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  #31  
Old 04-28-2015, 03:27 PM
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palindrome palindrome is offline
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Here's the cockpit section attached to the nose section. Note that the artwork leaves something to be desired. The bottom center join is right in place, and the right side looks OK, but as we go over the top and down the left side, the panel lines just aren't matching up any more:

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150428_113310.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150428_113325.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150428_113344.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150428_113402.jpg

That's where I'm at now. On to the rear fuselage. Something I've already noted: The instructions have you put glue tabs into the back of the assembled section. They expect you to glue the rear fuselage onto the rear of the cockpit section, then somehow slide the rear cockpit bulkhead, which is also the rear fuselage former, down through the back of the cockpit opening. Umm, I'm not sure that's possible.

Not gonna mess with that. Instead, I'm going to build the rear fuselage, put glue tabs on the front of that, fit the rear cockpit bulkhead/former into the rear fuselage, and then attach that to the rear of the cockpit section. That will also let me sort out what to do about the bit of cockpit that's sticking out too far. I'm thinking that if I can fit the former in at a slight angle, everything will match up properly without needing to mess with the cockpit itself.

At this point, I think I'm over the hump on this build. There's a lot of fiddly stuff to do, but other than sorting out the rear bulkhead stuff, I think I'm good.

I'll keep posting updates, and detailing anywhere that the instructions are out of whack.
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  #32  
Old 04-28-2015, 06:14 PM
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Sounds like a good plan for completing the fuselage.

I take your point about the artwork, but your model looks really good nonetheless.

Don
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  #33  
Old 05-04-2015, 11:48 AM
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The fuselage is complete, but not without even more fun.

The rear fuselage is in two pieces. The front segment runs from rear cockpit bulkhead to the back of the rear windows, and the rear segment runs from the rear windows to the base of the rudder. There's a bulkhead for each segment (and one for the very end, but that goes on later, while fitting the elevator spar and rudder):

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150501_142455.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150501_195504.jpg

(you can again see how the artwork just doesn't line up; I did my best to match up the flying tiger).

Now we come to the next fun stuff. Take a look at how the rear cockpit former fits (or doesn't!) inside the fuselage segment. This is so far off it's hard to fathom. Using a piece of string as a measuring tool, the circumference of the fuselage segment is fully half an inch longer than the circumference of the former...

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150501_195536.jpg

You can also see another issue. The instructions show the rear windows formed with a single curved piece of transparency. This was a mistake. The windows are supposed to be flat, not curved, but after gluing in the transparency film, I wasn't able to get the segment into its proper shape. It would be better to do this with two separate pieces of film. Oh well. In the end, it came out OK because the fuselage scallops under the windows still fit. And I'm planning to have the canopy open, so the canopy top will be over these windows (unless it doesn't fit...).

After test-fitting the rear fuselage to the forward fuselage, it was clear that the width of the bulkhead is OK, but it's just too short. So I did two things to get it to fit. First, I glued a tiny piece of cardboard at the hold the top of the bulkhead. Then I made a short stack of cardboard strips. The lower two slide under the bulkhead, and the top one fits behind it to hold the bottom in its proper place. A lot of test-fitting, and a couple of cardstock shims on the back of the bulkhead, and I got it at the perfect angle to close off the back of the cockpit properly:

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150503_133340.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150503_153617.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150503_170916.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150503_180438.jpg

Last part of this step was building the seat frame (rolled tubes) and headrest (stacked cardboard), and then installing the seat:

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150504_112535.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150504_120057.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150504_120131.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150504_120143.jpg

Next I need to make the legs for the landing gear. The instructions don't have those until later, but they friction-fit into pieces that are about to get buried inside the plane's structure, so they need to get rolled now and the fit verified, BEFORE the mounting holes become inaccessible...
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  #34  
Old 05-04-2015, 12:13 PM
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It''s really too bad all of the issues with this kit. Dispite these additional challenges, you're doing a great job. Nice fix on the fuselage formers. The exhaust turned out nice, and your fix on the dashboard looks like it turned out great.

My fingers are crossed for you.

Gary
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  #35  
Old 05-04-2015, 02:22 PM
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I don't think I have ever seen such an ill-fitting bulkhead. You came up with an innovative solution.

This may have been mentioned before in the thread, but I think you ought to bring these problems to the attention of Chris Gutzmer at ECardmodels so that he can inform the designer and perhaps get them corrected.

Don
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  #36  
Old 05-04-2015, 02:30 PM
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Thanks, Don. My plan is to finish the build, then write a review at ecardmodels. I will contact Chris as well.

TBH, I kind of wonder what I'm doing wrong. There are several versions of this kit, including a number of repaints by others designers. And several of the ecardmodels listings have a bunch of pictures of the finished model. So people are clearly successfully building it.
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  #37  
Old 05-07-2015, 09:16 PM
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I bet they all did what you and me did as well... modify and try to come up with a decent model.

I really admire you for not tossing this one to the bin.
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  #38  
Old 05-12-2015, 07:57 AM
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Flying surfaces done. Only one major design flaw in this sequence, and a few small ones.

At this point, I've largely given up on following the order of the instructions. For example, the instructions have you burying the landing gear mounts inside the wings & fuselage, but not making the landing gear until later. I decided to make up the gear legs now so I could ensure the fit BEFORE I embedded the mounts.

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150512_083306.jpg

I wound up putting a little extra wrapping at the top of each leg. I decided to punch the mounting holes rather than trying to cut them out. The smallest hole on my punch was just fractionally larger than the gear legs, so a tiny bit of extra wrapping made them fit perfectly.

