camelfuselage2

[camelfuselage2]

Fuselage Fit Out 1

Building the fuselage framework is fiddly at times, but straightforward.

The fuselage fit out is a different story.

1. Engine Ancillaries

The rotating part of the engine is in front of the firewall. Behind the firewall are the ancillary components that supply the air, fuel and spark to the engine. These are mostly cast metal, and a few are brass. I photocopied the parts legend and stuck it to a cork tile and ran double sided tape over the outlines of the parts. then I tipped the parts out of their bags, identified them and stuck them down. In this photo the engine parts have been painted, while the cockpit parts are still in white metal.

The engine parts are attached to the back of the engine mount as shown here.

I painted the centre part of the engine mount to match the engine (which is what it is representing here) and attached to it:

The air and oil pumps (top)

Twin magnetos either side of the central hole

In the actual engine these are driven from the gear wheels on the back of the crank case. I drilled shallow holes in them to take various tubes and wires.

The colour scheme is based on photographs of actual engines, with the gold parts representing brass.

The engine mount/firewall is glued to the double-thickness ply former at the front of the fuselage. This was easily done after some sanding and filing. The back of the engine is supported by the engine bearer, which is fixed to sockets in the diagonal plywood engine braces in the fuselage sides.

This is the firewall from the front.

I couldn't resist a dry fit of the lower wing.

The carburettor assembly comprises the carburettor proper, two air intake tubes, the fuel/air delivery (engine mounting) tube and the end cap. The tubes are brass and the carburettor and end cap are white metal. The air intake tubes must be bevelled on their outer ends - easy with a Dremel. The engine mounting tube is specified at 1 1/2″, which makes it stick out in front of the firewall, preventing proper engine alignment. I placed the end cap on the tube, slid the tube through the carburettor and firewall, marked where it would be flush with the front of the firewall, and cut off the surplus. 

This is the carburettor assembly.

It was then a (relatively) simple matter of sliding everything into place and gluing the various parts together.

The kit contains (most of) the parts for a fuselage assembly jig.

The jig lets the builder rotate the fuselage, making it easier to add internal parts. The builder has to supply the baseboard. 

This should work...

The jig is a brilliant idea spoiled in the execution. The front of the fuselage is supported by the crankshaft and can turn freely. At the rear the tail fits into a metal socket and, while it can turn, can be locked in any position by tightening a wing nut. The wing nut is the problem. The instructions caution against over-tightening as this may strip the thread on the bolt, which is actually cast metal(!) and not a steel bolt. In my kit there was no chance of that, as the bolt casting was too thin to even touch the thread in the wing nut. Perhaps a wrong size nut was supplied?

To remedy this I cut the cast bolt from the socket and glued on a steel bolt. I also had to grind out one end of the cast socket as the stern post (extended earlier to level out the tail plane) was now too long to fit in it.

Now it worked. It is a very good idea - and perfect with a proper bolt.

2. Pilot Controls

The primary controls are the rudder bar and control column, which are each made from a number of components and are hinged. 

These attach to the fuselage with brackets that mount on wooden cross members at fuselage floor level. These cross members are easy to miss if you rely on the full size plan used to build the fuselage frame. I certainly missed them and for a while I couldn’t work out how the rudder bar and control column fitted in. It’s all clear in Fig.17 in the instructions, but I missed it completely. Once I fitted the missing pieces it all came together with only a little difficulty.

3. Fuel and Oil Systems

There are two fuel tanks and one oil tank. Each is made from two castings. They were simple to assemble and fairly easy to clean up. I painted them with a mix of metallic grey and semi gloss black The filler caps are brass. The oil and auxiliary fuel tanks simply drop into place. The main fuel tank is an odd shape and sits in the fuselage at an angle and is secured with metal straps. The kit suggests the  copper tape used in the wings for the straps. This didn’t look right, so I used some self-adhesive silver tape instead.

The oil tank connects to the oil pump with a short pipe. The fuel tanks connect to a fuel tank selector valve with copper pipe (wire). The selector connects to the throttle/mixture controls and a pipe runs from there to the carburettor.

This is all very fiddly work.

The throttle/mixture controls are on the left of the fuselage between the main tank and the carburettor.

The pilot had to know what was going on - and so we come to the instrument panel.

I stained the plywood walnut and varnished it. The instruments are metal castings. I painted them semi gloss black and buffed the edges back to bare metal. The dial faces are simple paper cut outs. The photo is of the second attempt. I decided to make instrument ”glass” out of thick CA. I used far too much and as it cured it destroyed the dial faces. I undid everything with acetone and started again. 

The instrument at the far left of the bottom row is a pulsometer that indicated engine oil flow in a glass tube. In the kit this is a metal casting, and there’s the suggestion to paint the top silver “to represent glass”. I couldn’t imagine that working. I took some of the transparent “sprue” from the windscreen of a F1 car kit, heated it gently, stretched it to make it thinner and cut it to length. This would be the glass. Then I cut the imitation glass off the top of the pulsometer and painted the bottom in brass colour. Finally, I glued the clear plastic to the metal base.

