Airco Dh-2 1:24 Fiddler's Green

[jagolden01]

John, Peter, thanks! It has been a fun build. You can get lost thinking of little things to add!

John, it scaled up quite nice, I was very happy.
Tommorrow I'll get into the struts and mounting the upper wing.

[jagolden01]

Stiff, thin wire became my friend while building the FG Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 Helicopter.

I'd never built a bi-plane and had always been wary of the wing struts. After my V-8 moment with the helicopter blades, it was natural to use wire down the middle of the struts for strength and to keep then thin.
I cut and laid the wire pieces. They were tacked in place with CA glue. When I trimmed out the struts, I left extra at the ends. I bent an little angle in the end that was glued into the lower wing to give the glue more to grab on to.
By accident, I used all red/white striped struts - four of them should have been plain gray - oh well, looks nice. I heavily weathered them so they're not to bright.

When I built the upper and lower wings, I cut open the slots for the struts. Now a strut was glued into each slot in the bottom wing using white PVA glue. I worked slowly so I could get them as straight as possible.
After the glue had completely set, I test fitted the top wing in place. Overall, the immediate fit was great. My biggest concern was to be sure it was level and square. There were a few places where I had to trim the struts (I had left a little extra length for tis purpose). But it was very easy. When I was happy with the fit, the wing was glued in place one side at a time.
The last photos show it came out straight and level.

Not a lot of early planes had dihedral but this one did. That worked out fine to!

[Ron0909]

Absolutely perfect! Doesn't it feel good when all your preparation pays off with results like this? This is why I love biplanes so much. It just ain't done after the first set of wings are on Can't wait for the tail end to appear

Ron

[Bomarc]

Joe, I'm amazed at how well you're turning what's essentially a very basic Fiddlers Green model into a fine replica. Great craftsmanship with excellent results!

1/24th scale is my "happy" scale too, and I have a kit I sized up to that scale waiting to go (someday).

Mike

[peter taft]

Originally Posted by Bomarc

Joe, I'm amazed at how well you're turning what's essentially a very basic Fiddlers Green model into a fine replica. Great craftsmanship with excellent results!

1/24th scale is my "happy" scale too, and I have a kit I sized up to that scale waiting to go (someday).

Mike

I 2nd this.... Excellent job thus far

[jagolden01]

Deleted by JAGolden

[jagolden01]

Thanks everyone! This was my first serious build after a very long 2008 that really rattled me. Back on track now.

Next up is the fuselage frame. And I use the term fuselage loosely as it's just a frame all the way back to the tail surfaces.

I thought on this for a while. After looking at lots of photos it seemed that standard skewer sticks would be fine for the scale.

I printed out one of the pieces and used that as a template to mark the skewer sticks. Using a pin vise I drilled fine holes in the top and bottom positions being careful for them to line up.
Using the stiff wire again (from my old hobby shop - gone now:() I cut lengths that were al little longer than I needed. I used CA glue to secure in the holes of one of the skewers. Going back to the template I slid the other skewere down the wires until it was positioned properly and secured the wires with the CA glue. I had also carefully checked against the height of my wings. Since the wings would be a slightly different height because of the little adjustments to make them straight and even.

After both booms were constructed each wire was covered with the corresponding paper strut.

[jagolden01]

Before attaching the finished booms, I decided to do some of the rigging.
One, so I wouldn't break the delicate booms, ans second so I had space to work with my cucumber fingers!

On all the reference I found, the Dh-2 seems to have more rigging than a crane. It's freakin' everywhere! It was a very early war plane so I suppose it was needed to keep it together.

I've never done rigging so I did not want to get too fancy. Basically pulled taught and secured with a dot of CA. Worked good.

[Ron0909]

Joe, that's a great idea with the wire through the booms and then the covering. I'll have to remember that as I would have done it back asswards without thinking first Nice job on the rigging too!
This build is really coming along brilliantly

Ron

[jagolden01]

Yes, I' moving fast with the posting.
I'm leaving for 10 days this Saturday and won't be able to post until late the following week. Next week is vacation - week after is work catch-up.

Time to attach the completed booms.
I angle-trimmed the rear of the booms so they'd fit together better and hand drilled another little hole so I could pin it with the wire.

At the wings, I carefully removed a layer of the card so the booms would sit "down" a little. The fronts of the booms also had to be angle trimmed at a pretty sharp angle.

Using a professional jig of paint bottles, wire cutters, glue bottle scissors, etc. the booms were secured using the white Elmer's PVA glue.
Each boom was secured separately and the top and bottom were secured one at a time. Good results.

The rear of the booms was secured with a wire pin and CA and Elmer's glue.

Now, the model and the prototype call for the stabilizer to be secured just tot he two ends at the top of the booms. Not confident of that arrangement I glued a wood bar across the open space. Now I was happy!

Al of this model has gone together very well. This boom part which I'd expected to be difficult was not. I was able to work as fast as the glue would let me and the fit of the wood booms, using the printed one for reference, was superb.
The designer of this model did an excellent job with exacting measurements. Also, considering the scale up, the parts still fit great.

So, "thank you" to the designer!