albatrosflyingsurfaces

[albatrosflyingsurfaces]

ALBATROS D.Va FLYING SURFACES

1. WINGS

The kit follows the actual full size manufacturing techniques exactly. This means lots of parts and lots of painstaking, sometimes tedious, work. It’s important to study the plans and the instructions very carefully as there are plenty of opportunities for mistakes.

I did all the wood construction with extra thin cyanoacrylate glue (CA or super glue) and accelerant/kicker.

Upper Wing

The one-piece upper wing carries the ailerons. There are 27 ribs in the wing and each rib consists of a basic laser-cut rib plus 7 strengthening pieces on each side plus a top and bottom cap strip. That is 459 (!) individual pieces of wood, all of which have to be individually shaped and sanded and stained and assembled. 

HINT: Stain the wood before you start.

I pinned the 7 strengthening strips for one side of the ribs to the plan (covered with silicone baking paper) and glued the ribs on top of them. Then I glued the second set of strengthening strips on top of the ribs - making a sort of rib sandwich. 

Then I separated the ribs by cutting through the strengthening strips.

I added the caps strips to the top and bottom of each rib. Where there are two strengthening strips close together at each end of the rib, I removed rib wood between the strips to enlarge the “almost-rectangular” holes up to the cap strips top and bottom to make the holes big enough to take the wing spars. This was done with a small diamond file and is very tedious and time-consuming. 

By way of comparison, the ribs of my stainless steel models came off the photo-etch fret accurate to about 0.1mm and clicked together like a rifle bolt.

I pinned the ribs to a cork tile to keep them sorted for the next steps in the build.

Having made 27 ribs, I threaded them onto the main and leading spars, which I had sanded to an “almost-rectangular” cross-section to fit in the “almost-rectangular” holes I had made in the ribs. 

I found that the spar wood in the kit is only half the wing span. This is not mentioned in the instructions. I spliced two pieces together with a scarf joint to make full-span spars and reinforced the joints with brass nails from a sailing ship kit. 

This shows the spars being glued and clamped.

And stained - should have done this first.

Then I added the leading edge - another splicing job - and the rear spar and aileron spar.

I sanded the leading edge to air-foil shape, and blended it with the ribs, and tapered the spars towards the wing tip. A Dremel tool with a sanding drum is invaluable here.

I used the Dremel with a burr bit to cut the groove in the aileron spars where the leading edges of the metal ailerons fit, and then sanded those spars to blend with the trailing edge of the ribs.

The wing tips and wing centre cut-out are laminations of 3 wood strips. I made these by soaking the wood strips in window cleaner (hot tip for boat builders!), which made them very pliable. Then I pinned them to shape over the plan and ran CA into them the next day when they had  dried. I added various strengthening pieces and sanded the whole thing. I could not believe how long this was taking!

I finished staining it (cedar) and applied a few coats of satin Estapol. 

Wing hardware

All the Britannia Metal castings have to be cleaned, “tidied up”, primed and painted. I cleaned them in an ultrasonic cleaning machine and tidied them up with miniature diamond files, a pin vice, and finger nail buffers. The ailerons needed quite a lot of straightening. I painted the parts metallic grey to simulate steel. 

The cast metal ailerons are hinged to the wing with self-adhesive aluminium tape supplied in the kit. I added a reversed piece of tape inside the actual hinge point so that the ailerons wouldn’t touch the adhesive and stick to the hinge tape. The ailerons will be operable through the control column in the cockpit (!) and must be able to move.

I added the metal rod trailing edge using more self-adhesive tape and then the wing hardware: compression bars, rigging eyes and inter-wing strut attachments. These are very soft and easily bent.

The bracing wire inside the wing is simulated with metallic grey thread. The rigging includes tiny Britannia Metal turnbuckles, which I painted metallic brass.

The top wing was now complete. I have no idea how much time I spent on this, but it was a lot. 

I’m happy with the result.

My impressions of the kit so far:

The wood strip is of excellent quality, being fine-grained and straight.

The laser cutting is very clean and precise. It leaves a slightly charred edge, which I’ve decided to leave as is to add some colour contrast. This is probably poetic licence, but I’m looking for a visually attractive model as much as an accurate one.

The Britannia Metal castings are a little disappointing. There is a lot of “flash”; the surface is frequently pitted; many parts are bent - some beyond repair; holes have to be corrected with a Dremel or pin vice and bit; flat surfaces have to be made true - lots of remedial work to be done. They are very soft.

The full size plans are excellent.

The instructions are a bit vague in places.

Some parts were missing. However, Model Expo has an amazing “no questions asked” policy of supplying missing parts and replacing lost or damaged parts - even if lost or damaged during the build - at no cost to the builder, and some are now on their way to me.

That being said, the good far outweighs the annoying and this is a very enjoyable build and is shaping up to be a beautiful model.

Lower Wing

The lower wing is built in essentially the same way as the upper wing. The major differences are:

It is smaller.

It is in 2 halves.

There are no ailerons.

There is no wire bracing.

There are metal components as in the upper wing, plus parts for attaching the wings to the fuselage - a locating rod and a bayonet-style socket.

I learned from the upper wing experience and stained all the components before assembly.

There are 3 metal parts in the wing root: 

A socket to take the fuselage attachment peg

An alignment pin

A duct for the aileron cables. 

The instructions and drawings around the wing socket are vague and it took two attempts to get the first one right, including cleaning it out with my Dremel.

Tailplane/Horizontal Stabiliser

This is quite a simple structure, but is very fiddly to build. 

I started by staining all the components. The basic structure is 3 laser cut ribs per side, which are joined by 2 interlocking laser cut spars to form a grid/egg crate arrangement built over the plan. The parts are quite thin and the slots are quite large, so the fit at the joints is sloppy. The difficulty was in keeping the whole wobbly structure square and true while gluing the joints. 

I grooved the trailing edge to take the leading edge of the elevator  (same as with the upper wing) and glued that to the grid structure. The edge of the tail-plane is another wood lamination built over the plan and glued when dry and then sanded to shape and stained. 

The metal elevator needed a lot of straightening.

Then I added cap strips to the top and bottom of the ribs and the spars and various strengthening pieces. I sanded it again, touched up the stain and sprayed it with a couple of coats of Estapol. Finally I cut it in half at the trailing edge.

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