For the Lysander, a transparent canopy is obligatory! (There is a cockpit interior.) This one is in 1/25 and an early attempt at rescaling and motorization. I remember it took a lot of watercolour paint to cover up my glueing mistakes.
The challenge is to design a realistic - and working - interior structure for supporting the wings. It is very visible and prominent viewed through the glazing. I ended up with welding rods, since they were of the right dimension in 1/25 and pliable enough. Main spars were made of welding rods, too. Worked fine, although it was a pain to hit the holes in the ribs once the wings were covered. In 1/33 you'll probably do fine with wooden grill skewers or similar roundwood for spars, and thick wire for the interior structure.
The problem is that you will first have to build the cockpit interior, then make the glazing with holes for the spars, then glue in the spars, then shove on the wings. If you decide on this procedure, I recommed a card structure in the wings to guide the spars into their right position.
I would very much like to build a detailed and well designed model of the Lysander in 1/16. In that case I would prefer the version used for getting agents in and out of occupied France (see photo & painting). I read the memoirs by the man running this scheme; quite fascinating reading.
There are good drawings of the Lysander if you want to go all the way. The agent-carrying version is the one at bottom right. It also had an enlarged interior fuel tank, in addition to the exterior one below the aircraft. Agents had to squeeze themselves in at the gunner/observer position. It was reportedly quite uncomfortable.
What is really interesting, and challenging for a modeller, are the automatic slats, and the extreme position of the horizontal stab at slow speed setting of the trim wheel. It is really quite unbelievable. For the pilot, the challenge was NOT to apply full throttle if he had to go around after a missed approach; not until he had got the stabilizer back into a reasonable flight position, that is.
For good measure, I'll attach a close-up of the cockpit instrumentation.
Last, but absolutely not least, a link to a gallery report by a guy who really made the most of this model; it is motorized, in 1/33 original scale, and exquisitely well built (see sample photo attached; more in the link):
http://www.kartonbau.de/wbb2/thread.php?threadid=10452
Now, there!
- L.