Falcon 1/4 scale Tiger Moth

[Gary Binnie]

It will get painted anyway so the material isn't important. Thickness looks right, if my guess is right then scale thickness would be 1/32" or 0.8 mm.

Is there a matching fitting for the fuselage that this attaches to?

The Blue Angels with F-4Js were not exactly environmentally friendly! My local base was Upper Heyford, I was standing on a 45 gallon drum to see over the people and an F-101 Voodoo came from behind the crowd line, transonic at zero feet., ended up on the grass!! That was a while ago!

[Trevor Rushton]

Started on the second lower wing panel tonight and immediately realised that I had made an error in the port wing. I had searched for details of the taper for the front and rear spars at the tip, failed to find anything so assumed that they tapered top and bottom by an equal amount. However, the starboard Wing drawing shows the taper on the top side only. I will build it like that and adjust the other side. I do like to make things more difficult than they need to be. Moral: read the drawings properly!

[Trevor Rushton]

Gary, they don't do air shows like that any more! A good thing probably, but not quite the same somehow. Or am I just getting older?

[Trevor Rushton]

Wing tip re- made today, it took a bit of cutting out but with the help of some PU glue to make up for the inevitable gaps, the remedially worked well. I guess it would not have made very much difference, but might as well get it right.

port wing now back on track and starboard lower 50 % done.

some pics of the wing; currently weighs in at 222 grammes without the aileron, other parts are aileron 25g, rudder25 g fin, 32g elevators 27g horiz. Stab 44g

[Trevor Rushton]

Detail of lower port front wing fixing point; a Plywood "wrap around" is provided just like the full size; I have not added this yet.

[Trevor Rushton]

The reconstructed tip. The whole thing is very strong although I have added a 1/64 ply doubler to the joint butt joint between the aileron ft railing edge and the curved tip. Must me ember to add some lightness somewhere else.

[Trevor Rushton]

Here are the parts completed to date. Adding the riblets was very therapeutic!

[Trevor Rushton]

Photos from the iPhone keep turning upside down but you get the gist of it.

[cymaz]

Trevor, if you want some scale detail, then I came across this on eBay. It might help....

Here

[Trevor Rushton]

Thanks Cymaz

Looks like a good lot of stuff there. I will think about it.

Trevor

[Trevor Rushton]

Found this site containing some interesting photographs. The wing details show the compression struts replicated in the kit. I am enjoying the scale touches.

Cymaz I decided not to go for the eBay disk in the end; I have a good excuse to go back to the DH museum for some more research!

[Trevor Rushton]

And this site, pretty sobering.**LINK**

[PeterF]

Hi Trevor,

I bought this kit earlier in the year but have not yet started it as I still have stuff on the bench for another couple of months. You are ahead of me so I will keep a keen eye on your progress and hope you do not mind being a guinea pig.

I have bought the full kit (less wheels) as it appears you have with the Swiss flying wires, which are things of beauty and take all concerns about soldering skills out of the build. I have bought the wheels & tyres from Traplet from their Duncan Hutson Moth as these look to be very scale with the correct DUnlop name moulded in etc. I have got instrument panel kits from Mick Reeves as these look very good and also his screens as these seem more scale than the ones in the kit as well as some turnbuckles and a few other bits and pieces. I have bought quadrant controls and harnesses from aerocockpit. There is also a brand new Laser 150 waiting in the cupbaord along with a semi scale prop nut I bought off ebay.

I bought the disc with information / photos on from ebay linked to above, there are some nice photographs of lots of details but it is not a gamechanger in terms of the information available and is not a must have. I wanted to go to Woburn this year, I plan on modelling G-ADGV and that is usually there, but work is taking me away mid August.

I saw your thoughts about the aileron servos, I had planned on building somethign scale with the actuating disc as shown on several build logs for the Flair and Traplet Moths, however, it appears that the wings on those models are a lot thicker than scale and can accomodate a vertically oriented servo with a larger than normal disc. The Falcon Models Moth does not have enough room, I have wondered about putting in a bevel gearbox driven off a servo, there are a lot of robotics gear sets available that can be driven off standard RC servos, or trying to devise some form of linkage. It all seems to be too much trouble though and using the thin wing servos appears to be a good compromise.

I have seen two other build logs, one by Don Coe on RC Scale Builder, but this covers the fuselage only before he sold the kit on. Another on RC India, which again covers the fuselage only before the log (and the build ?) ran out of steam. I will probbaly do a build log as I work on mine, I have done with my most recent planes (on other forums).

RC Scalebuilder build log

RC India build log

Peter.

Edited By PeterF on 01/08/2014 12:00:31

[cymaz]

This looks like it will be a superb build...mug of tea ready, I'm in

[Trevor Rushton]

Hi Peter

i am delighted that you have decided to build one of these and I look forward to sharing experiences. Mine has been on the back burner for a few weeks whilst I sort out the results of an unplanned contact between my Calamoto and a bank of trees. It's flying again now but then I decided to treat myself to a Seagull PC9 for some quick gratification; that is not quite ready yet but I will pick up on the Moth very shortly.

like you I bought the MR instruments and compass; I like the quadrants and must have a look at those. What are you doing about pilot? I have recruited Tiger Terry from Jim Reeves.

i would be very interested to know the weight of your wheels; the Dubro ones with the kit do seem quite heavy and I am anxious to keep the weight down.

i have bought the Hitec wing servos as the plan and will put in some dummy disks I think.

