Warbird Replica Spitfire MKix

[Martian]

front wing locating former

Wing mounting plate with blind plates

Rear top formers ready for sheeting

Top former going in place and top spine in place

back to the wingtip and leading edge laminate nearly sanded to finished profile arm was aching to gave it a rest

gluing lower formers in place using gorrilla pu glue ,all squared up and duoble checked, unfortunatley the formers in my kit are a sloppy fit but I am able to correct this by gluing 1/32 balsa on the tab with ca and sanding to fit it works well

Motor mount assy and battery plate all ready for fitting to the fuselage ,blind nuts fiited and hole for motor wires drilled

wing tip sheet pinned in place

[Dickw]

You are making great progress and are soon going to overtake me on building the fuselage because I am doing mine as a 2 seat trainer, so a bit of extra work for me.

As well as moving the front cockpit forward and shortening the front decking I have had to make up extra formers and side sheets for the rear cockpit, plus the rudder and elevators are slightly different on the T9.

Bending the fuselage sides round the nose formers took lots of clamps and tape, but the result was good. I also found the cowl very fiddly to trim to shape and glue together, but if you take plenty of time over it all works out nicely.The problems of building such a shapely model I suppose.

Dick

[Martian]

Thanks Dick ,that's the thing with this kind of kit much of it is relatively simple you can afford to take time on difficult areas

[Martian]

More progress, final sanding of the wing has yet to be done below a trial fit of the top part of the cowl all parts for cowl cut out ,just an aside Richard Wills of Warbird Replicas now does some really excellent merlin exhausts units (on order)

Mid top section now covered easy enough to do my method is to use spots of CA and a bead of aliphatic on lower edge the let it dry then bend to middle at top slicing of the excess sheet on centreline roll around and glue using aliphatic and pins to hold till dry .

Turtle deck sheeted and top block glued in place then rough shaped

control snakes in place also triangle fillets glued in place later together with the bottom blocks in place this will be planed and sanded to a rounded shape

turtlle deck before sheeting

top mid section pinned in place

Lower cowl cut out ready for reinforcing strips ,the outline in black is supposed to be to create a battery hatch not sure i'm doing it this way yet . thats it for now

[Martian]

I spoke to Richard yesterday and contrary to my statement the Spitfire is still available and will be for sometime , I can highly recommend this kit so to get one ☺

[Dickw]

Good news about the kit still being available and like you I can highly recommend it.

It is very adaptable as well - the attached pic shows my 2 seat version mods with a shorter front deck and an additional cockpit, plus new rudder shape.

Martian, your workshop looks tidier than mine!

Dick

[Martian]

Dick do you really think I would show my workshop as it is,I shove everything to one side then take pics,

Your double cockpit is looking really good, I'm not going to do the cockpit sides until I have fitted it out got pilot and instrument panel on order from Richard only 9.95 , Ady made his tailwheel castoring I going to do the same but using a different method i.e using wheel collets through the ply plate with brass sleeve bearing i hope that will be ok. Some careful work needs to be done at the fuselage rear to get a sharp taper through fin to rudder trailing edge I'm going to temporarily fit all to sand to shape that's the theory anyway.

[David P Williams]

After failing to work out how to make the tailwheel steerable I've made mine fixed. Castoring tailwheels are much too squirrely for me.

[Martian]

Out of interest did the Spitfire have a steerable tailwheel

[Dickw]

Well if it was steerable it doesn't seem to be linked to the rudder on the one I am modelling - see attached photo - rudder one way wheel the other!

I have made mine castoring as well.

Dick

[Paul Johnson 4]

Hi guys

Free castoring tail wheel = squiggle!!

I had one but soon fixed it....

[Dickw]

Looks very nice Paul.

I made my tailwheel castoring because I wasn't sure with fixed how easy it would be to do 180 degree turns at either end of the runway on the ground. But, easy to fix with a few drops of suitable glue if castoring is a problem.

Dick

[David P Williams]

Many full size aircraft have castoring tailwheels for taxying, but then they usually have differential braking on the main wheels to aid manoevering.

They also often have a tailwheel lock though, which is engaged when lining up for takeoff and disengaged before turning off the runway after landing. More info here.

Quote - "There is no way to taxi in a straight line with no lock in a brisk wind."

p.s. from a quick search it appears that Spitfires did not have locking tailwheels, the suggestion being that they were designed for the wide open grass airfields of the day when take off and landing could almost always be made into the wind. I'm sure more knowledgable members will be along shortly with further info.

