Norseman Floatplane in 1.48

[marvinneko]

For my Norseman I eyeballed where the ends of the shoulders hovered above the edge of the floats to position them. 

 

I used a similar method as you did for the tailplane struts. Unfortunately the tension changed at some point so I redid it with fine metal pieces.

[rob Lyttle]

20 hours ago, marvinneko said:

I eyeballed where the ends of the shoulders hovered above the edge of the floats to position them. 

Eyeballing is the order of the day, I think! 

Here's what I've got so far...

Two 1mm wire front legs, still adjustable at the floats, and a foamboard profile that straddles the floats at the rear crossbar position and supporting the fuselage. 

 

The length of the wire legs tallies quite well with the kit parts, but other than that I think the kit legs can be disposed of. 

The square end indicates the rear leg and that's shorter and more vertical than the front one. That's not what I'm seeing in reference material. Anyway trying to make those moulded ends suit my new attachment points on the floats would be trouble. 

For a start, I'll check where the propeller disc will be in relation to the floats. The big red safety lines will prove advantageous for this 😎

 

It hadn't dawned on me just how tail-heavy the assembly will become. 

[rob Lyttle]

This plan is already on Britmodeller,  supplied by @dogsbody on an excellent build thread by Moa a coupla years ago. 

I hope it's OK for me to reuse it here, if not,Dogsbody,  let me know 😇

This will give me a few good reference points for setting the fuselage up on her floats. Here's the front elevation to compare with the drawing...

I'm in the right area for angles and float spacing I think 🤔 

[AdrianMF]

Nice! Love the little boat too.

 

I'm a kitchen towel and silver foil guy, but good to see the alternatives!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[dogsbody]

Okay by me

 

 

Chris

[marvinneko]

On my build I noticed the strut shoulders on the kit were an L shape but on diagrams and my ref photos did not have that extra lip, so I cut it off. May depend on version.

[rob Lyttle]

Some progress on mounting the fuselage onto the floats... I got some styrene tubes that take 1mm wire and used that instead of my wrap-around skinny plastic efforts. The sides were filed away to get an oval cross-section, and concentrated on the front legs and the back upright legs at the rear crossbar position. I concluded that the rest of the rigging needed doing as part of the whole process. 

The middle, sloping struts will be fixed after. I've got attachment points prepared for each end where the 2 arrows point...

3rd arrow is the stretchy line emerging from one of the holes drilled right through the sponson. After a couple of fails with attaching the tops of the diagonal lines up underneath ,I figured the way forward was to drill right through, pull the line out the top, stretch and glue. The top surface can be made good 👍 

So far so good...

The side view is pretty much where I want it and the front aspect looks like a decent match to that plan drawing. Not seeing anything out of alignment in the topside view 

 

And with 1mm brass wire doing the structural work, the whole lot is feeling steady as a rock. I also predrilled for ladders for the passenger doors so ought to be OK for that. 

 

I've been following the progress of the women's World Cup rugby tournament... my word, these women mean business 😲

Anyway, the Final is this weekend and it's Canada 🇨🇦 V England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 

I ought to say that Canada took out NZ in the semi and THAT speaks volumes! England are on song too, and it's gonna be some game. 

Whichever way it plays out, it's total admiration for the Canadian squad, who were by no means the favourites to even get to the final.

Just sayin...🤩🏉

[rob Lyttle]

.

I finally took the opportunity to get some white primer on to cover the weird plastic, get a look at the surface.

Still quite difficult to make out the ribbed areas but I take that as a good sign--  if it's obvious then it's still too pronounced. 

The engine attachment has been improved. The ali tube insert protrudes out the back but the hole in the fuselage front is a bit slack and undefined. So a piece of tube the next size up has been glued into the enlarged hole centred and straight and the engine tube is a nice snug fit into that. 

 

The upside of this fix is that the engine attaches to the fuselage and the cowling attaches to the engine and an airgap can be maintained without glueing the cowling onto the fuselage. 

I've been fiddling away on the cowling from time to time with small improvements. I worked out that the diameter was little small to get an airgap so enlargement was done by cutting straight through and inserting 2mm of plastic strip.

The increase in circumference just eases the size up a little and an extra lap of skinny styrene around the radial engine gives a tidy fit inside the cowling. Glad to get that issue sorted out 😀

 

Edited September 27 by rob Lyttle
Correction

[rob Lyttle]

Well, the Norseman is moving forward. A livery scheme had to be decided on and paint applied before fitting the wings and support struts. This is where things stand...

 

I want a darker colour on the fin because the supplied"Norseman" decals are yellow and I'd like to use them. There's no particular airframe that I'm copying, it's just a scheme that's "of the type".Owners and operators applied all sorts of schemes on mostly ex-USAAF military aircraft. I fancied going with red and I wanted to do the black cowling front. 

