Gordon McConnell

Wing sections joined together with epoxy.

Not too much progress over the last few weeks. I have joined the outer wings to the centre section as per the plan sing the dihedral braces. I did find that the angle cut on the foam outer wing panels gives more dihedral angle than the full size. I think it is around double. However, rather than correct it, I have left is as is. It’s not really noticeable and will contribute more roll stability. I marked out the slots for the wing joiners on each section to ensure they were lined up correctly and then cut the slots with a thin bladed pull saw. It was much easier to do than anticipated. 🙂 I used 60min epoxy to join the panels together.

Just to add my two pence worth to the statistics for the FW 190. Fuselage 1140g (including 120g lead balance in the nose which likely can be reduced a little bit) Wing 500g (no retracts) Battery 4S 3350mAh 300g Total 1940g No special measures were taken in the build to save weight. The model flies wonderfully well at this weight. I have the retracts to fit but not a priority at the moment. 😃😃

Murat, Looks great and very realistic. Excellent model making.

You are welcome. Good to see that there is another one out there yet to be built. 😄

Jon, Thanks very much for the photo of the LG installation. It’s very neat and I will follow your method. It helps a lot to see how others have done it. Your completed model looks excellent and the flying shots are very realistic. I hope mine will look as good!

Eric, Thanks for the confirmation. The retracts are big and clearly could not be mounted in the centre wing. But I was still a bit concerned and the confirmation from someone who has built it is reassuring! 😃

I was thinking about starting the wing now. I had a look at the retracts and I had me realised that these have to be mounted in the outer wing panels due to there length. See photo. Is that the case? They are beefy units!! I will have to leave that step until the outer wings are joined to the centre section.

Aha! A cunning solution! I had not thought of fixing the canopy open. I will give it some thought. Looking at the photo, it shows what could be some armour plate behind the pilot. which also gets near to sealing of the aft part of the canopy from the cockpit. I will likely replicate that on the mode. You are correct saying that the canopy needs to move forward by say 1/4 inch. However, I am stuck at the forward windscreen intersection with the coaming which is right on the battery hatch aft edge. I think its too much work to rebuild all the front fuselage so I will leave it as is for now. I will paint up the (already terrified) pilot and sort out the rest of the cockpit. I think it will look fine when finished. Thanks again for the welcome advice.

Thanks Richard. That is a great help as I could not find a detailed picture on the internet. The step at the rear of the canopy must have created some unwelcome drag! Perhaps it helped the cockpit ventilation.😊😊

In the last two years, I have built the Warbird Replicas P51 Mustang and FW 190 kits produced by Richard Wells. They are great to build and fly very well indeed. Thanks to Richard, I purchased his last Hawker Hurricane kit and have started to build it in the last quarter of last year. You will already note that I am a slow builder! I will add description and photos as I progress. There is a build topic already posted some years ago on this forum by several contributors which gives lots of information. https://forums.modelflying.co.uk/index.php?/topic/37723-who-wants-a-warbird-replics-hurricane/&tab=comments#comment-657939 However, I thought I would post some pictures of my build although I understand that there are unlikely to be any more Hurricane kits produced by Richard. It may generate some useful comments and discussion in the Warbird Replicas community. It was originally designed for IC power but I will be converting it to electric power using an PropDrive 5050 580kV motor. The Hurricane kit came with a brief set of instructions (without photographs), a parts list and a full-size plan, all packed in a substantial cardboard box. Retractable landing gear and wheels are an optional extra. The quality of the laser cutting and other parts is excellent. The fuselage is built around a central box structure with a plywood top spine and plywood reinforced balsa side panels. After gluing the ply reinforcements of the side panels, the box can start to be assembled. I remembered to create two handed side panels – made that mistake before. I assembled the fuselage box in my build jig, however I think this is not really necessary as the laser cut formers provide support to keep it all square. Next task was to figure out how to mount the motor and create a battery tray. I enlarged the cut-out in the top crutch, underneath the removable hatch. This was necessary to allow the battery to slide into the tray from the top. The tray is mocked up here in cardboard. I added an additional former to support the battery tray between the fuselage sides at the front. Normally, the IC engine mount plate is fitted here. The finished battery tray with the kit IC motor mount glued on the front to mount the electric motor. The motor was mounted and battery tray temporarily installed. Following advice from Richard, I have made allowance to move the prop plane forward by approx. 12.5mm to help achieve an optimum forward C of G, hopefully without lead weights. This movement can be achieved within the tolerances of the cowl, repositioning the top cover access hatch and the final fixing of the battery tray. View showing the front and rear top front fuselage formers and the removable battery hatch. Next on the list was to add the leading and trailing edge to the centre wing box. I attached the LE with Gorilla Foaming Glue. It fills up any spaces between the LE and the foam. Trailing edge was added and the LE shaped I opted to reinforce the wing dowel installation by embedding a wooden block into the wing. I will put some epoxy and glass over it later to reinforce the joint. I added a reinforcing plate to Former #1 as it seemed a bit flimsy and drilled through for the wing dowel, taking care to carefully align the wing centre section. The rear TE fairing was attached to the fuselage ensuring that the centre wing was square with the fuselage. The bottom ½ in square longerons could then be added to the fuselage sides after fitting the rear formers in the box. Need plenty of clamps for this bit! The longerons need planed and sanded to shape to give a smooth transition from the fuselage side to the bottom. A fixed tailwheel leg was added to the rear former and bound with tread and epoxy before installation in the rear fuselage. I don’t taxy back on the clubs runway and I found that on the P51, the fixed tailwheel helped keep model on track during T/O and landing. I decided to move away from the fuselage for a change of scene and started on the vertical and horizontal tail. I chose to save some weight on the tailplane by cutting out the basic plank between rib positions and capped the ‘ribs’ with 1/16 inch square strips. It should add some scale detail although not much weight saved! I added balsa strips to simulate the ribs on the surfaces which should look good once covered. Back to the fuselage, I added a servo mounting plate in the fuselage just behind the wing LE. The snake is for the elevator control and the rudder is closed loop. With the controls runs figured out and the elevator snake and rudder wire exits installed, I could then sheet over the bottom rear fuselage. Next it was back the front fuselage to build the side sheeting and the cockpit sides. Also, the rear of the cockpit (veneered foam) and the foam rear deck were fixed in place with PVA. The cockpit will need more detailing later. I trial fitted the canopy on the fuselage and trimmed the cockpit sides to suit. There is a gap at the rear edge between the canopy and the rear cockpit veneered foam moulding. I will have to figure out how the deal with that later. Any ideas welcome! The wing to fuselage fairing is fixed to the fuselage. In the middle section, it is made from ½ inch triangular section with saw cuts to help shape it to the wing profile. At the aft end, there is a 1/8 inch ply profile supplied to support the aft fairing. I thought the ply was too thick so I remade the part in 1/32 inch ply and glued it the fuselage. I had made some cutouts in the fuselage sides to save weight although I had to cover the cut-outs to be able to apply the dummy stringers on top. The rear fuselage on the real Hurricane is fabric covered over the metal frames and stringers. 1/16 inch square strip is provided in the kit to simulate the stringers and these are glued onto the foam upper and balsa sides. It does not take long to do it and it should look good when covered. I am going to try Oratex for the first time as the covering material.

Looks great Eric against the blue sky. Take it the temperature was not Baltic where you are! 😄

Looks great Eric. Well done to be the first of the new batch!

No problem Richard. Still working on the Hurricane!! I can wait until last. Gordon