Edited By David P Williams on 15/12/2017 10:36:55

[Martian]

Thanks guy very useful and informative feedback.

[Paul Johnson 4]

I got the advice from the Govenor....(Richard)

Full size if you look closely at a Spit you will see the castor takes place at the bottom of the leg a little like a shopping trolley wheel so tended to pull back inline. But at this scale and taxiing over the equivalent of a ploughed field you need a lot of help to keep it straight.

For an experiment when complete if you first try to taxi it castoring you will soon see how much it will veer about. It is also a lot worse on a hard surface..

[Martian]

Hmm to squiggle or not to squiggle that is the question . I,m going to make it castoring but damping it so the movement is sluggish but also make it lockable worth a go , locked for takeoff and castoring for static ,

There is something so pleasurable about sanding a Spitfire wing that I don't get from any other wing it's almost sensuous off is a beautiful wing. I know I need to get out more. I have made more progress and will post pics tomorrow

[Glynn]

I've Just started my Spitfire that I got from Richard at WarbirdReplicas. He told me he would still be producing this Kit for at least another year, I started with the fuselage and I'm still working on the tail. So I will be watching this build for all the tips that I can get. So keep up the good work.

[Paul Johnson 4]

Hey Glynn...

The camo doesn't come in tigger orange!......

[Martian]

Posted by Glynn on 15/12/2017 22:53:14:

I've Just started my Spitfire that I got from Richard at WarbirdReplicas. He told me he would still be producing this Kit for at least another year, I started with the fuselage and I'm still working on the tail. So I will be watching this build for all the tips that I can get. So keep up the good work.

Yes I mentioned that in an earlier post , I don't know about tips 😁

[Martian]

Pictures as promised,

wheel wells formed and one painted.. The Simon is all glued together now I found it best to do one side at a time and carefully line up I used polystyrene glue. after sanding lightly I filled the slight caps with plasto it is a plastic paste the dries really quickly and sands with the lightest touch with fine grade paper. I should add the indentations on the cowl are cutout guides and I highlit them with a marker pen to make it easier to cut

[Martian]

Hi all Happy Christmas

progress has slowed a little waiting for bits etc :- I've got my exhaust stub set and have carefully cut into the cowl to let them in (scary) its a gradual process gluing them in place will show pics when finished . Canopy cut to shape and offered over cockpit area it,s going to be a good fit there is some thin ply in the kit to act as a canopy support but I can,t see where it is supposed to go anyway I don,t feel it's needed. I'm starting to fit out the cockpit pic later. Meanwhile I have decided to make to tail wheel steerable and pics below show how this was done enjoy

I'm using a lightweight snake for the tail wheel and am supporting it 6 5 and 4 inches along the length keeping it as straight as possible

[Martian]

Hi modellers

after a brief hiatus from the Spitfire building a mass build plane the Ghostrider its back to the sanding on the Spitfire.

having bought the Boddo book on scale model airplanes I have to admit that whatever I do this will only ever be stand off scale but never mind I'll just not let anyone near it including me, Boddo tells it like it it and this was back in the eighties the classes were Super Scale, Scale and stand off scale and the stand off scale standard was high never mind the others so what is it like now unbelievably good I should think and beyond me so I will do the best I can until i'm happy with it. Just to help things along I bought the Revell MKix 1/32nd kit to study the curves and try to get it right.. I.ve got till October then it will be an even tougher build the Fury. Any just 4 pics to show progress to date.

oops gotta download them first BRB

[Martian]

First pic the wing fillets more or less done the grey stuff is plastic model filler,

the next three are the underside rear fuselage still quite a bit of shaping yet to do but getting there oh and I've ordered my 40gsm brown paper for covering being a little optimistic

[Concorde Speedbird]

Lovely neat work!

[Dickw]

It's certainly looking good Martian, and you have made more progress than I have with mine (Christmas, builders in, etc.).

Mind you, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to do the differences between the kit and the two seater I am working on. It also took me a week to just modify the 3D printed exahast stacks and fit them in the cowl, so I am definitely not the fastest builder in the world.

I have used brown paper on foam wings in the past, but I have more experience with glass/epoxy so will take that route for mine. Either way can give good results.

Keep up the good work.

Dick