Evening All,
Many thanks for following along gentlemen.
Shaun: as far as I am concerned, anyone who had the nerve to attempt a take off from the sharp end of a battleship in a wood, wire and linen machine with a rather unreliable rotary engine has my deepest respect. I would be very content to watch from the side.......or make a model of it!!
I have been working on this while working on the GB dio. Now that the latter is finished, (well almost - as I will explain later, I have decided to make two new Bleriot XXIII's because I have finally sorted out the wing problem), I will focus on this subject.
Having made most of the major parts I painted them: CDL for the flying surfaces, and Revell semi-matt 382 tan for the struts:
The engine was mounted on a block on the trailing edge of the lower wing: I made a mounting from plastic card and inserted a piece of rod to represent the shaft which connected the fuel and oil tanks to the engine. The fuel/oil tanks were cut from 60 thou rod and mounted on a frame made from plastic strip. There was a passenger seat in front of the fuel/oil tanks - that was cut from 20 thou card and after all had been painted, the sub-assemblies were fixed to the lower wing:
NB the pilot's seat and frame are only placed on the model - they will be attached permanently later.
All was now ready to attach the upper wing. I followed my usual procedure for making the process easy: select 4 wing struts and the two rear boom struts. Place drops of cement into the holes on the ends of the lower wing and place the struts into the holes. While the cement is still soft put small drops of cement into the relevant holes in the upper wing and gently place the lower wing and struts into the 4 holes in the inverted upper wing. I had paint pots handy to keep the wing edges square and supported while I put super glue on to one corner of the rear of the booms. I inserted one of the rear struts, followed by the second, and I had a square structure. I set this aside and allowed the cement to set:
When the cement had set I had a rigid structure which can be handled so that the remaining struts can be fixed at leisure:
The next step will be to add the interplane and boom struts and then the undercarriage.
Thanks for looking.
