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Old 09-03-2022, 02:37 PM
Siwi Siwi is offline
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Fairey Fulmar- 1/72

I started this plane a week ago but didn't post a build log until now due to the forum issues.


I became aware of the Fulmar earlier this year whilst reading a book about the raid on Taranto in 1940, where an audacious action by the celebrated Swordfish biplanes sunk a number of Italian capital ships in harbour and significantly aided the British campaign in the Mediterranean. Whilst the Swordfish is rightly famous the fighters based on the aircraft carriers such as Illustrious are not. These were in the early war the Blackburn Skua (an outdated, mis-shapen design with inadequate performance) and the Fairey Fulmar (which also lacked the performance of landplanes but was more modern and well armed). Both actually did a reasonably good job of protecting the fleet from attacks, chasing enemy reconnaisance and serving as reconnaisance platforms themselves.


In any case, I rather like this aircraft, an opinion shared by most of its pilots who found it easy to fly. The Fulmar had the Merlin engine and the eight guns of the Spitfire but there the similarity ends. Due to the considerations of carrier operations in the middle of the sea, it was deemed neccesary for 'fighters' to carry a navigator and radio operator in the back, plus a lot more fuel, which meant that the aircraft was less a light, nimble interceptor and more the size of a light bomber. In fact the Fulmar was actually derived from the same plan as the Fairey Battle. It was around 100mph slower than a Spitfire but carried three times the ammunition, and in reality never really had to face any potent opposition such as Bf109s given the theatre it was operating in. The Fulmar was more than up to the job of shooting down Ju88s, Stukas, Cantieri and Savoia-Marchetti reconnaisance planes and seaplanes that might attack the fleet.


The Fulmar is not particularly well represented either in paper or plastic, and the only kit available was a S&P, which was available in repaints by Gerry and Brent. I went for the Gerry repaint as it was in my preferred 1/72 - I never know if 1/100 will be practical to enlarge due to page layout. This is a Mk1 from 1941, based on HMS Ark Royal.
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Old 09-03-2022, 02:49 PM
Siwi Siwi is offline
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Obviously I was never going to build the (fairly simple) kit 'out of the box' and got to work modifying it. As a minimum I always make transparent canopies, a basic cockpit and recessed landing gear wells. On this build I will also use my improved spinner 'sandwich' technique and attempt a working wing fold.


The tail section was first. I backed the printed layer with an inner layer to strengthen and serve as a glue tab, and scored the panel lines. I also tried out a new idea for tailplane spars, having two sides of my favourite material, mount board, that slot together and keep the stabilisers aligned and firmly in place. A similar technique was used for the rudder.


The navigator's position has an entensive 'greenhouse' with a sliding hatch in the centre. Again, the piece was backed with an inner layer. It's important to glue this with the part shaped, so I had to glue in stages, adding the centre and then cutting out all 27 windows before gluing the sides. The hatch part was seperated, and edges were attached so that it could be re-attached as a recessed section. The glazing is thin and very flexible acetate which conforms nicely to curved surfaces and is a good scale thickness (you will have seen this on the Hellcat, MiG and London). Double-sided tape was used over as many surfaces as practical to hold the clear canopy in place.



After this, the nose, which was largely out of the box apart from reinforcing the front circle and gluing a toothpick section to recieve the spinner.
Attached Thumbnails
Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220828_111643.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220829_152404.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220829_152422.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220829_152656.jpg  
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Old 09-03-2022, 03:32 PM
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Don Boose Don Boose is offline
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Good beginning!

The Fulmar is one of my favorite airplanes (I have an odd likely for airplanes with a less than stellar reputation but goof aesthetics). I'll be watching your build closely.

Don
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Old 09-03-2022, 05:09 PM
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Rata Rata is offline
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I'm with Don with a fondness for the Fulmar. Little celebrated today it saw a lot of service, equipping a score of Royal Navy squadrons serving aboard 13 carriers.
Best of luck with it Siwi.
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Old 09-04-2022, 03:25 AM
rifleman rifleman is offline
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good to see a fulmar being built great build
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Old 09-04-2022, 04:57 AM
Siwi Siwi is offline
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Don, did you mean to type 'goof' or 'good'?



A bit on the spinner and propellor technique I'm trying here. The upside of inline engines is not needing to build 9,18 or more cylinders and all the attendant rods, fins and fuel lines, but the compound curved dome of the spinner can be a headache for the designer and the builder (as can a nose without an engine). In 72nd scale the usual solution of cylinder sections has the potential for a great deal of frustration and an untidy result when dealing with tiny parts, tiny glue tabs and a fragile construction. I had some success using blu-tack as internal filler on the spinners from RR Trents on a 1/120 Airbus, but even that presents the fiddly task of getting tiny paper sections to stick exactly, and they are heavy.


