chris moody Posted February 23, 2017 Share Posted February 23, 2017 Hi Jon, thanks for your response and supplying more information. It is a superb model and the CAD work alone must have taken months. Sign me up for one of the kits when it takes to the air. Will you supply the 3d printed bits in there? I wanted to ask you whether Hendon has a good collection of the drawings for the S6, as I have this mad idea to build a full size replica (non flying). It would make a suitable commemoration of Mitchell's, Supermarine's and your great uncles achievements. And in 2029 it'd be about the right amount of time I'd need to make it. Crazy maybe - but then again my dad did build two full-size catamarans in the first floor drawing room of our family house when I was little. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Stainforth Posted February 24, 2017 Author Share Posted February 24, 2017 Chris, I had the 3D parts made by Shapeways in New York. The files for the parts one makes at Shapeways are stored on their website. Getting duplicates is trivial. One just ticks boxes in one's personal catalogue, goes to the "shopping basket" and pays. The only sang with the parts is they are rather expensive, so in future model(s) I might consider making molds for fibreglass copies. Hendon has a very large collection of Supermarine's drawing that includes all the Schneider planes and (I think) all the marks of Spitfire. The Supermarine drawings are identified by five digit numbers, the first three digits being the aircraft model, which is 186 for the S6 and 187 for the S6b. The last two digits represent the major assembly, e.g. 07 for wing, 74 for floats etc. Thus the drawings for the wing main plane of the S6 have the number 18607. To access the Hendon archives you need to make an appointment telling them which aircraft's drawings one is interested in. Once there, they let you load the microfiches into a copying machine to make the copies yourself. I found it took me several hours to make the copies of about fifty of the drawings. The S6 has essentially the same airframe as the S6b: only the floats differ substantially. So it would probably save you a lot of time if I scaled my 3D Rhino model of the S6b right up to fullsize. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Etheridge 1 Posted February 24, 2017 Share Posted February 24, 2017 Not very good photographs but I think this is an S6B at the Solent Museum in Southampton ?. Edited By Mike Etheridge 1 on 24/02/2017 22:37:17 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Stainforth Posted February 24, 2017 Author Share Posted February 24, 2017 This is actually one of the two S6's (N247 and N248) that were built for the 1929 Schneider Trophy, which with slight modifications for the 1931 competition, such as better floats, became called S6a's. Two entirely new airframes with further enhancements were also built for 1931 (S1595 and S1596); these were called S6b's. The S6b's had the most advanced Rolls Royce R engines, and because of their extra weight, the floats of the S6bs were about a foot and a half longer than the S6a's. Out of these four S6's that were built, we are lucky that two have survived to the present day - this S6a N248 in the Solent Sky Museum and S6b S1595 in the Science Museum London. The other S6a (N247) crashed on take-off on 18th August 1931 killing the pilot Jerry Brinton. The second S6b (S1596) was designated for the Speed Record attempt by George Stainforth, but he crashed that during a preparation flight, so he ended up doing the record in S1595, which is the same plane that flew the winning Schneider course a few weeks earlier, piloted by John Boothman. Anyway, it is very useful for me in the building of my model to be able to visit the two surviving S6s in their museums in Southamption and London. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Laughton Posted February 25, 2017 Share Posted February 25, 2017 John S - sent you a pm still unread? Cheers Jon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris moody Posted February 26, 2017 Share Posted February 26, 2017 Hi Jon, thanks for all of the information about the Hendon reading room and posting the information about the S6b's and A versions. Thanks also for your offer to enlarge to full-size your 3-d work. I would dearly love to be able to use your files in the planning and construction of a full sized replica. It would give me a massive starting point in it's development and fruition. I don't know where this idea will end up but it'll certainly be an intersting journey. I look forward to seeing you plane in flight. Thanks again Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris moody Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 Hi Jon, coming back to you about the work you did on the Seaplane. You mentioned you had undertaken a lot of work at the archive and had prints run off. Would you be interested in loaning or selling me your print outs, so I could make a start on working out the construction side of a replica. It would allow me ro make a feasibility study of the idea in advance of any rhino work you can let me use. All the best Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Laughton Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 Chris - did you mean John not Jon? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris moody Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 Ooops! Yes John not you Jon. Thanks Chris - Duh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Stainforth Posted March 9, 2017 Author Share Posted March 9, 2017 Chris, I did not do a lot a work at the archive - just a couple of hours there. I don't think there would be any problem sending you copies of the copies I obtained from Hendon, because I think all copyrights have expired. I have a number of computer files of scans some of the prints. These are in a bit of a muddle, because I did some experimenting with different computer formats (Jpeg vs Tiff, etc). Also some of the prints need to be corrected for distortion (something was slightly wrong with the horizontal vs vertical scaling of the prints I made at Hendon from the microfiche films). Some of the most valuable pieces of information on the plans are the Tables of Offsets of the fuselage and floats, which are pretty hard to read. However, I gradually sorted out those tables and put the values into Excel and converted these in to XYZ coordinates. I would be quite willing to give you copies of those. Whatever, you do with rescaling of drawings etc, it is essential (if you want a true scale model) that you key these to all the key datum points and lines and planes. You haven't said which S6 you intend to make a replica of. Usually when people say "S6", unqualified, they mean the S6a. My offset tables for the floats are for the S6b, not the S6a, whose floats were smaller. If you were to use my computer model for your build, it would be easier if you made an S6b. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris moody Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 Hi John, thanks for coming back to me. I'd always supposed I'd build a replica of the S6b, as I see it as the pinnacle of Mitchell's, Rolls Royce and Supermarine's work. I suspect that the longer floats will give flexibility to whatever engine might end up being used. And the use of ply as opposed to aluminium in it's construction. It also makes great sense as you've already done alot of the 3d design work. I've got some experience in interpreting Supermarine's drawings having drawn up quite a few of the Spitfire engineering drawings. The quality of the scan work means you're cross-checking measurements all the time. I did the same as you and interpreted the offsets for the Spits' fuselage frames and came across quite a few adjustments. If you want to trade for any of these I'm very happy to give them to you. You never know you might want to build a Spit next. What's the best way of me sending you stuff? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Stainforth Posted March 10, 2017 Author Share Posted March 10, 2017 Chris, Send me an email at [email protected] and/or [email protected] so we can discuss how we might exchange data (not on this public forum). I do not intend to charge for exchange of information. I am glad it's the S6b you're interested in, not only because that is what I am working on, but also because it was the pinnacle of Mtichell's Schneider achievement - as you say. One of the problems of the tables of offsets is that they are only accurate to 1/16th inch (on the full-size) so I had to do a fair amount of "fairing" in Rhino to get consistent cross-sections, and that is a bit of an art - in Rhino, at least, there is no "exact" solution. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris moody Posted March 16, 2017 Share Posted March 16, 2017 Hi John, I've sent an email direct to those accounts, I hope you get it OK. Thanks Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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