I am also tempted to have a go with some litho plate when I come to the cowl but that is light years away at current rate. After the upper wings I need to make myself a new building board long enough for the fuselage.

i have seen the two blogs you refer to; it's a pity they peter out, but between us perhaps we will fill the gap.

good luck with the project!

Trevor

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[Trevor Rushton]

Sorry about the typos in the last posting; it's what comes of using the iPhone on a busy train! My excuse anyway

[Trevor Rushton]

Peter

mine will also have the Mick Reeves screens they look really good. I am off to Norfolk with the mother in law for a week in October so I am planning to take the instrument panels and screens away with me to work on for a little displacement activity!

[Trevor Rushton]

My Dubro 5" wheels came in at 469.9 g, so if there is any weight benefit in using the Traplet versions (which look good from the photographs) 'dI think seriously about getting them.

I did buy a block of foam from Mick Reeves to try making a set of wheels but it feels quite heavy and I am not convinced that they would be much lighter by the time I have finished.

I like the look of those quadrants from Aerocockpit, but they look as though they would be fairly simple to fabricate from plasticard so I might save that up for Norfolk as well. If it does not work, I've not lost anything.

[PeterF]

Terry,

You tease, I have just been out into the workshop to weigh the wheels for you and just stood there going through the contents of the box again, can't wait to start this one, but I must finish what is on the board before starting another. The Traplet wheels weigh 418g for the tyres and wheel cores, I have not counted the DH wheel bosses in that. 52g lighter is not much because any wheels for this weight of plane need to have quite a bit of rubber in them.

The pilot will either be Tiger Terry or Pilot Johnny from Rogers Pilots at **LINK**.

My work takes me away for lengthy period from time to time, the Brian Taylor Mosquito in my avatar took over 3 years to build, hence anything like the Aerocockpit quadrants to cut down my build time is cheerfully grabbed.

If you search on RC SCale Builder for Don Coe's Duncan Hutson Traplet moth build then he made up his own Quadrants and that may give you some inspiration. I had the Traplet kit for a while along with a Flair undercarriage but when the Falcon kit became available again I sold the Traplet kit unstarted and bought this one.

[Trevor Rushton]

Thanks Peter

its not a big saving on the weight, but. A bit here and there will add up and it might just get me out of trouble if I need it. I have to stay under 7 kg at my club and the target weight of 15 lbs ( mixing my units) was one of the attractive points of this kit. I bought a laser 155 which from memory is about 60 g heavier than the 150. So that would cancel out although I would not want to have to add additional nose weight later. So I will leave it for now and see how I get on. I do like the look of those wheel bosses though.

Don Coe's moth is a work of art; I am tempted by his hinged cowl method and might give it a try. Interesting how he goes for the weathers look on painting but the picture that you posted of GV has a showroom shine. I used satin fuel proofer on my little DB moth and was quite pleased with the result.

Trevor

[cymaz]

I have used solarlac and 3 coats of Clearcoat on a paint scheme. This gives it a nice metal sheen without being very glossy.

[Trevor Rushton]

Hi Cymaz

Did you spray the solarlac and Clearcoat? Spraying is not one of my most favourite tasks, so I usually end up spending a fortune on car paints in Halfords. Also was that on to solartex? I have found that a couple of coats of non shrinking dope works well as a primer.

 

Edited By Trevor Rushton on 17/08/2014 21:40:30

[cymaz]

I use a chap in town who is a car body repairer. He does Airfix kits in his spare time so spraying 2 of my big models was a real joy.

I didn't know about the dope. We used white solartex then filled the weave with white solarlac. After that there was a VERY light buff with some wet and dry. The lining tape was done and masked off. This was then sprayed with colour.

I wanted a light sheen but not a gloss so used 3 coats of Clearcoat. Any more it would go too glossy. Have a look at more photos on my albums page under Precedent Stampe.

Edited By cymaz on 17/08/2014 21:51:00

Edited By cymaz on 17/08/2014 21:51:55

[Trevor Rushton]

Back on to building again this weekend - built the top port wing. All goes together really well, but it is very easy to assemble wing fitting metalwork the wrong way round - the drawing makes it look as though the fittings are one way up whereas in reality they need to point down (otherwise there would be nothing to attach the wires to! Its very much as case of take time and think everything through before drilling, fitting or cutting. I hope that I have got it right. The photo below shows the rear fitting assembled but upside down. I do like the mix of wood and metal parts in this kit, they are very satisfying to assemble.

And this is the front fitting.

I found this site which sells Tiger Moth Parts - they have some useful plate drawings that can be copied or printed - useful background info. The metal fittings in the kit are not exact scale, but they do resemble the full size at least in concept terms.

[Trevor Rushton]

Thanks Cymaz - I am impressed with the finish that you have achieved, especially the straight lines with no bleed through. I sprayed the roundels on my Sopwith Pup using Friskett masking, but had quite a lot of trouble with them.

I'd not thought of using wet or dry on solartex, but a light rubbing down (presumably used dry?) makes sense. I have experimented with rubbing compound on the finished paint, but that seems to work better on solid surfaces. I managed to buff up a really deep black shine on a Tucano using that method (and following a real hash of trying to cover it in Profilm).

As mentioned earlier I am toying with the idea of the red and white chequer pattern K2585 (as the Mick Reeves version here) but I am nervous of all of that masking. If I can eliminate the bleed through problem it would be much easier.