Hi Bart,

Following your thread with great interest. The C Class is still on my list, but will just have to take its turn!

Hi Mike. My Blenheim is built as per the plans but was scratch built, with the extended nose to house a 3s 3300 and that only weighs 3.5lbs AUW and that's with retracts so you should be under that. Get your 3 bladed props from 4-Max. George flies at our club, nice guy.
Daz

Hi Daz,

I'll get some props from George. He gave a talk to our Club a few years ago - as you say, nice guy. many of my planes are powered by his motors!

Sorry about the long break - I got distracted!

The nacelles are a tricky part of any build and I'm going the formers and planking route. I don't really trust the 3-view profile or plan, so made the spine and three formers from card, assuming the designer would have kept things as simple as possible, and that the centre point for the various sections as they move back over the wing profile was on the thrust line. Once drawn up, the cutting and fitting was quite easy. The depron former marks the front of the nacelle.

Now to cut the shapes from 2mm balsa (alowing for the thickness of the planking) and include a spine and side pieces, which will support the front of the nacelle. The cowling (yet to be sourced) with then fit onto small blocks in the usual way.

Good to see yout building again Mike !!

Keep up the good work,

Cheers ,

Bart

I see from my last post that it has taken 10 days to get the top nacelles to the "almost finished" state. I admit that I have been running other projects (the little Focke-Wulf TA152H has flown very successfully) but this seems a long time - 2 planks a day!) for some fairly basic work. What was more galling was that the foam rear sections took all of 10 minutes to draw, cut and sand to shape.

Time now to start on the lower nacelles, which are a more complex shape. At least the retracts are fitted and work well. Provided I don't land too hard...

Nice work Mike , i hope my nacelles turn out as good as yours.

Love the Focke wulf.

Cheers,

Bart

The lower nacelles have a bit more detail in them, including the large cut-out for the wheel well, over which the UC door goes, leaving a V-shaped gap. It was presumably not worth Bristol adding fully-closing doors...but I wonder why not?

Looking good Mike , are you making going to make dummy's for those Brisol Mercury radials as wel ?


Cheers,

Bart

A great coincidence Bart! I was just looking at the Park Flyer Plastics website for 5" cowls and 9-cylinder engines!

The shape of the cowls is not right though, and the Wasp engine is no-where near the Bristol Mercury...

I also have looked there for look a like bristol Pegasus engines for my empire but nothing they have looks like it.
One thing all bristol radial's have is the large gearbox and they use the cowl ring as exhaust. That's why they all very deep inside the cowl.

Have you noticed that all bristol engine's turn the the other way , how british is that

btw : have you seen the new haynes repair manual on the S23 Empire by Brian cassidy ? its excelent











Cheers,

Bart

I seem to be getting along much better now that I have only one model on the table. The nacelles are almost ready for covering, so now is the time to flesh out the fuselage and bring it to the same stage. I got the wing bolts fitted so that it can sit on its UC, but if I took it outside all the parts would end up blown over the garden.

In this state and with a 2200 mAh 3-cell flight battery in place, the model balances about on the 27% chord mark, so after covering, and with cowls and props on, there is a fair chance that it will balance without ballast...or perhaps with a 4000mAh battery.

I did in the end order cowls and dummy engines from Sparky at Park Flyer Plastics. At a mere $6 each the cowls seem very good value (the engines are even cheaper) and if the plane flies well and I can get round to it, perhaps some scale cowls can be made up.

On On!

On the most interesting parts of our hobby: fattening up the ladder frame fuselage to conform to the side and top profiles. With no reliable 3-view it is down to the modeller to work out what the designer had in mind, assuming that he would always take the simplest approach to a problem.

When comparing a frontal photograph the most detailed 3-view it's clear that something is wrong with the drawing - the fuselage at the cockpit and forward is simply not that shape, but it's interesting working out what shape to make F1 - F3!

The landing light is a good one - I'd just have made it circular if I hadn't seen this picture at the Duxford Museum.

Mike,

I reckon that there was no strake but that it's the light from the wing reflecting off the side of the nose as there's a similar effect present on the stbd nacelle. Just my tuppence worth!

Pete

Originally Posted by Pete1978

Mike,

I reckon that there was no strake but that it's the light from the wing reflecting off the side of the nose as there's a similar effect present on the stbd nacelle. Just my tuppence worth!

Pete

I have to agree Pete...but there is a definite line from LE to nose on this second picture. Any ideas? I suppose it could be a panel line, or just a trick of the light.

Or a chine...