models in the making

CHRIS HARDIE'S BLOHM UND VOSS MB141

Awaiting completion of covering and painting - but it will be back!

STEVE BOLIN'S B-17 It has been quite a while since we had a pictorial update of Steve's progress on the large-scale B-17 he is building, so I was especially pleased to hear from him with a few recent pictures taken with the digital camera he was given for Christmas.
	This is how things stood when we last saw this giant model on Modelflight #24, and this indoors shot gives a good idea of the scale. On #30, Steve said he had then covered the elevator, and the rudder was still awaiting covering.

Now we can see that Steve has both the elevator and rudder covered and fitted, prior to making up the linkages and proceeding with servo installation for these surfaces.

	Here's the servo installation in the tail area, with the pictures taken with the model upside down in Steve's very nice heavy duty model stand which you can glimpse in the previous picture. There is one servo for each elevator and a quarter-scale one for the rudder.

This is another upside-down shot in the tail area. Box 1 is the floor for two battery boxes. You can see the bottom with two pieces of plastic nyrod for the routing of steering cables for the steerable tailwheel, which can be seen in box 2. This tailwheel is also retractable. Box 3 shows the panel carrying the navigation light switches and where the receiver switch and air filler valve will also be located. This area will be accessed by the rear door which will be operational.

Steve is now getting closer to getting the lower half of the fuselage sheeted, which will then be his cue to move on to the wing. Steve is unable to spend as much time on his model as he would like right now, but I'm sure the next progress shots will be well worth waiting for!

GEOFF GRAHAM'S BEN BUCKLE FALCON

April 5th, Geoff reports: I have almost finished the fuz and tail feathers. This model is a really "good build" if you like that kind of thing, and I do. For example, the cabin windows are a sandwich of 1/16 sheet, acetate sheet, 3/32 sheet. I sprayed each using Flair Spectrum and yellow inside, blue outside. I will be covering outside with blue Solartex and the business of spraying means that the edges of the window "frame" will be coloured right up to the acetate sheet. Difficult to achieve with iron-on. I am enjoying building this model but before I do the wings I have to make myself a wider building board as the chord is 13 inches and wider than anything I have built on my very old 12 inches wide board.

April 18th: Here is the Falcon so far. Servos are in, throttle control proved. Tomorrow the tailplane/fin assembly will be epoxied in place and I can then put the closed loop rudder controls in. The wings need about two or three days completion work on them. Estimate the whole thing flying in about 10 days, weather permitting.

I just love that colour scheme; beautiful, absolutely beautiful! Maybe our next shot will show her in flight - can't wait!

Geoff has also been busy making up the centre section of the Falcon wing and that has tongues and boxes so that the wing can be split for carriage. This can be quite a difficult job, particularly for the less-experienced, and Geoff has detailed the procedure, together with some excellent pictures, for the benefit of those of us who value some good advice on these more tricky building processes - see his article on air space.

I know some of you have unexpectedly seen this already, but here's the finished heli cabin that Viper has been working on - we saw it in an earlier stage on #31. Nice one, Viper!

REG'S SIG CITABRIA

I'm glad to say that progress is once more under way, and the fuselage construction of my Citabria has now got just beyond the stage previously reached before I pulled it all to pieces (twice!) to correct that nasty curve I had managed to build into it.

Bottom, top and side stringers are now in place, the fuselage forward of the cabin is planked top and bottom, the window frame and cabin braces are in and the tail platform has been fitted.

The completed wing is required before the next stages of the fuselage can proceed, so I have now also joined the wing panels to the centre section, building in a 1¼" dihedral to each wing section - is that referred to as a 1¼" dihedral or is it, in fact, a 2½" dihedral?

The wingspan of 67¼" (1710 mm) is not so very much bigger than my ATS Kite, but it certainly looks it. Excuse me while I go and check out if I can get it in the car . . . !