Colin’s Spanish Fury

[Colin Leighfield]

Hard to believe this took me two evenings! There was no way of getting the guns inside without cutting them up, sadly. I tried all roads to wiggle them in with the instrument panel in place, no chance. In the end the answer was to cut the breech blocks right back and fix them to the instrument panel. Even then, I had to relieve some areas inside to get it in, but finally, success! The rest of the cockpit should be easy now. Waiting for the pilot from Dave Banks.

[Danny Fenton]

Sadly i ended up in the same boat Colin. With hindsight, maybe the cockpit should have been fitted out before sheeting?

 

[Colin Leighfield]

35 minutes ago, Danny Fenton said:

Sadly i ended up in the same boat Colin. With hindsight, maybe the cockpit should have been fitted out before sheeting?

 

Probably Danny. However, the model’s internal structure limits the ability to match the full-size. Also, some of it will be hard to see, so I’m not going to try and do it all. 

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

It's looking good, you could always put a small Led in the cockpit to make it stand out.

[Colin Leighfield]

5 hours ago, Paul De Tourtoulon said:

It's looking good, you could always put a small Led in the cockpit to make it stand out.

That’s an idea Paul! Not so sure it would it any favours though, it’s not that good! A problem is that in the full-sized plane, the cockpit skin is the plane’s outer surface and controls are attached to that. In practice, particularly with a pilot in situ, you’d hardly see them anyway.  In the model, the internal structure is different, with the “inner sides” forming the interior. Therefore, I’ve focused on the instrument panel and gun breeches/cocking handles. I’ll do a bit more, but only what would be normally easily visible.

[Colin Leighfield]

Looking more carefully, I was wrong to say that some of the controls are attached to the fuselage surface, in fact some of them are fixed to the tubular fuselage structure. I've had another look at the 3D printed frames that Tony made to see if I might be able to cut bits out of them and stick them in places where they could be seen. However, I decided it’s not worth the trouble, when the full length pilot is in place they’ll hardly be visible. I think this is as far as I’m going to go with the cockpit interior, it’s fit for purpose. Although there is a lot of excellent detail in the  Guerrero book, I’m still not clear about cockpit interior colour. However, I struggle to believe that in the desperate, hard-working combat struggle of the Spanish Civil War, that it would have been silver. I’m happy with cockpit green. There are some amazing photos in this book, some of them here. I really think that the Spanish Hispano engined Furies were the most business-like of them all. Loads of detail, such as the exhaust stubs, louvres etc, which I will reproduce.  The last photo shows one of Tony’s 3D printed parts, I’ve failed to work out where it goes. Next step is to carefully cut the aluminium spinner to fit the 20” prop. 

[Colin Leighfield]

Here’s the 1/6 scale pilot from Dave Banks. It looks like a WW1 figure, but that’s probably ok and I can perhaps add a moustache or something! When I hold it in position in the cockpit, it looks right, albeit too wide for the seat. I’ve compared the dimensions with those on Matty B’s scale dimensions chart and they look right. However, when I sketch out a body to fit to it and make a 5’8” equivalent height, it’s clearly too big to fit in. Nor sure what to do about this, I can see why Danny has just used the bust.  

[Colin Leighfield]

Since the last post, I’ve been to the Isle of Man on my bike for the Manx GP and although I’ve been home for nine days, chaos around the house caused by building work is causing problems, so I’ve only got back on the case today. The pilot is unfinished business. I’ve given up on the idea of giving him legs, they wouldn’t be visible anyway, but decided a torso with arms should work, so I’m on with that. I notice that Martyn has a WW 2 style pilot, which fits with his SAAF choice. My pilot is closer to a WW1 subject, which might be nearer for a Spanish Civil War choice.  Some tidying up to do here, it’s a mess at present. 
I’m keen to do a good job on the spinner, so spent some time on this to get it right. The adapter nut for the spinner needed tapping out to match the 10mm propeller shaft. The thickness of the prop hub means that I’ve got to countersink it to get everything on, that’s tricky but I’m trying. 

[Martyn K]

Love the pilot Colin and cracking job on the spinner, which has made me realise I need to add that job to my list..

[Colin Leighfield]

Thanks Martyn, so much still to do. Exhaust stubs, Hispano exclusive louvres, lower wing root fairings, tailplane struts,  rigging detail. The paints arrived from Fighter Aces this week, so the ducks are getting lined up in a row.