The instructions then want you to insert the elevator spar and attach the rudder. But the rudder doesn't fit properly (as you'll see), and the elevator and rudder fillets overlap (on the real plane, they're actually all one piece. So I decided to put the elevators and their fillets on, then the rudder and its fillet:

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150506_094641.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150506_132344.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150506_194657.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150507_151115.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150507_161445.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150507_182744.jpg

In the next-to-last picture you can see a (relatively) huge gap at the base of the rudder. The rudder doesn't come close to fitting the top of the fuselage properly. Fortunately, the fillet covers the gap. Unfortunately, the fillet didn't go on smoothly. I should have figured out a way to brace the nose of the rudder. But since I didn't, when I tried to glue the fillet, the rudder moved. So the base of the rudder is really ugly. Oh well. Another error you can't see is that the elevator fillets are designed wrong. The camouflage doesn't line up on the underside. I decided to get it lined up on top, which made the bottom misalignment worse. But that was better than having both sides wrong.

Next the wings. There are wheel wells, but also poorly designed. The circular bottom is fractionally too small, and if you wrap the wall to tightly fit the base, the well will be smaller than the wing opening. I decided to use gray marker on the glue tabs and count on a lack of light leakage to hide the remaining gaps:

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150509_150349.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150509_150404.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150511_165939.jpg

I screwed up mounting the wheel well - the lines should be parallel to the leading edge (oops). The wings actually went together pretty well, though (yay!). One thing I did was to embed a paper mounting tube for the pitot. On a previous model, the pitot was just inserted through the leading edge, and that's a really weak joint. This time I made a paper roll around the pitot wire, inserted it through the leading edge and glued to the paper tube to the wing skin. When it comes time to mount the pitot later, I have a 1/4" tight-fitting mounting surface to glue it into. I also made up the machine gun barrels to make sure they fit through the holes in the leading edge properly. I didn't make internal bracing for them because they're short and the paper-to-paper joint will be strong enough.

The instructions wanted the wing spar mounted earlier, but I was smart enough to not do that and risk bending it while working on the tail feathers. I mounted the wing spar after building the wings, and the glue brace I added when building the fuselage segment earlier worked perfectly to give me a good gluing surface and the ability to adjust the dihedral. Mounting the wings was straightforward, except that the cutout at the top of the right wing was 1mm too short, so the wing didn't come to the center of the fuselage properly. Sigh. An easy fix, though, and the top joint will be covered by the wing fillet later:

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150511_193139.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150511_195836.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150511_195905.jpg

The underside of the fuselage gets covered by a long piece of ductwork later, so the center joints pretty much all get hidden.

The instructions now want you to assemble all the upper parts, including the canopy, then flip it over and do the underside. Umm, no thank you. I'll do the upper wing fillets and then flip it over, do all the underside, including the landing gear, THEN put the canopy and other top parts on when it's standing on its legs. Why anyone would risk damaging the canopy by following the instructions, I don't know...

But anyhow - it looks like an airplane now!
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  #39  
Old 05-26-2015, 05:47 AM
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Time for an update.The wing fillets on a P-40 are very long, since the wing root extends so far back. This is a very complex compound curve. They fit pretty well. Not perfect, but I'm pleased:

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150513_134952.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150513_135005.jpg

Now on to the landing gear. The first step is the pods on the wings. The hemispherical front was made from petals. I didn't do a very good job with these. I've done OK with smaller ones, but these were too large and too hard for me close up properly. There were gaps, so I took small pieces of paper, colored them with green marker, and stuffed them into the back of the glued-up nose. That helped, but the flaws are unfortunately fairly visible:

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150513_212150.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150513_212207.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150514_100431.jpg

Now on to the wheels. They are standard stacked disks. They are supposed to be 6mm wide, per the instructions, but there were only 4 pieces. When I made my separate page collecting all the parts that need to be bonded to cardboard, I made extra disks for the main wheels and tail wheel. After shaping and coloring, they look pretty good:

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150519_175527.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150520_200638.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150520_200655.jpg

I had a near disaster mounting the gear. One one side, the brace/glue block inside the wing broke loose when I inserted the gear leg. There was no way to get in and fix it, with the wing solidly attached to the fuselage. I wound up making a small cardstock patch, and between that and the actuating parts, which are doubled cardstock, there's enough bracing to attach it relatively firmly. It's strong enough to hold up the plane, anyhow (you can see the patch on the near gear in the 2nd photo):

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150524_191351.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150524_191415.jpg

The tailwheel mechanism is straightforward. Unfortunately, the horizontal arm isn't at the right place (it should be further down). But the instructions were vague, and this wasn't clear until I went to attach the door retraction wire. I wound up cheating and just gluing the door brackets on top of the wire, rather than trying to fit the wire through them. It looks good enough, IMHO:

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150525_132839.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150525_133119.jpgFlying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150525_175515.jpg

And here she is up on her gear:

Flying Tigers P-40B Warhawk-20150525_175547.jpg

I'm in the home stretch now. I need to finish the under-fuselage ductwork, then do the canopy, propeller, and accessories (guns, carborator duct, pitot, etc.).
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  #40  
Old 05-26-2015, 06:38 AM
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It's looking pretty good considering all the problems that had to be overcome. We learn the most on models that challenge our skills, and you certainly got an education with this one. Kits like this ultimately make better modelers of those with the fortitude to go all the way. You've clearly got what it takes.
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