A Quarter Scale Hurricane Build

[kenking-King Design]

Following my thread on making 'A ¼ scale tailwheel for a LARGE Hurricane' several people asked for information and some views of the model for which it is intended. I promised to ask my client, Paul Jarrett, for permission to run a build blog on his behalf, and he has kindly agreed to let me do so. Now, thanks to Paul, we can all share in the excitement of seeing this big model come together, but it is important that first I give you the background to the story.

Paul's motivation to build this model came over ten years ago when he read an article about the desert 'tank buster' Hurricanes, and the extreme dangers faced by the heroic pilots of No. 6 Squadron as they made their attacks from an altitude of only twelve feet ! Many of the pilots were lost in these actions. Paul wrote to the Squadron and they responded by sending him a disc containing the day to day records of their time in the desert. Paul chose one of their aircraft, Hurricane BP188, JV-Z as the subject for a ¼ scale non-flying model, which he built from blue foam and balsa. Paul says it was far from perfect, but it is now in the Newark Air Museum in Lincolnshire.

Paul wanted to build a flying model but by this time his health was deteriorating, he became unable to work, lost his job and so put the project on hold. He was diagnosed with terminal Pulmonary Fibrosis and was housebound, but his consultant, with great persistence and experiments in treatment regime, has almost halted progress of the disease, though Paul now has the equivalent of just one lung. He does, however, now feel well enough to resume the project.

Drawings were carefully prepared and sent to SLEC to have them laser cut the major components, whilst Paul selected systems, hardware, and the all-important engine. He has chosen a German product (I'm sure the irony has not escaped him), the Kolm 135 1L.

Initially the wrong engine was sent, and it was another two frustrating weeks before Paul had the correct one in his hands. As you can see, the wait was worthwhile and it looks like a work of art.

Slightly under-scale retracts, from Mick Reeves, were altered by Mick to bring them to ¼ size, and at about this time Paul saw one of my ads and contacted me to see if I would like to make a sprung tailwheel. I jumped at the chance, and for those who didn't follow my blog, here it is.

With the arrival of the parts from SLEC Paul has launched himself into the build and I am amazed at the progress he has made in a short time. I think it is a reflection of the care and though that he put into the design phase.

Tail surfaces are built on the central core and half-rib principal, with thin ply leading edges.

Temporarily assembled on the rear fuselage displays the unmistakable Hurricane characteristics.

The fuselage structure has been carefully though out, and it shows in the way things are going together.

Another view, and one can almost hear that engine roaring inside this cowl.

Paul has made a lovely job of the intake, as you can see, and has also been busy making up those deadly underwing cannon pods that wreaked such destruction.

I'm told that ten Savox servos will provide the muscles, powered by two 4,000 LiPo batteries. Paul will tell us more about his selected American rotary control, fully enclosed system in due course.

When he has finished framing up the fuselage he plans to tackle the wing centre-section, housing the retracts. Paul attributes the speed of build so far to his designed use of laser-cut parts, but says that it will become slower as 'fiddly bits and detail take a lot of time'. The model will be covered in part with fabric, and the rest in ProSkin from Mick Reeves. Personally, I can hardly wait to see the next instalment, and I'll put everything in the blog as soon as I have it.

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

that's some story Ken

Paul must be some fighter himself, and a very determined character

as you say the engine looks a work of art, as is the tailwheel.

from what I've seen of the build so far, looks like a work of art all round

I wish Paul well and shall enjoy following his build

[Tony Bennett]

fantastic and being a hurricane lover with a MR hurricane (also a tank buster version) under construction.

i will be watching with great interest.

[Martyn K]

Looks amazing, I'll enjoy following this one.. Good luck to Paul, hope his health holds out.

Martyn

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

Smashing stuff, thank Paul from all of us for letting you share this with us. Excellent - looking forward to seeing it develop.

BEB

[Colin Leighfield]

What a wonderful project and it's a MkIID! They reckon that their biggest problem was having to come in absolutely flat and straight at low level, giving the tank gunner time to line up his gun on the approaching Hurricane. As a result, the tank often won and the Hurricane was blown to smithereens, no chance for the pilot. Absolute heroes, to face up to that in battle every day through the desert campaign.

Good luck to you Paul, this is an inspiring project and a great memorial to those guys.

[Andrew Price 2]

Watching with interest.

