Hope you are getting through the storm safely, Amilcar. NJ has been hit hard this past year. Right now, we have 40 mph winds and blinding snow, although the radar shows nothing! Life in western MD.

Making good progress on the IP. Tonight started out poorly, but I took a break and went back to it and I am now happy with how it is going. Still on track to have it done by Sunday night.

Time for sleep!

Here's one for ya. It's -3 outside. My wife's car wouldn't start this morning. You'd expect that right. Nothing unusual, at that temperature.

Well, her car is in the garage. It's heated to 60 degress.

I guess that I know what I'll be doing today.

I had planned to work on my Monoprep, but that's gone by the wayside. LOL

Ugh! Sorry to hear about that. I don't miss that sort of cold from when I lived in Iowa. When I was in college, I had an old VW bus that always broke down in the cold. I didn't have a garage, so if I couldn't limp it to my parents house (where they had a garage), I would be bustin my knuckles on it in the cold!

The IP I am working on has three layers. This morning I got to the point of gluing the IP sandwich together! While it is drying, time to go to the local hobby shop for materials to build the yokes and start thinking about the seats...

DRAT! In Cumberland we have a nice hobby shop that even still sells kits, but they were out of metal rods. I drove to the other craft shops but it was the same story.

Is someone in this area building a plane out of metal rods?

Using bent metal seems to be the obvious choice for the yoke/stearing column. But I guess I will try and craft it from wood. I was worried about bending two identical stearing wheels anyway. I was thinking that I would need to build a jig to get it right. Might as well use the jig as the finished product!

One of these days I need to put a big order of supplies in to Tower. When I used to frame kits for $$, I always had a great stock of wood and hardware. Need to get back to thise days!

aaron... they sell a set of larger wires also.
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&P=SM&I=LXVET2

Bruce

You may consider using a dowel for the elevator joiner. When I do that, I glass the joint for extra insurance.

Iowa= cold. I miss living there, but it was darn cold during the Winter.

This sub zero weather, here, doesn't happen often.

The car was a simple fix. My wife put gas in the car, and didn't correctly install the gas cap.

Have you tried the local hardware store, for metal rod ? Mine carries several sizes suitable for our models.

I will check out the hardware stores, we have tons of those around here, and they are often open on Sundays! But I will for sure order the set Bruce posted.

Long day working on what ends up not looking like much. I crafted the yokes from plywood; it took many, many tries to get two that looked close to the same. In the end, they look fine but I made the braces inside the "stearing" wheels too thick.

Grrrrrrrr.

You guys will see on Monday when I post pics. It does not look horrible, just out of place. The rest of the IP including the yoke braces look really good, and the yokes look a little cartoon-ish.

I need to remind myself that although the Stinson is a big plane, this kit is around 1/9th scale, which is pretty small. It is hard to nail scale details spot on at this scale with a kit that was not designed for the kind of details I am adding.

I have two more gauges on the IP and the fuse/switch board/compus on the top left (for those referencing the pics of the IP I posted awhile ago). Pretty sure I will get it done later today!

Ugh. Took longer to finish that I thought. And even then, I still have the silver panel under the IP with switches to finish! I made one, but it does not look that good. Those switches are too small to make from wood, but a bit larger than pins. I might need to wait until I get piano wire.

Pics will be posted tomorrow! Overall, I am happy with how it looks. Too bad most of the detail won't be noticed once the plane is finished!

Originally Posted by 4075aaron

Ugh. Took longer to finish that I thought. And even then, I still have the silver panel under the IP with switches to finish! I made one, but it does not look that good. Those switches are too small to make from wood, but a bit larger than pins. I might need to wait until I get piano wire.

Pics will be posted tomorrow! Overall, I am happy with how it looks. Too bad most of the detail won't be noticed once the plane is finished!

aaron.... when I need to make things like switches what I do is look through all of those parts and bits of stuff you have extra from early builds and another thing that's also great to use is left over plastic model parts you can heat and bend them drill them carve them and I can some times find parts that look very close to what I'm making.
for instance I used the grommets from the servos and put a brass micro threaded cuppler w/ a flattened end for the toggle switches on my Stinson.

Bruce

When I made switches, I use small bolts, washers, and nuts.

The pic is small, but maybe you can see enough to get the idea.

Also, I Fly Tailies has a set of small switches, but they may be too large for your IP/

Man, that is a nice IP Tom! Is that from a kit you have? I like the idea of using bolts/screws. I will check my bit box to see if I have anything small enough.

My bit bucket is fairly empty right now though. The wife "accidently" threw my old one out when we moved out here last winter. Besides this Stinson, I have only built one other plane in the past year.

Ok...here it is! One pic is of the full scale version.

This version of the Stinson is very different from the civilian version! I will walk you through the process of building this IP in the following posts.

Excluding the compus on the top, it is only 2 inches tall!!!!

Nice ! Very nice !!!

The bolts that I used, are the ones that hold eye glasses together, if that's any help.

That cockpit kit is in my Ziroli Stuka. The kit, itself, was from Dynamic Balsa.

This is how I built it...

Oh...your right, Tom! Eyeglass hardware! That is a really good idea. I also seem to recall that there is a store in Cumberland that sells dollhouse stuff. Maybe something of value there...

Thanks for the compliment!

Not sure how much I will be able to work on the plane this week. I have a recording job that needs to get done by Friday. I don't want to build the seats without the wire needed, so next will be detailing the walls next to the seats. On the passenger side there is not much; the drivers side has the throttle controls!