David P Williams

Posted by Adrian Smith 1 on 13/01/2021 16:20:55: Livened up my day I can tell you!     The Chinooks come by my house a bit lower than that, they're often behind the house over the road. We get Hercules about the height of that Apache, usually in twos and often around 11pm in the pitch black. Hope their night vision goggles are good, sound like they're going to take the roof off. When I was doing my flying training with the Royal Navy Elementary Flying Training Squadron from RAF Leeming and RAF Topcliffe in 1978 we used the low flying areas to the west (around Wenslydale) and the east (North York Moors). I was learning in Bulldogs and we were allowed down to 250ft agl with an instructor, or 500ft agl solo, all judged by eye of course as we would be flying down in valleys or up over the hill to the next valley. Radio calls were made on entering the area and on leaving, but often no radio signal while we were in there and no radar cover. We could usually hear other aircraft calling entering or leaving as they descended into or climbed out of the area and there would often be quite a mix of aircraft, including USAF and occasional German and other European ones. Consequently you had to have your eyes on stalks and your head on a swivel as you were pitoting the aircraft and at the same time trying to calculate a heading and time of arrival at the target your instructor had just ringed on the half mil chart you were clutching (it was usually a telephone box - a 'T' and a dot on the chart). All done at a fairly sedate 110 knots or so, bit still pretty hard, sweaty work, lots of use of 'five mile thumbs' and the 1 in 60 rule. I had two close encounters. The first was when flying down a valley with my instructor, 250ft, hills either side a fair bit higher than us. another valley intersected from the right and as we approached the intersection a Vulcan appeared from the other valley, same height as us, and passed across our nose probably half a mile ahead. The second was while flying solo, so 500ft, on a cross-country navex, again following a valley. A pair of Buccaneers appeared from under the nose, flying down the same valley, having flown underneath me. Both events got my attention pretty quickly.   Edited By David P Williams on 14/01/2021 14:13:50

Thanks for that Bert. I wasn't actually asking how to do it, I'm aware of the various methods and have used some of them in the past as seen on my Chipmunk - I was just musing on the vast mileage of tape on the Stearman, the faff and cost of doing it and the weight added - it's almost like covering it one and a half times.

I'm building a 1/4 scale Boeing Stearman, detailed on another thread. I'm probably going to finish it as a US Navy N2S-3, most of these built between 1942 and 1943. I've worked on and flown in several full size Stearmans, including recovering one of them. They had all been recovered in recent years though, using modern Ceconite and modern pinked tapes. I've read that pinked rib tapes were introduced around 1935 - is that true? If so, would an original US Navy Stearman have had pinked or torn rib tapes?

Plenty of time to decide on rib tapes etc. Top surfaces only is definitely an option. Fourth wing panel is coming along nicely.......

Thanks chaps, great encouragement, really itching to crack on with this now. Finishing the last of SWMBO's "little jobs" this weekend, so in the workshop first thing Monday. I've also found my hoarded stash of Solartex - 10m of Natural and 10m of white. Flair reckon 10m for the wings and 2m for the fuselage if you're careful. I've used Mick Reeves precut rib tapes on previous models, so I calculated the total length of rib tape needed if I do it all including the fuselage stringers. Gulp. About £120, and quite a bit of weight. Time for a rethink maybe.

Wow - over 6 months since I last posted on this thread. Various family issues, including my wife having a stroke last September (now 95% recovered), house maintenance, and building my artist wife a new studio in the garden meant that I had very little time in the workshop. I have managed to finish the tail components and build three of the four wing panels. I just need to finish the fourth and then the centre section, and almost all of the woodwork will be complete. I should be able to get some uninterrupted workshop time over the next few weeks, so hope to make some significant progress. I'd like to get it ready for painting for when the weather improves and I can set up my outdoor spray booth (cheap Ebay 3m square gazebo). Some pictures of where I'm at - Tail slotted together to check fits - nothing glued yet of course. All pretty straightforward. There was a fair bit more headscratching over the wings. Flair published a set of notes on their website correcting some errors with the early batch of kits (of which this is one), including the fact that the printed plans are undersize by up to 25mm in some places. The notes say to go with the precut parts where you can and where you can't things will be around 1.5% undersize. Well, we don't want that do we? Lots of measuring and scaling from precut parts to the plan indicated that the plans were OK across the width but were indeed a fair way out on the length. I had already recalculated and redrawn the positions of the formers when I built the fuselage, so now I had to do the same for the rib positions and spar lengths etc. All part of the fun. The leading edges are 1/2 inch balsa dowel with 1/16 balsa wrapped round. With the soft sheet supplied and lots of soaking this worked better than I feared. The ailerons feature inset hinges made from CNC cut Tufnol or Paxolin, with a 1/64 ply leading edge. Upper and lower views of mostly complete lower wing panel, still lots of sanding to do. Finally, the obligatory trial fit of the lower wings. Yes I was watching the cricket at the same time. I've now got a Sky Q mini box in there so even better You will also see that the window is open and a fan in front of it as I've finally started to get sensitive to CA fumes. More progress soon I hope.

Another silent watcher here too David. My next project when (if) the current one is off the bench is another biplane twin, a 1/6 DH89a Dragon Rapide, which is also an older, overengineered, one piece (96" wing plan, so I'm particularly interested in how your split detachable wing solution works out. The Rapide wing is really thin, only 15mm or so, so joiner arrangement will be 'interesting'.

Maxford USA used to do an ARTF AN-2, 63" span I think. I had one, with a 52fs in it. Huge side area, so cross winds were interesting, but great fun. I sold it to a fellow forumite a couple of years ago. Long discontinued I should think, but there may be the odd one still knocking about.

...and someone (not me!) is selling a couple of these busts on the BMFA site at the moment....

Posted by Martin McIntosh on 09/11/2020 16:16:12 Question. Anybody know where I can get a suitable 1:5 pilot other than having one made? I have looked everywhere I can think of. I only had a half depth cockpit in my 1/5 Chipmunk, and used one of the JP latex waist-up busts, can't remember if it was the "Civilian" or "Sportsman", but probably Civilian. Bought an Action Man helmet off Ebay that fitted perfectly, made a visor and boom mike and painted it all up in military rig, it looked OK.

Hi Jon - I've retrieved the TopFlite P51 plan from the loft. Do these pics help? Let me know if you need any other pics or dimensions.