[yankeekilo]

Originally Posted by chris190

Greetings to all from the really quite ridiculously warm UK!

Looking back, it seems that I finished my last model (SMS Gneisenau) on 11th April and since then I've been working on the design of the Latecoere 631. As with my previous scratch built aircraft, the scale is 1/100 - really quite big enough, possibly a bit too big for this prototype! - and once more, the Draftsight 2d cad programme is being used.

It's a lengthy process and the first months are spent amalgamating and interpreting reproductions of small scale, sometimes blurry original drawings, in this case supplied courtesy of Pascal Parpaite, whose book on this elegant aeroplane and its rather tragic history is the last word on the subject and well worth a read - in French of course! Each original drawing is to a differing scale, meaning that strange factors such as 1:226.83 and 1:171.44 etc. have to be applied to measure off and then draw to 1:100.

Usually, although one can get a reasonable three view result without too much difficulty, it's in the sections of all the elements where a lot of the work lies; fortunately, Pascal's drawings included a factory drawing of two fuselage cross sections from which the others need to be derived and as all information has to correspond in all dimensions, this can be quite frustrating, particularly when it's necessary to get smooth lines running from front to back on the planing bottom and the fuselage topside in both plan, section and elevation.

Then comes the development of components in the flattening out part of the work, also very time consuming, so I've started actual construction work on the fuselage before completion of the design of wings, empennage, floats and engines so as to maintain my interest.

So after five months of the above, here is the fuselage framing substantially complete after a weekend's work! Next stage is to draw out the panels infilling between the formers, since I am intending to use the same hull construction method as GPM used on the Gneisenau which, although rather bigger, gave a nice smooth hull resistant to clumsy handling.

Will post more in due course and perhaps hope for rather more rapid progress! Also keeping up with cereal consumption as the material from the boxes is ideal for framing and infill purposes.

All the best

Chris

Chris,
i've been unable to answer your private messages, can you send me and email o [email protected] ?? i'll send the clipper the way you want it