[reg shaw]

A fantastic project, another Hurricane fan watching with interest. With your tailwheel, does Paul fancy letting you loose to copy these retracts? These are my set but you could borrow them to copy with pleasure!! It'll be a while til I get round to needing them!! They are scale in design, complete with the folding, sliding, twisting link back to the rear spar. Here they are just mounted in a jig to get the set up right. Not my doing, a great guy near Nottingham made these. He used to make them for the 88" DB Hurricane but I commissioned a set at 1/4. I have a set of the smaller ones too if they would be useful.

Cheers,

Ian.

[kenking-King Design]

Hello Reg Shaw who signs himself Ian, I've sent you a PM about the above, so it should be in your in-box.

Paul has now received the tailwheel and sounds quite pleased with it, which is very gratifying. He's putting a side access hatch in the vicinity of the cockpit for servo access, and has promised to report, with photos, when sufficient further progress has been made. Watch this space,

Ken.

[reg shaw]

Hi Ken, the guy that built my retracts is now retired and not doing any more machining work which is why I offered to let you look at these, otherwise I'd have offered details of where to get a set as they are truly fabulous creations. What drawings is Paul using for his build? Mine will be a mixture of the Rawle plan, which is basically a blown up Brian Taylor plan, combined with my own design ideas like a dowel fuselage skeleton to mimic the tubular fuselage of the full size.

Did Slec cut a full kit for Paul?

Ian Redshaw

[kenking-King Design]

blog cont'd.

Some more news today and a few pictures, but first, a correction. It's important to give credit where due, and Paul's just told me that Richard Rawle supplied the cowl and radiator scoop in the rough, and says they are very good scale items.

A removable hatch is being constructed in the port fuselage side, above the trailing edge, to give access to two servos, one for rudder, the other for elevator. Paul may site the power-box there too.

Batteries are going to live 'up front' , below the two 20 oz. fuel tanks (one for each carburettor) !! Now to answer some queries raised recently :-

Paul based his plans on scaled up drawings from 'The Hawker Hurricane: A Comprehensive Guide For The Modeller' by Richard A. Frankes. From this book came the fuselage former profiles, and the dimensions for the outer wing panels. Tail surfaces were scaled up to give full size dimensions then scaled back down to ¼ size.

The wing centre section is similar in design to the Mick Reeves model as it was the intention from the start to fit his retracts.

Chris at SLEC was very helpful in transferring Paul's designs to CAD and correcting the odd duff dimension or alignment problem after discussion with Paul. Slec cut light ply (or should that be Liteply ?) parts, for the front box section incorporating the firewall, fuselage formers, and most of the wing ribs.

Having sent Paul the tailwheel I was desperate to see it in position, and apparently Paul was too, as he tells me he dropped what he was doing, to make the mounting former.

He very soon had the unit clamped temporarily in place, at which point I suspect he rolled the tail around a bit, making taxiing noises. Well maybe he didn't, but I know I would have done. Problems with his computer delayed pictures, but finally these arrived.

I know the tailwheel's only a little part of a big aeroplane, but I can't help feeling chuffed. More later,

Ken.

[kenking-King Design]

cont'd.

Paul had been a bit quiet for some days, then suddenly hit me with a dozen and a half photos showing extensive building progress, so here we go.

Another two access hatches have been inserted, this time in the starboard fuselage side and more rearward locations.

The added stringers now define the fuselage contours beautifully and the to my mind this is when the model begins to gain real character and presence. Here's the port hatch again.

and here are the individual hatches. I don't yet know what Paul is installing behind the new ones, but we'll find out in due course.

Sorry the above pic appears twice; I must read up on how to remove such errors.

The hatches are in place but it's not clear how they will be retained or hinged.

Apparently about this time a touch of insomnia resulted in some of this construction taking place in the wee small hours, leading to the point where Paul could try mating the fuselage to the dry-built centre section. This brought good news and bad news, the good being that the structure proved to be absolutely square and true.

The bad news was the discovery of a major Oops in the centre section. See if you can spot it when I continue the blog shortly.

[reg shaw]

Its coming on a treat, I'm hoping the only ooops is the warp in the centre section and that its recoverable! Fingers crossed.

Ian.

[kenking-King Design]

cont'd

Warp ? What warp ? You seem to have seen something that Paul hasn't, Ian (nor have I, for that matter). Bear in mind that this is a dry assembly so clearances may come into play, but optical illusion should not be discounted either.

Any way, you get one more chance, so keep looking.

