BF109E Instrument Panel

[richkat]

Eduard has a 1/4 scale one found it on Amazon for $40....Rich

[richkat]

Here's a link to the Eduard site.....Rich
Bf 109E instrument panel 1/4 - Eduard Store

[sgoti]

Originally Posted by herky

would make a great wall hanging

Hmm… Too bad there isn't an "Alan Rose"-type model of this craft. Imagine the plane "flying" out of the wall with the instrument panel below.

(Although I guess one could enlarge a model and make their own wall decoration…)

Looking back through this, I'm always impressed at how this is turning out. Again, great job!

[MacSongLi]

Hey, that is fantastic work Al, very impressed. Your clear plastic covers look convex in shape, did you shape them, or is it flat plastic?

Gary

[Yeti]

Holy moley, this is awe inspiring!

[chicharrero]

Very good idea, friends.
And some WW1 instrument panels would be awesome

[YOAVHOZMI]

very interesting project.

when i was young in the army, i worked on similar instruments, fixed and cheked them.

good luck

YOAV

[Leif Ohlsson]

Very ambitious, very good and interesting idea! Very competent handling of the materials. Pleasure to watch. - L

[alzictorini]

PMs

Thanks for the encouragement guys. I was wondering how this project would be taken as its not the usual build you find on this outstanding site. As for some of the questions raised, yes this is a full scale project. It would seem a mammoth task but the more I do the more I find its achievable. The clear plastic came rolled up, I heated it to flatten it and sometimes in the light it may look convex.

As for the plastic model available at 1/4 scale, I have seen it. In fact I've used it as reference as you will find.

OK, I have a few more gauges to show you before I go onto the Instrument panel construction. The panel is split in two halves, an upper and a lower. The gauges in the lower half are smaller and have some slight differences. The needle for instance is not central and its lower half is covered by a half shroud (see the attached pic). This increased the sandwich width due to an extra layer so to compensate I made the card thinner.

Find pics of the Fuel and the Temp Gauges below.

[alzictorini]

PMs

As my gauges started taking shape I looked at producing the upper panel first. Of all the Models of BF109, the E version eluded me of its original plan. Other models are available but my chosen model was finding hard to come by.

As mentioned earlier by richkat, Eduard has produced a ¼ scale model of a 109E instrument panel. On looking at Eduards literature I came across a picture of the model panel without any instruments attached. It dawned on me that the holes for each gauge were in place. If I copied the picture and blew it up until the holes on my gauges fit, I would have a perfect stencil to make a card panel. I blew up the picture at work and the technique worked a treat. I remanufacture another manifold pressure gauge and placed all three upper gauges in their positions on the Eduard paper panel. They fit perfectly (see pic below).

I next used the paper panel as a stencil and drew out the panel on grey card. This I then cut out. Original upper panels had a bend at the bottom of the panel which I couldn’t reproduce. I figured that if I made the lower half thicker I could sand it round at the edges to give a similar look which I have done.

The fine course altimeter FL22320 is one of the few German gauges that attaches from the rear (the rest attaching from the front). Using the paper stencil I marked where the cut out would be for the FL22320. This was cut out, sanded and coloured in grey using a grey pencil.