FGMM Bell P-39 Airacobra - Page 2

**jagolden01** · #11 04-01-2010, 04:42 AM

Is the tape applied to the inside or the outside of the canopy frames?

**cjwalas** · #12 04-01-2010, 05:31 PM

Forging ahead.
Still deciding what changes I'm making on this one. I'm adding rivets onto some of the under surfaces that I think could use them; mostly around the landing gear;

One thing I noticed on my P-39 test build was that the spinner is sized to have a straw go through it, which is too large an opening to be remotely prototypical. So I added more poorly colored nose;

I'm toying with the idea of doing separate flight surfaces. Never done this on a model yet. It's what stopped my recent GPM Stuka build! My idea here is simple; shape and form some styrofoam tray material and glue it in the wing;

Then simply (and carefully) slice through to separate the surfaces;

It's easy and it seems to work fine. I know it's not paper construction, but this is FG, where anything goes, right? Has anyone tried this before?
Chris

**bob martin** · #13 04-02-2010, 05:31 AM

jagolden, You must print the canopy assembly on regular printer paper. Not Card Stock!! The tape goes on both sides of the canopy. There is a face book tutorial and link at Fiddlers Green on how to do it.

**Tapcho** · #14 04-02-2010, 06:37 AM

Those flight surfaces look good. Thanks for the trick, I must try it sometime.

**bob martin** · #15 04-03-2010, 12:50 PM

Oh No!!!! Now I gotta start saving our old stryofoam egg crates
Great Idea,:D I gotta give it a try.

**cjwalas** · #16 04-07-2010, 07:55 PM

Finally getting some real progress on this one;

The Snook's 2nd seems like it's usually carrying an external fuel tank, so I copied one from the KW kit in preparation for this one.

I cut out the nose gun ports so I can add barrels later.

One of the things that stood out to me when I was doing my research was how the exhausts are full pipes that can be seen exiting the fuselage, so I've built these recessed boxes to place the pipes in later. A bit tricky as they span two sections of fuselage. I decided to add them to the forward section so that I could be sure to attach them securely.

I added a few pennies in the nose for counterweight and to "add value" to the finished model.

That's the nose wheel well above and the nose wheel strut in progress below.

The trickiest thing by far is the cockpit interior. This will be the black box (radio, I think?) behind the pilot's seat on the green decking section behind. I punched out a few holes so that I could add white card from behind for the dials. All hand-drawn, so try not to laugh to hard.

OK, so here's what a hand drawn P-39 cockpit looks like. :D:o It's a tough one. The FG fuselage is a little rounder than the prototype, so the fit was a little fiddly. Finished black box in position on the left.

The instrument panel probably isn't very accurate, but it's good enough for me.

Here's the joystick in place with a still wet blob of glue on the end (to be painted later, if I remember).

The fuselage seems to be coming together OK. I decided to heat form the back half of the canopy as well as the front half. I could have just bent the plastic, but I hope it'll be easier to place later if it's already holding its shape.

I almost forgot to put the nose wheel well in place! This is a tricky build because the fuselage has to have a lot of holes cut into it and I'm not using any bulkhead formers (hope that's not a big mistake!).

Added seat belts when I finally remembered them! That's about it so far, but I'm into the build now, so I should keep the pace going on this one. Oh, wait....

Gun well and barrels in place!
I'm enjoying this one a lot, actually. And I think a big part of that is that I did the test build first. I'm sure I would have made a couple of big mistakes already if I hadn't done that.

Chris