All done with brushwork after the initial white primer. I'm having a little experiment with the acrylic paint by using Pledge Kleer as the medium and washing it on. All a bit experimental but liking it so far. It takes a couple of layers to build the colour values, had a few leaks under masking, but no brush marks. 

Wings are in preparation with flaps attached, 

I'm thinking I need to do the wing attachment and ensure the dihedral is what's required before I add the struts. I can't tell if they are precisely the right length to give the dihedral. From what I can tell they are pretty close to correct. 

The midway struts assemblies are WAY too thick. So far the crossbar pieces are replaced with stretched sprue after the kit's attachment gaps have been filled. Once the wings and struts are on, the verticals will be fixed, either sprue or wire. 

I like wire 😎

Speaking of which, a ladder has been made...

 

0.6mm wire, two uprights located in their holes and rungs added one at a time with CA. Top one still needs trimming to length and nail Clippers can cope with 0.6mm .

And I have the makings of a base 🤩

[rob Lyttle]

Phew... that was emotional 😋 but the wings are on and the V struts have been made to fit. This is the dihedral situation, 

 

I have no data, I'm working from refs and back to the good ole eyeballing. 

 

Looking again at my Matchbox build, I don't think there's enough dihedral, in fact the wings are just about straight. That's what comes from relying on the parts. I'll be ready for it next time. 🤩

The lengths did need extension and a bit of help with the inboard attachment points, but worth going steadily to get the thing looking right. 

 

[rob Lyttle]

Hmmmm...

As the paintwork progresses I'm less than overjoyed with the appearance of the wingtop. I can now see that the leading edge has not lost all traces of the huge ribbing, and the rest doesn't look like a well-doped fabric over ribs--  

 

It looks like heavily moulded ribbing that has been thoroughly worn down. 😅

I'm weighing the options. Even dead flat would look better than this, but the trenches are so deep that there would be almost nothing left of the wing tops. I can ignore it and press on, muttering the modern mantra "It is what it is".🤭

I could try skinning the whole top with skinny styrene sheet taking care not to replicate those trenches through the skin. If I do that I won't bother about the underside which is not so heavily moulded and looks considerably better than the tops. 

[rob Lyttle]

...(½hrs later...)

That didn't take long to decide, did it ⁉️

I think I just needed to talk that through with you guys 👍

Port wing first 😋 

Leading edge well attached first. That's just reaching back to the ailerons and flaps, the little quadrant will get added and blended. There's a nice flat, unribbed area right along in front of the control surfaces. 

Then boom...

 

The tip area is a bit compound in it's curves but i think the plastic can cope. 

 

Wow,feeling better about it already 💃

[marvinneko]

If you're using pledge anyway, you could brush it over the masking to seal its edges first, then apply colour.

[AdrianMF]

Good call on the wings! What did you use to stick it down? I'm presuming superglue.

 

Overdone fabric effects are the worst. The Airfix Demon is the most offensive one I have had to deal with. Or maybe the Airfix (1/72) Anson, which had an overdone fabric effects for wings that were covered in plywood on the real thing. 🤔🙄🫣. Both effects ground into the moulds in the early 60s after starting the production run with perfectly nice smooth wings.

 

Regards,

Adrian

 

[rob Lyttle]

Just ordinary poly glue,  Adrian. I need to be a bit careful using it with the skinny styrene as it can work right through the plastic quite easily. I'm gradually getting over my hate of "superglue"--  sometimes it's not that super. But still only use it where necessary. It's never my go-to 1st choice. 

For one thing, I've got finger recognition on my phone and it messes that up for a passtime 

[rob Lyttle]

Little bit of time spent constructing a timber jetty with skewer piles through into the plywood base and a thin ply deck. 

 

On a previous Floatplane build I came to the realisation that tidal harbours and lakes are two different situations requiring different solutions. Lake jetties can be on piles with no tidal rise and fall to accommodate with floating pontoons. 

Then some planks over the base. 

Recreational carpentry 🤩 All done with pva so that can dry now and harden up, then I'll see what else can be done with it. 

I have a small selection of civilian figures in 1.48, 3D printed by a fellow club member. 

His latest "trick" is to give a photo of a person or people, or a face selfie,  to an AI program/app thing and it'll (do it's best to) make a 3D facsimile of it that can be fed into his 3D printer which produces the person or people in the original photo. It's nothing short of remarkable. 

You want Eisenhower, Churchill and Stalin at Casablanca? Or Einstein and Bohr in Gottingen? In 1.24 scale??.

Just show it the photo...😲

Kinda scary as well as remarkable 😬 

[rob Lyttle]

Here, let me show you an example of what he can do...