With the centre-section assembled it was inevitable that the wheels would be placed just so and admired for a while.

and then, of course, the retracts have to be played with too.

One of Mick Reeves units on its mounting plate, and very nice too. I'm looking forward to seeing how they operate so those linkages can be fully appreciated.

So, did you spot it ? If not, here's a close-up.

That's right, Paul forgot to draw in the rear spar cutouts for SLEC, so had to cut them himself. Not a big deal and quickly sorted. The assembly sits flat and warp-free, patiently waiting for glue and retracts, teasingly arranged in the second pic.

Finally, Paul included these two shots of some of the electronics, doubtless to eventually be found behind those hatches.

Well, not quite finally, because he also sent this photo of the three bladed prop, and if he didn't twirl it on a stick making Merlin noises I should be extremely surprised, and worried about his mental state.

Thanks Paul, for telling it as it is, we all await the next instalment with baited breath,

Regards to all,

Ken.

[reg shaw]

Looking good, I await the next installment too

The warp I see hopefully is just because its a dry assembly. You can see it in the head on shot you posted today, the stbd trailing edge is down compared to the port.

I'm sure its sorted

Ian.

[Tony Bennett]

looks blindingly fantastic sir.

one day. sigh.

[kenking-King Design]

I thought that was what you thought Ian, but in reality I think the trailing edge is just lost in some over-exposure or flare in that area whilst the other side is seen against a dark background, hence my reference to optical illusion. At this stage Paul was carefully checking alignments so I'm sure it's all O.K.,

Ken.

[Danny Fenton]

Enjoying the build Ken, thx for sharing. The hatches are all present on the full size, and to make them look right they are best made and covered before affixing to the model. You have to be careful here, many modellers have come unstuck as the covering pulls the edge of the hatch in and opens what was a perfect gap. I am sure Paul has it covered though.
Cheers
Danny

[kenking-King Design]

Cont'd

There's a lot to report as Paul has been showering me with photos, so I'll have to do it in batches.

First off, I showed the prop' recently and Paul has been busy sketching modifications needed to the spinner and backplate, which I hope to be able to carry out for him soon. In the meantime the prop' has been taped to the cowl whilst Paul works out dimensions and clearances. The prop is slightly over-scale, but size has been dictated to some extent by the characteristics of that Kolm engine.

Seen here perched somewhat precariously on the main U/C (yet to be properly set up), this view also contains a couple of intriguing extras, one above and one below the horizontal blade. Spotted them ?

The 'below' one is the array of port exhaust stubs, and they are worthy of a closer look.

Fabulously realistic or what ? Paul has moulded these hollow, lightweight items in fibreglass, and has detailed the process steps for the benefit of others attempting anything similar. Of course, there are many ways to skin a cat, but this method has certainly produced the goods.

The starting point was a photograph taken in Malta of a Hurricane manifold, backed up by measurements taken from various book illustrations. Paul then made a model of a stub in blue foam, checking dimensions as he went.

Attempting to cover this in resin resulted in some melting (a lesson learned) and so it was instead coated with filler which was then sanded down to the required shape and size.

The filler surface was given a thin gel coat of resin, and once fully cured this was rubbed down with wet and dry paper to a fine finish, providing a sacrificial plug from which to make a mould for repeat production. Here is the plug after serving its purpose.

To make the mould, the plug was coated in release agent, then a gel coat of resin to reproduce the fine surface finish. Then, allowing time for each stage to become tacky, four layers of woven cloth ( in small pieces) were laid on, and allowed to cure fully. A good dusting with talcum powder blinded any remaining surface tack, after which the whole assembly was sliced down the centreline on the bandsaw, and the plug halves were removed, leaving two half moulds.

From these moulds each stub was produced in two halves which, after trimming, were taped together and permanently joined by applying resin and small pieces of glass matting on the inside. Paul admits this was 'fiddly' but worth it in the end, and I have to agree. The outside seam on each stub was hidden by car body-filler, then rubbed down with wet and dry. The resulting hollow stubs are lightweight yet strong.

Paul is hoping the two front pairs of stubs will be effective in extracting heated air from within the cowl, and is going to experiment to see if the rear pair can be used as true exhaust outlets for the Kolm.

Returning to the other mystery extra in the first photo, which will be covered in the next session, a further clue if needed (though I'm sure not) is that it is green. More later,

Regards,

Ken.

