Inspired by A2A Piper Cherokee

[heywooood]

ghost in the machine..

 

[heywooood]

and a little paint...needs a dullcoat

 

[Daveroo]

once again,AWESOME

 

[heywooood]

Thanks, Dave
So I took a break from balsa the other day, just to switch things up a bit.
This is a 1940 Willy's coupe - a Gasser.. from the same era as the P40 so I guess it's sort of 'on topic' maybe

 

[heywooood]

the body is painted Tamiya 'Racing White' and the interior is a combination of that and Testors 'Competition Orange'

I always like the look of this car and now I know why...it looks like a cousin of the Curtiss P-40

 

[Daveroo]

hats pretty nice,i bought a dremel 3D printer,working on the CAD now.and my drawings for the truck bed are about done as well.should start building soon.

 

[heywooood]

I AM still working on the P-40 (wing) and plan to make the gear retractable - but these gassers are a fun distraction

 

[heywooood]

ok - there's sidetracked..and then there's SIDETRACKED...

The Holidays are approaching and I have been bitten by this model car thing - then I was browsing around on the Tamiya USA website and I saw something I had last seen in the mid '80's when I was working for a small graphic arts studio.
A couple of the guys had brought one of these RC Beetles in one day - Fridays were very light and loose and the boss man was a youngish feller himself and would allow for a bit of random fun so - they ran this thing all over the floor after clearing an area for it and it
was pretty cool.

Apparently Tamiya has reissued it as a kit..so naturally - I bought it. It's like a 50,000pc puzzle..that goes like a bat outta hell
It was lots of fun to build - and in the dirt lot next to my house - a lot of fun to run

 

[Daveroo]

thats pretty cool,i had the old teymia frog,hated its looks but it was alot of fun,im still building a taymia cascadia truck,and i have all the parts,except the motor,controller and a few other electronics,to build a 1/10th jeep rubicon.solid plastic body rather than lexan.all custom chasis and parts..well after market anyway..lol.

 

[heywooood]

a new distraction..

 

[heywooood]

after a brief 6 month hiatus I am back on task, refocused on getting a decent P40n built up and displayed..somewhere

I am going for manually retractable landing gear..not sure how I'm going to make the doors work but hey, we'll jump off that bridge when we get to her

 

[heywooood]

some more progress - please excuse the mess.
also - one of the things I'm not very good at is documenting as I work..I had meant to take pictures of the work I did on the belly pan but became a little absorbed and forgot to do that..

so here you see the belly pan being attached, as well as the before and after showing the wing fillet

 

[heywooood]

landing gear should work..here it is retracted

the gear fairings and 'knees' were difficult to fit but eventually we got somewhere..I used 1/32" thick balsa sheet material at the leading edges and essentially mounted the under wing portion 'flat' using the balsa at the wing leading edge to fill the gap
between lower and upper halves of the knee
..seems to have solved the problem of poor fit related to the variable from one builder to another that Guillow prefab parts are tied to.

 

[heywooood]

prop blades...

I use balsa strip material - typically 1/4" thick x 1/2 wide
only the outline of the blade is carved - the rest of the shaping is done with sandpaper and a small wooden block for the faces of the blades, and a section of 3/4" wood dowel wrapped with sandpaper
for the backs of the blades, sanded along the vertical axis - to get the concave shape.

the faces are sanded at a slight angle to achieve a discernible leading and trailing edge - and then rounded and tapered toward the tips. Then the backs are scalloped out using the dowel instead of the block.
It's a process but it works - then the proper incidence is obtained as each blade is installed to the hub.

this image shows how the wing is attached, then the balsa fillets (for and aft) are installed along with the wing root reinforcement (1/8" square balsa strip) as an anchor for the
spackle used to make the fillet.
Sherwin Williams shrink-free product is used.. the balsa strip also blocks the spackle from squeezing into the fuselage cavity and hardening into pellets - we aren't making baby rattles here

 

[heywooood]

some paint applied..

 

[heywooood]

test fitting the LG...I made the wheel covers from 1/64"thick bitch ply laminated with 1/16" thick sheet balsa.

I'll need to use filler and sand them down to remove the wood grain - also to be sure they don't keep the gear from retracting fully into the wheel wells

 

[heywooood]

Yeah - what kind of ply..?
birch ply

 

[heywooood]

inching closer to completion. I'm still working on the LG doors and need to attach the prop blades to the hub. They are done, just need to be glued into place.

 

[heywooood]

cleaned up my bench finally - such a damn mess..

The LG doors are on and the rest is history..

 

[heywooood]

couple few last images..