Me and Frank...that 1/72 Carvair

[VH-WAL]

This was going to be a straight build of the Formaplane vacuform kit that had been languishing in the stash for several years.... But the plastic is thin brittle and horrible in places and while trying to round out the flattened nacelles using balsa formers I managed to dissolve a large portion of the flimsy plastic with super glue.

Right! so the next phase was to get the red roo DC-6 to DC-4 conversion set and use the nacelles of that to fix the kit wings... nope that is not going to fix the problem!

More headscratching and the current build plan is to use the Heller DC-6 wing converted to DC-4 wing using the red roo conversion and the red roo tailplanes on the Carvair vacform fuselage, of course the shapes and bits don't match so quite a bit of bog sculpting will be required.. (buy shares in milliput), this is going to be character building....
[url=https://flic.kr/p/nxNqmu]
[url=https://flic.kr/p/nQhSsR]
[url=https://flic.kr/p/nPZQwM]

[Tony P]

You are a brave man.!

[Adam the Akrodude]

Wally

I salute you and bow low in awe of what you are building! This is one build to watch!

Cheers

Adam

[VH-WAL]

anyone got any light weight fibre glass cloth radio modellers use to skin their balsa plane models? I need a small amount to bind in / fair plastic to resin to milliput to vacuform structural joints around the tail plane and wing roots, a half handkerchief size bit of cloth would be more than ample

cheers
wal

[Knotty]

No fibre glass cloth , but I still think you will regret not buying that second Carvair kit
Man you have some work ahead of you !!!! You are a brave man Wally my friend ..

[VH-WAL]

Evidence of the new found exuberance engendered by Expo, I battled on with "Frank" the Carvair, I glued tabs and doublers under the fuselage joins but it all went pear shaped (well actually saddle back shaped) on the mid top fuselage... never mind .. I SHALL prevail over this POS nothing lots of filler and shaping and sanding wont fix!

[Knotty]

Looking good Wally , only 1245 hrs to go ........
Seriously ,that's coming along nicely .

[VH-WAL]

This morning I am like Homer Simpson chasing the runaway roast pork joint.. shouting "It's still good, it's still good" thinking I might have stuffed this up.

Here is pic of the saddle back problem:


two ways of fixing this build up with milliput on top or surgery from bottom of fuselage, cutting through a balsa floor to expose the fuselage top beneath, split the fuselage joint (with it's doubler) open it out a bit and redouble it in it's new position (with gaps) using fibreglass cloth and epoxy resin, don't know which way I'll go yet.

In a Eureka moment I realised why the tail plane fit wasnt real flash.. I was sucked in by the fact that the tail plane root cut out matched the vacuform tailplane fairing, this was entirely coincidental, the fairing was actually too fat and protruded too far so I cut them off..hmm I might have stuffed this I said:



hmm I still can do this, tailplanes joined by a box spar


all I have to do is build some internal bracing structure to hold the tail plane box spar, mount the tailplane, fill the hole and shape a new fairing

[Knotty]

Keep at it Wally , looking good so far . You will over come the problems .......one at a time .

[VH-WAL]

After several hours of filling and wet sanding (2 applications of milliput) the saddleback dip that was mostly fixed by splitting the fuselage and pushing a shape up from within is almost gone.. there is a section about 1 cm long which is about 1 mm shallow, I could probably leave it and get away with it but I will skim another layer of milliput over the top and then do the rear bottom fuselage seam. I am happy with this fuselage, it is coming along ok.