CardPlane Bartel BM-6a

[ccoyle]

A slightly blurred shot of the fuselage to date. The wings are in progress at the moment. All CardPlane kits have substantial wing former assemblies -- 16 pieces per each half-wing in this case. That'll be all for now until the new year. I'm heading out-of-town for a bit...will be in Pasadena for the Rose Parade on 1/1/09.

Cheers!

[Yu Gyokubun]

What ccoyl described is the method that I also always use for four years except for very small scale model like smaller than 1:144.
But, once one of Japanese fellow paper modeler said that the adhesive on the tape will be deteriorated in a long run and cause detachment of mylar from frame.
It has past four years since I used this technique for the first time and I observe no deterioration but I would like to know does anybody experience that?

[whulsey]

Haven't used the double sided tape, but have found a lot of tape adhesives either deteriorate or attack the surface of what they're attached to after a few years. Althought for some of the better quality tapes it may be 10 or 15 years before this starts, depending on storage conditions. There are tapes made for bookbinding and mounting artwork and photos that use archiveal materials and don't have the problems.

[ccoyle]

Hmmm...that's not very comforting to read. Perhaps I'll try experimenting with wicking a bit of CA into the taped frame/mylar joint. That would give the joint a greater degree of permanence.

[ccoyle]

Wow...I can't believe it has been this long since I posted any progress. :o And what I have to post will not appear like much.

The accompanying shot shows the partially completed upper wing. I like this shot because it shows not only a wing skin in place, but also shows the typical rock-solid former assembly typical of CardPlane designs, even the early freebies. There are, though, a couple of major differences between this design and Lech's later, more sophisticated designs, such as the PWS-10 currently being built by Shrike. First, the graphics on the Bartel are much simpler: no weathering, and the rib lines are just plain lines rather than the shaded lines of newer kits that give a greater illusion of depth. Second, the earlier CardPlane kits make much less use of joiner strips; you can see where I added a strip to join the left and right wing halves.

If you are sharp-eyed, you will notice that the part numbers on some right wing elements don't match. I accidentally glued some of the formers together out of sequence. Fortunately for me, the Bm-6a was built with identical upper/lower and left/right wing sections; therefore, the parts for each wing section are mostly interchangeable. Whew!

Cheers!

[Leif Ohlsson]

Good to see this progressing! - L.

[Don Boose]

That's a good-looking wing and I like the photo showing the underlying starboard structure and the completed port wing.

Don

[ccoyle]

Thanks, Don. Sorry about the lack of progress lately -- life has been getting in the way of modeling. :-(

[ccoyle]

OK, soccer tournament out of the way...got a little modeling done. Also owe some thanks to Shrike for motivating me with his PWS-10 build. I have not had the same difficulty with tight skin fits on this model as with my other CardPlane kits; in fact, the wing skins are quite loose and required a tiny bit of trimming in some spots. Also, there is a printing error on the right upper aileron -- the insignia is set too far back from the leading edge and so creates a large gap in the insignia where the aileron joins the wing. I printed an extra lower left wing aileron; flip it over, it matches exactly due to the symmetrical upper and lower wings.

Cheers!

[willygoat]

Looking very nice Chris :p