Photo,

 

3D print,

No chairs of course and the program has by necessity taken a few guesses, but they're remarkably good guesses. All it had to work from was that photo. 

 

[PattheCat]

The 3D printed figures based on a picture are impressive but not as much as all the work you put into this build.

A very nice result.

 

Waiting for the final touches and scenery.

 

Cheers.

Pat.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

5 hours ago, rob Lyttle said:

On a previous Floatplane build I came to the realisation that tidal harbours and lakes are two different situations requiring different solutions. Lake jetties can be on piles with no tidal rise and fall to accommodate with floating pontoons. 

Hello Rob, not all lakes are that way. I grew up in Northern Wisconsin lake/Dairy country. No one has a fixed dock ? The posts are fixed but the actually docks are on flotation to rise and fall with water level fluctuation. If needed the posts can be dug out of the bottom to be moved further out. Sometime they're on wheels so can be rolled further out if the levels drop below a certain level. A lot of the lakes are reservoirs for minor damns/power stations. But even on rivers they're mobile. And yes Ive seen flying boat’s, seaplanes, and Amphib’s on a lot of them. 

[rob Lyttle]

17 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Rob, not all lakes are that way.

Thanks for the info. Complicateder it gets ⁉️🤭 Definitely something I need to find out more about, I think. What you say makes sense of course. 

I've turned my attention to a few details on the aircraft, and the air intake at the bottom of the cowling in particular. When I inserted 2mm of plastic in the cowling to increase the circumference I left some protruding outside as a base for building the intake. 

So now it's getting boxed in with 0.5mm styrene...

That finishes well back from where I want the front opening to be. It's just a  base to build on. Next is the skinny styrene sides, shaped to follow the profile of the cowling. 

And then the bottom wall. 

That got trimmed to fit inside the side pieces to give what looks like the right sort of rectangular opening. Once it's all well set the corners can be honed into shape and i should get a nice thin walled intake .

A good zoom in on the photo of the yellow aircraft reveals a load of interesting stuff. Ropes left lying on the floats ready for the next mooring. 😎! I'm doing some of those. 

Another thing, on the other side of the fuselage,  are the 2 sort of Ventura sensor things (?) Have to make something for those. 

I've done a couple of control horns for the water rudders and trying to rig them up somehow. 

There's a 3rd line that hoists the rudder assembly over so it's sticking out behind the float in flight. What I've got is not total scale but it's something and after all this is the Modelcraft kit 😎

[Mjwomack]

Because Strictly Come Dancing is back,,,

 

Dahling! This is Fab U Lous

 

 

[rob Lyttle]

14 hours ago, Mjwomack said:

Fab U Lous

🤩💃💃💃🕺👯💃🤼🤹‍♂️🤼‍♂️👭😀

 

I made a bracket for those thingies 

And then i tried to make'm,

3mm styrene tube after a whaft from the old lighter and stretched a bit. After a few tries I got something like this shape and then made a matching pair. 

I did use CA for attachment this time for fear of melting the skinny bracket. 

I now think they are too big, sort of oversized, but the pilot's door will cover the back ends and I'm thinking I'll leave well enough alone. 

And I'm having another go at the red wingtips, and trying out Marvin's idea of sealing the tape edge with clear Pledge first. But not sure I've been careful enough and patient. We'll see soon enough 

I saw a beautiful build of the Matchbox kit online earlier, absolutely outstanding job. I think it was on "Civil Airliner Modelling" or something like that. Unfortunately the photos all had the dreaded P-Bucket logo plastered on them but still viewable. A little jetty like mine and poured resin water. I noticed however that the wing leading edges were still ribbed...🫣 Also a build article in a Scale Aircraft Modelling magazine of the new Dora Norseman . Lovely results but a warning of excessive fiddly things. And wheels only--  no floats available (yet...)

[dogsbody]

Those " thingies " are venturi tubes, to create negative air pressure for some cockpit instruments. These were used before engine-driven air pumps were utilized.

 

 

 

Chris

[rob Lyttle]

I'm on a bit of an interlude with a couple of Piper Cherokees elsewhere in this honourable GB, but fear not for the Norseman float plane 😎 Little bits of progress have been made over time and it's edging forward. The aircraft itself is pretty much completed, I'm adding a few figures and  stuff on the jetty... oh I did hang the cockpit door and I found a lost control arm for a water rudder which had gone awol. 

I'm pressing some homemade decals into service for the Canadian reg and "Manitoba Air Services".

That's the main text applied. I have the capital M, A and S printed separately slightly bigger and different font, they'll go on next. 

I tried inserting some fish cut from ali foil under the water surface. Not that convincing...

Coupla barrels, coupla kit bags, coupla old tyres, that kind of thing ♥️ 

[marvinneko]

Don't know if it's too late, but it would be CF- rather than C-F