Bleriot XI - heavily modified! - Page 6

**Leif Ohlsson** · #51 03-11-2014, 03:31 PM

Very nice little Anzani engine. As a spectator, one realizes that you really love what you're doing - and rightly so!

- L.

**altbob** · #52 03-12-2014, 08:58 AM

Thanks, I am certainly learning a lot from each step of this process. I finally got all the pieces together (photo attached!) and I'm pretty happy with the way the Anzani engine looks. I can't wait to get a prop on that shaft, but that will probably be the very last thing I do.

So before I can go further I need to edit the Fiddler's Green plans to delete the "Egregious dotted lines" that appear all over the covering and will ruin the look of the finished model. I circled and labelled the lines in question in the attached image so you can see what I mean.

**jagolden01** · #53 03-12-2014, 09:03 AM

Looks so good! Am really enjoying your work on this.

Yes, they probably could have done something different to indicate the fold, maybe a soft shadow line with fold lines indicated outside the art area.

Joe

**Leif Ohlsson** · #54 03-12-2014, 09:17 AM

Oh, nice fuel tank! Haven't noticed that before, really. - L.

**altbob** · #55 03-13-2014, 01:04 PM

Glad you like what you see! Yes, the fuel tank looks very authentic once painted, I think. I mixed some gold into the brass paint and gave the whole thing a brown ink wash to bring out the texture detail of the gas cap.

Moving on, I had a new covering painted in Photoshop but it printed about 2mm too small, so I need to do that over again. Meanwhile I was able to remove part of the old covering which you can see below...a somewhat messy process, but I well worth it in the end to get rid of those "egregious dotted lines" and other imperfections, such as stray glue and paint from all the design changes and rebuilds this model has already gone through since I started.

Also decided to put the engine mount diagonal supports on now as I don't think they will get in the way of the new covering on the underside and this adds a bit of strength to avoid accidentally breaking the mount off while doing the covering and next, the landing gear.

**altbob** · #56 03-23-2014, 09:41 PM

Getting this tread moving again after a pause in construction for real life concerns.

I went ahead a re-drew the fuselage cockpit coverings without the dashed lines and actually flipped the sides on the computer so that it would be a solid piece, wrapping around both sides from the bottom (the Fiddler's Green kit has a top portion, and so there was seam on a bottom corner).

I printed and cut out my work and did a test fit, making notes on it that I could follow when printing and second covering and cutting and folding it to fit perfectly. The fuselage cockpit is now re-wrapped with a nice new covering with no seams, dotted lines or stray glue or paint from the rather messy design-built process that got me to this point.

Here are some W.I.P. photos (sorry if they are a little blurry, but I was taking with my camera phone them one handed while working!)

**Leif Ohlsson** · #57 03-24-2014, 04:16 AM

Good to see you are persevering with your project! - L.

**altbob** · #58 03-24-2014, 11:42 AM

Thanks for the continued support Lief! In case anyone else has a similar masochistic urge to build this kit in the modified way I am building it, I am including the reworked cockpit covering that I drew. As you can see, the sides were flipped and the dashed lines were eliminated. The end result is very smooth and I'll post some new WIP photos soon, as I move on to the landing gear.

Anyone have a top where I can find a nice 1/2" spoked wheel? I made some decent hubs out of cardstock, but I need the spokes...

**altbob** · #59 11-03-2014, 09:23 AM

Hey guys, it's been a rather crazy year for me, badly breaking my ankle in January, demolishing a house to make room for a new self-designed cutting edge solar and geothermal Energystar "Zero E" house, managing the construction of that house (never again...) and now moving into it and combining two households worth of stuff. All of my models, except for a few in my office, are still in storage and what little time I had for scratching my aeronautical itch went into building/repairing and flying RC models over the summer.

Now that I'm finally in the new house and slowly turning it into a home, and having been inspired by Texman's awesome Fokker E.v cutaway, I've managed to set aside a little coffee table space to get back into this Bleriot project that I started back in January, 10 months ago, and havn't touched since March

So, picking up where I left off, I was trying (unsuccessfully) to make some spoked wheels for the Bleriot. I finally pushed that forward now, using a combination of a jig incorporating some plastic from a milk container (I found cardboard was just too flimsy) and using my panavise - honestly until I brought out the vise I was ready to lose my mind with my chubby, arthritic fingers and that unwieldy monofilament!

Here are some in-progress photos. Still a lot to do on this, but I dare say the worst of it (the first wheel, anyway) is behind me for now.

**Texman** · #60 11-03-2014, 09:37 AM

Yes, those first spokes are the beasties! I spent well over 3 hrs trying to get it started.
Good news, the worst of that wheel is done! The panavise, what a great idea to use
that in this instance. Wish I would have had that!

Best of luck!