So, I hit upon making a 'sandwich' of mount board (did I mention it's my favourite material, 'wunderstoff'?) which can be sanded and shaped as needed. I tried this on a recent Spitfire and got a good result, although needed a better way to attach the propellor blades firmly. Another nice feature is that the propellor can be made to spin. The first step is making a hole in the board, and then cutting around it to get the correct diameter of the back of the spinner. Typically I cut it a bit wider by eyeballing, and then place it on the nose 'drive shaft' of the model, and draw the circle using a propelling pencil with a thin lead, then use the knife to cut this more precisely, sand the edges and repeat. The 'sandwich' is then built up using as many layers as needed to make the spinner the right length. Getting the correct curve is a mixture of laying it on plans/photos of the real thing and just eyeballing. On the second layer I marked and cut three slots to accept the actual propellor blades.


Once all done the mounts of the blades are carved from cocktail sticks and test fitted. The whole assembly is given liberal amounts of glue, and will recieve multiple layers of paint and varnish with sanding in between to get as even a surface as possible. Panal lines are scored if required.



Two little things I learned about real aircraft from this: the angle of the drive shaft and the spinner/prop is almost always tilted down slightly from 'straight and level' as the AH would show. This is because tilting the thrust angle in this way natually helps the aircraft fly at the optimum angle of attack for cruise. The second is just how much variation there is in the shape of spinners even amongst aircraft that have the same engine. The Fulmar's is more stubby than a Spitfire or Hurricane but smaller than a Mosquito, all with the same Merlin.
Attached Thumbnails
Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220826_110203.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220904_112730.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220904_112751.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220904_112818.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220904_112834.jpg  

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Old 09-04-2022, 06:38 AM
Don Boose's Avatar
Don Boose Don Boose is offline
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Although I have been known to commit embarrassing typos (ask Texman), in this case, definitely good.

I enjoyed your tutorial on fabricating spinners from mount board. That smooth spinner on your model of Squadron Leader Hugo Throssell Armstrong's 611 Squadron Spitfire Mk. IX BS435 is proof of the technique.

Don
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Old 09-04-2022, 06:46 AM
Siwi Siwi is offline
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Well, I'm impressed by your Spit knowledge - I didn't actually research the airframe, just recognised it had been used as the paint scheme on a still-flying Mk.IX.
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Old 09-04-2022, 09:40 AM
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Butelczynski Butelczynski is offline
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I'm keeping an eye on this thread because one of my possible next projects involves Fairey Fulmar. Carry on
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Old 09-04-2022, 12:53 PM
Siwi Siwi is offline
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Thank you. This post brings the buildlog up to date with this weekend's work.

Folding wings were a necessity on the modern carriers introduced at the start of WW2 such as Illustrious and Ark Royal, as these vessels were designed with lifts to move the aircraft between the flight deck and armoured hangers on the lower decks (older carriers were converted cruisers or merchant ships). The Swordfish had a simple pair of aligned hinges on the wings that could be released with an external lever, but the retractable landing gear of the Fulmar made it impossible to hinge the whole wing at a point that made the aircraft sufficiently narrow. Fairey therefore used a mechanism which first hinged the inboard trailing edge up and forward to allow space for the wing to swing backwards, whilst somehow still allowing the flaps to function. Later designs such as the Sea Fury and Bearcat had powered upwards-folding wings, whilst the Wildcat and Hellcat had more complex angled hinges.

Obviously, I had to make this. The first part of the process was cutting the wing into outboard, inboard and flap, then cutting out and making the landing gear wells, and trying to persuade the wing skin to make the right curve over them. The wingtip sees another new technique - trimming a thin piece of mount board as an internal former over which the burnished skin could be glued. The nav lights will be filled using tinted varnish later on. After that - the guesswork about wing thickness and chord began. I have some blueprints for the Fulmar but by the time one has factored in the thickness of the paper skin, any simplificiations made by the designer and the internal walls not being perpendicular to the fuse, they're of limited help. I proceeded by trimming mount board to an approximate shape and adding layers until everything looked like it matched. Of course, the wing chord has to match either side of the join too...


The hinge is a simple loop of substantially reinforced card layers, which will turn around a stub of cocktail stick as the pin. I want to add some kind of peg and hole so that the whole weight of the outer wing isn't resting on this when in either stowed or flight position.


At the moment the wing roots are attached to the fuselage and just need some firmer attachment to the spar to maintain the dihedral and take the weight when sitting on the landing gear. I am increasingly thinking about going over the entire model with paint, so any gaps can be filled with varnish or 'paper sprue glue' before this stage. The repainter has done a good job, but all the colours need to be desaurated and lightened for the scale and there are numerous parts of my scratchbuilt sections that are going to have to match up.
Attached Thumbnails
Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220831_093036.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220831_104331.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220831_104858.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220904_190957.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220904_191034.jpg  

Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220904_191204.jpg   Fairey Fulmar- 1/72-img_20220904_191251.jpg  
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