KLM DC-4/C-54 (Papertrade 1:50)

[Don Boose]

That fuselage is beautiful, Erik!

Don

[romanmodels]

good work Erik.

[MacSongLi]

Very nice build work Erik (as always). The fuselage looks great.

Gary

[Isaac]

Erik


Good idea to have an internal stiffener in the form of the tube. That is good design.

I may have missed it, but did you print it on 160 gsm paper or heavier?


Isaac

[Vinalssergio155]

Very fine work on that fuselage Erik, excellent.

[Diderick A. den Bakker]

Due to the large size of the Skymaster, reinforcement of various skin parts is a good idea. One solution is glueing an extra layer of paper inside the part (after forming it!). Paul Paymans, working on the Spirit of Freedom, sent this picture - no further explanation needed!

[smithdr]

THAT is a beautiful thing! Nice one, Erik...Dan

[Diderick A. den Bakker]

More pictures from Paul - wings, flaps, ailerons are finished, but will not be mounted until engines and landing gear have been added. He is satisfied with progress on engines: just finished 56 pistons. For those less 'into' this sort of superdetail, a printed engine front is included in the model...

[Erik Zwaan]

Thanks Don, David, Isaac, Gary and Dan! I indeed didn't mention it anywhere, Isaac, but the model sheets are printed on 160 grams A4 size paper. The arrangement of the parts on each sheet also allows letter size paper for printing. Make sure you set the printer to 100% of size (manual selection), not on auto-fit or something.
I made a back-up copy on 80 grams paper, which is regular printer paper quality. I use the thinner paper for corrections like closing small gaps and masking any joints/seams that don't look nice and inadvertent glue stains. If you cut the correction patches smartly, on panel lines for example, they will hardly be visible from a certain distance.

Moving on to the wings. Had little time for modeling in the past two weeks and the ailerons proved to be a bit of a struggle unfortunately.
The flaps are straightforward and the internal structure fits well, so no difficulties to close the envelope properly.

In general, the aileron internal structure needs trimming, especially at the wingtip end. The baseplate (bottom side of the aileron) can best be glued on an additional strip of 160 grams paper only, not on 0.6-0.8mm thick cardboard as mentioned in the (draft) instructions. Make sure you leave at least 1mm free space at the trailing end otherwise the aileron envelope can't be closed neatly.
Further, I didn't cut out the slots for the ribs. Instead, I cut off the notches on the ribs and glued them straight on the base plate. That's a lot easier and leaves the entire structure stronger. Hopefully can be incorporated in the final design of the model, I'll check with Cor.

There are 20 ribs as part of the internal structure (!) and once the envelope is closed at the trailing end and the glue dried, you can press the paper carefully on the ribs' edges to get a nice "canvas look".

The right aileron is still to follow - this one got screwed up in the trial-and-error process to make the internal structure properly fitting.

Erik

[Don Boose]

Your usual clean, precise work on the control surfaces.

It's always a great pleasure to see you build a model.

Don