[georgerutherford1861]

Hello everyone,

Some work in progress shots of my 30 Squadron RAAF Beaufighter serial A19-5. This would have been one of those taking part in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. This is the one from which film footage was taken during the attack.

This is one of Bruno's standard Beaufighters, I changed the roundels and added the letter and serial number. My serial numbers do not show up real well once it was printed, but they are there!

At the moment I am working my way through the wings, which always give me cold sweats. S&P has a partial wing spar on these, but I wanted to extend it almost the full width of the wing.

I found a nice set of plans online for the Beaufighter, scaled it and cut out the wing profile, sizing the thickness down a bit for the wing wrapping over it. It also came with a few ribs so I am going to try and incorporate those as well. Because my wing spars tend to go everywhere and be a bit flimsy in connection, I added a few braces at the join to the fuselage. We will see how that turns out. I also am lining the wing joint with regular print weight paper to help add strength (and hide gaps?!) when those pieces go together.

You can not see them, but I added a few internal formers to the fuselage using the same plans I found online. I can not seem to get by without them, I salute those of you who make great fuselages without using internal formers of some kind.

I also cut a bit off the bottom of the central window of the cockpit. I had a doozy of a time getting it to fit the fuselage otherwise. I also cut a bit off of the rear of the fuselage, the vertical stabilizer did not extend as far forward as it needed to otherwise. No big deal.

This build will also include a piece or two from Gerry's repaint of this aircraft - this one has been in the works so long I did not get to start with his as a starting point, but he added a few pieces I need to his model (including the small bubble window on top of the fuselage that I think is for a direction finding antenna?)

Doug