The instructions now call for installation of the ammunition boxes and rear gun supports, followed by slipping the instrument panel into the narrow gap between them. Since the backs of the instruments have to be connected to various cables and pipes, I decided to fit the instrument panel first, cable it, and then fit the ammo box and guns.

This is the piping and cabling diagram. Easy, eh?

Then, the guns

The fuel gauge and a piping T-connector were missing from the kit, so while I waited for replacements I decided make a pilot’s seat. How hard could it be?

The missing parts arrived - usual fabulous service service from Model Expo - so I put the seat on hold and finished the “plumbing”.

Left side.

The fuel gauge is the tubular device attached to the second vertical wooden spar from the left. It comes as a white metal casting. In the actual aircraft it is a glass tube between two brass fittings. I simulated this by grinding away almost all the central part. I drilled out the ends to take the copper pipes and painted them to look like brass. Then I glued clear plastic tubing over the ground down centre section to simulate a glass tube. I think that it’s quite convincing. Remember - it’s MUCH smaller than it appears on screen. The fuel gauge was a simple “liquid finds its own level” system and is connected to the top and bottom of the fuel tank by copper pipes.

Right Side

The missing T-piece is directly under the rear end of the guns. It is in the line that pressurises the fuel tank. This was done by either a “windmill” pump on a wing strut or the brass hand pump with the red top. The top of the T-piece will be plumbed into the windmill pump later.

4. Pilot Seat

The pilot’s seat was made of wicker work like a veranda chair! 

In the kit it is represented by two white metal castings that have to be joined and painted to look like wicker work. 

It looked pretty horrible to me, so I decided to make a real wicker work chair.

I used the seat base as a pattern to cut a plywood seat. I framed it in 1/16″ aluminium tubing and drilled holes for the “wicker canes”.

Then I had to make the upper frame. I cut another piece of tubing, drilled it and bent it. Bad idea! It cracked and broke.

In my second attempt I bent the tubing and THEN drilled it and fitted it to the seat base.

Starting the “wicker” weaving.  The vertical “canes” are copper wire.

Some time later...

For the horizontal canes I raided my wife’s embroidery thread collection and made up 2-ply threads with in appropriate colour.

Then I painted the metal and started weaving.

Later still...

Then I added a buttoned real leather cushion (padded with tissue). Here it is compared to the kit item. No contest!

Finally, the seat belts, which I made from masking tape and aluminium and copper.

The instructions call for the seat to be installed now. There is a lot of control cabling between the cockpit and the tail, all of which goes under the seat, so I decided to leave out the seat for now to give me as much room as possible when installing the cables.

I installed the tail skid into the socket at the stern post. The skid is steerable in parallel with the rudder, so it has to pivot. However, It was a loose and sloppy fit, so I sleeved it with aluminium tubing to take up the slack. The skid suspension was by elastic bungee cord - simulated here with string.

The instructions now call for cross-bracing each fuselage bay with cables and turnbuckles. As with the seat, I decided to leave this till the control cables have been installed in the interest of access.

5. Tail Control Cables & Fuselage Bracing

Fitting the tail surfaces was a simple task. I lined up the tail plane/horizontal stabiliser on the fuselage drilled two holes to take tiny reinforcing nails and glued it on with thick CA, making sure that it was at 90 degrees to the fuselage. The fin and rudder simply glue into sockets on top.

Control cables run from the rudder bar to the rudder and tail skid, and from the control column to the elevators. The connections are shown in diagrams in the instruction manual.

Unfortunately, the connections are incorrectly labelled! 

The control column when pushed forward (dive) should pull on the bottom control horns - a & c. This is reversed in the drawing. Similarly, the rudder connections are also reversed. Just as well I checked...

To make life easier, I built a simple jig to hold the fuselage steady - and vertical - while I ran the control cables and the fuselage bracing. 

I connected the rudder first as it looked easier. I clamped the rudder and rudder bar in “neutral’ and then it was relatively easy to feed the cables (thread) from the rudder bar to the rudder and tail skid. I used (very) short lengths of 1/16″ aluminium tube to simulate cable fittings. I was pleased that I’d left the fuselage bracing off as it certainly improved access when feeding in the cables 

This shows the model in the jig with the rudder and tail skid cables installed. The jig keeps the gun muzzles off the bench.

Rigging the elevators was more difficult, as can be seen from the cabling diagram. I made a tiny hook from fine gauge wire and used that to work the cables through the fuselage and onto the various fittings. It was very painstaking work. The cables have to be tight, exit the fuselage in the right place, loop over “pulleys” on the rudder bar and attach snugly to the control column. I got there eventually with the help of my little hook.

It got very busy in the cockpit floor...

Then I glued in the seat.

And rigged the tail plane and each fuselage bay with bracing wires and turnbuckles.

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