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I hope I can do it justice.
My two favorite warbirds are the Curtiss P40 and the Grumman Wildcat.
For the US they were the first responders, in it from the start, and stayed in the fight for the duration.
If I can find a suitable model of the Wildcat it will be next in line after this build
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I still do things the old school way..cork core building board, T-pins, wax paper, etc...
https://i.imgur.com/tBkpRnd.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/2D9dJgm.jpg?1
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just to give a sense of the basic and essential construction method. Whether you build for flight or display, the essential construction of each component of the kit is the same.
https://i.imgur.com/q1yDsLx.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/8MTyFws.jpg?1
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you can see I've added a cockpit floor for the later enhancement of the area. I'll correct the panel and shroud too
https://i.imgur.com/tIqcxuw.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/w5Dqscx.jpg?1
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working on the fuselage. The P-40 has a really cool form, from the large chin intake, to the cockpit cutouts behind the pilot, to the way the gear sorta semi-retracts yet still kinda has too much of itself hanging out in the slipstream when it's up.
But the fuselage. Lots of work to do to get it looking more or less accurate..
https://i.imgur.com/IhuxcxT.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/l07FU6Q.jpg?1
I replaced the card stock that lines the cutouts with 1/64" thick birch ply..
You can also see that I doubled the firewall with a sheet of 3/32" thick balsa to give the plastic cowling more to hold onto, just sanded it to shape and then the cowling slides
over it with a good 1/8" of overlap / glued surface all around the inside edge
The infill finished, I have begun the filling and sanding process. This will take a week maybe
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more sanding and filling, Cowling attached and cooling vents installed
https://i.imgur.com/yYkBMnK.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/t7XG785.jpg?2
https://i.imgur.com/XXHnnyH.jpg?1
you can kind of see that the cowling went on nicely with a very good seal all the way around..made flush with the filler and more sanding. lol
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At this point I probably still need to add another layer of filler, sand that off and then spot fill any remaining defects -
I still have to furnish the cockpit and install the masked canopy before I can move on to the wings and tail assemblies.
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I fabricated and installed the glycol cooler cans - they are behind the scoop where they belong...I think maybe I should have cut out the dividers that were molded into the cowl and made my own.
Maybe next time..
https://i.imgur.com/uxGVvJM.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/3b6GB0m.jpg?1
the flash is horrible but it's the only way to see those cans in there..Also the top mounted air intake is installed now -
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Still need to lay on more filler yet..
as soon as the surface of the fuselage is prepped fully I can start on the cockpit interior - long way to go yet.
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and a little paint...needs a dullcoat
https://i.imgur.com/PCasOQ8.jpg?1
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Thanks, Dave
So I took a break from balsa the other day, just to switch things up a bit.
This is a 1940 Willy's coupe - a Gasser.. from the same era as the P40 so I guess it's sort of 'on topic' maybe
https://i.imgur.com/rE9Zfjk.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/HP9A8P5.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/Tf1AFY8.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/DITRbFZ.jpg?1
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https://i.imgur.com/UEy5Mz8.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/Vb09GsZ.jpg?1
the body is painted Tamiya 'Racing White' and the interior is a combination of that and Testors 'Competition Orange'
I always like the look of this car and now I know why...it looks like a cousin of the Curtiss P-40
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hats pretty nice,i bought a dremel 3D printer,working on the CAD now.and my drawings for the truck bed are about done as well.should start building soon.
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https://i.imgur.com/OZ85EGR.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/fNZKud6.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/Ds67is2.jpg?1
I AM still working on the P-40 (wing) and plan to make the gear retractable - but these gassers are a fun distraction
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ok - there's sidetracked..and then there's SIDETRACKED...
The Holidays are approaching and I have been bitten by this model car thing - then I was browsing around on the Tamiya USA website and I saw something I had last seen in the mid '80's when I was working for a small graphic arts studio.
A couple of the guys had brought one of these RC Beetles in one day - Fridays were very light and loose and the boss man was a youngish feller himself and would allow for a bit of random fun so - they ran this thing all over the floor after clearing an area for it and it
was pretty cool.
Apparently Tamiya has reissued it as a kit..so naturally - I bought it. It's like a 50,000pc puzzle..that goes like a bat outta hell
It was lots of fun to build - and in the dirt lot next to my house - a lot of fun to run
https://i.imgur.com/UMr11F8.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/vhXbfCz.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/1beBOJI.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/W142VxX.jpg?1
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thats pretty cool,i had the old teymia frog,hated its looks but it was alot of fun,im still building a taymia cascadia truck,and i have all the parts,except the motor,controller and a few other electronics,to build a 1/10th jeep rubicon.solid plastic body rather than lexan.all custom chasis and parts..well after market anyway..lol.
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after a brief 6 month hiatus I am back on task, refocused on getting a decent P40n built up and displayed..somewhere
https://i.imgur.com/TY26MgM.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/u3PlPoi.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/kTx6pxm.jpg?2
I am going for manually retractable landing gear..not sure how I'm going to make the doors work but hey, we'll jump off that bridge when we get to her
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some more progress - please excuse the mess.
also - one of the things I'm not very good at is documenting as I work..I had meant to take pictures of the work I did on the belly pan but became a little absorbed and forgot to do that..
https://i.imgur.com/3ESclBv.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/YekGlve.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ew0alM7.jpg?1
so here you see the belly pan being attached, as well as the before and after showing the wing fillet
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landing gear should work..here it is retracted
https://i.imgur.com/xFZQ9Rb.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/MdMqcXS.jpg?1
the gear fairings and 'knees' were difficult to fit but eventually we got somewhere..I used 1/32" thick balsa sheet material at the leading edges and essentially mounted the under wing portion 'flat' using the balsa at the wing leading edge to fill the gap
between lower and upper halves of the knee
..seems to have solved the problem of poor fit related to the variable from one builder to another that Guillow prefab parts are tied to.
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prop blades...
I use balsa strip material - typically 1/4" thick x 1/2 wide
only the outline of the blade is carved - the rest of the shaping is done with sandpaper and a small wooden block for the faces of the blades, and a section of 3/4" wood dowel wrapped with sandpaper
for the backs of the blades, sanded along the vertical axis - to get the concave shape.
the faces are sanded at a slight angle to achieve a discernible leading and trailing edge - and then rounded and tapered toward the tips. Then the backs are scalloped out using the dowel instead of the block.
It's a process but it works - then the proper incidence is obtained as each blade is installed to the hub.
https://i.imgur.com/z8Kjqlb.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/LsXAVg7.jpg?1
this image shows how the wing is attached, then the balsa fillets (for and aft) are installed along with the wing root reinforcement (1/8" square balsa strip) as an anchor for the
spackle used to make the fillet.
Sherwin Williams shrink-free product is used.. the balsa strip also blocks the spackle from squeezing into the fuselage cavity and hardening into pellets - we aren't making baby rattles here
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