[contourcreative]

The Pratt and Whitney Wasp (and Hornet) engines in 1928 were installed in 45 different types of planes, both military and commercial, and were used by more than 25 operators in the US alone.

Being part of so many aircraft of that era means that getting a reasonable, to scale, representation of this engine is important given our design range.

The engine was designed with a card 2-ply wheel with nine 'spokes' on which the individual cylinder heads were mounted. Each head was rolled from an individual piece of paper.

The detail of the push rods and rocker boxes, while not essential, give a far more realistic look to the model. The rockers boxes are folded from minute pieces of paper and the rod created out of 0.25 Evergreen styrene painted gray and fitted individually. A minute blob of white glue is then dropped in the front of the folded rocker box to give them better shape and touched up with gray paint. Doing all this will take between 2 to 3 hours per engine.

The engine, shown here without exhaust manifold on the Fairchild FC-2 prototype, is slightly over scale, but being such a visible part of the plane, contributes much to the appearance of the model.

Terry