[Colin Leighfield]

I have to say how much I continue to be stunned by the quality of craftmanship in this, it is a build of museum quality standard and way beyond anything I could do. What a pleasure to follow it though.

[karl grey]

Inspirational work so far. Will be watching this closely and can't wait for the next installment regarding the pilots seat ( i hope)

[kenking-King Design]

Cont'd.

Well Karl, you didn't have to wait too long, did you ? I have to say that when I first saw these photographs I was blown away by the intricacy and detail, and above all, the authentic appearance (to my untutored eye at least). I felt I could easily have been looking at pictures of a real aircraft restoration project, lurking in a hangar corner, collecting dust until man-hours and funding was available. Take a look at this !

On this side panel the white inscriptions are obviously hand done (no disrespect intended, Paul), but maybe Paul might ultimately replace them with simulated stencilled text, (if that is appropriate).

Don't you just love those button-down pockets, the shielded panel light, the miniature route cards etc etc. ?

Now this next photograph is going to send Karl into ecstasies, I just know it, so Karl, just take a quick glimpse, then rest, and repeat until stable, before taking a longer look.

Honestly, if it wasn'tt for the side cutters and hand file in the background this lot could have been cut from a written-off aircraft couldn't it ? Fantastic details, like the seat height adjusting lever, directional compass, and isn't that the fuel tank contents gauge down between the rudder pedals ? It's all further enhanced by the trailing cables and leads attached to various items.

The background to this little gem is that Paul built it ten years ago (now that's what I call forward planning) from a kit produced by Clark Industries, Ontario, Canada. Before you reach for your chequebooks I have to tell you it is no longer available, at least not for a while. The reason is that the owner, John Clark, is part-retiring and is selling off parts of the business complete with tooling, machinery and so on, including everything for his Spitfire and Tiger Moth kits' production . I recommend Googling the site. The good news is that his ¼ scale Hurricane kit production, with all this fabulous detail and more, has been sold to Authentic Scale Engines, and they are making some changes before offering it again. They also have some interesting developments of their own coming along, including a water-cooled gasoline version of the R-R Merlin. The mind boggles.

Returning to Paul's cockpit interior, now that Karl can handle it, here's another view revealing yet more detail such as the star-wheel rudder pedal adjustment, and what I think is the brake lever across the control column handgrip. Please don't hesitate to correct me if any of my interpretations are misguided, I'd much rather have errors put right here in the blog.

When this is installed in the fuselage it will be a wonderful enhancement of the model, well worthy of its inclusion as I'm sure you will all agree.

I leave you now with an underside view of the Volkes filter and radiator, and hope Paul will tell us more on their construction next time around,

Regards,

Ken.

[karl grey]

Wow, that looks truly amazing. ...................

Just had to look again whilst writing this...........

And again

[kenking-King Design]

To all those who have been wondering where this blog had gone, fulsome apologies. I went away for a couple of weeks with a blog backlog to catch up on, only to discover that at my new location I could not access my store of Paul's photos, and there were other computer related problems too, so no catch up. Since returning to home base things have been hectic and I still haven't made good the deficit, but I WILL, later this evening, with news on the cockpit installation and more good stuff. Watch this space ! (Just a little bit longer, Karl )

Additional news - I've just arranged to visit Paul early next week to talk over several jobs he may want me to tackle, and I expect to come away with loads more info. and pics for you.

[kenking-King Design]

I'm back, and it IS later, actually tomorrow morning, but I expect you've stayed up late in anticipation, haven't you ? No ? Well, anyway….

I mentioned the Vokes filter a while ago, and the housing is another item Paul has moulded in fibreglass, using the same procedure as for the exhaust stubs. Here's a shot of the foam former from which he produced a female mould, inside which he moulded the required item.

Of course, it's looking a bit the worse for wear now, having served its purpose and been dug out of the mould. The radiator housing, however, was purchased from Richard Rawl and really looks the part, fitted below the fuselage, seen in the next pic. Paul explained that he lined the moulding with a liteply box, sealed in with mastic to make it airtight. A central hole was cut for the oil cooler intake, made from a Tesco tomato puree tin, and this was given a protective mesh backed by silver painted plastic rod. Two more holes of 1 1/2" diameter were cut left and right of the oil cooler, and also fitted with mesh guards and supporting silver painted rods. Paul hopes to be able to duct air through this unit and direct it through 2" flexible ducting toward the rearmost cylinder of the engine. Ingenious fellow !