HubertB

Thank you guys, you are too kind with me ☺️ (only Kevin seems to have had an honest assessment ) You know you have beautiful eye(let)s, honey ? Well some more progress today. I had prepared some time ago eyelets for the rigging, using shamelessly the late Les Delatorre's technique for mass production. So I had a bunch of those : They are made with 0.3 mm copper wire stolen from an old electric motor. I have a lifetime (and more) of copper wire supply with this one. Now was time to insert them in all the anchor points for the rigging (and a proof that the holes had been drilled ): When all the holes were duly fitted with some eyelets, I was left with this, of my original 56 ones . And I did not loose one in the process ! (But there is one - the short one - which fell off the fin but i could find easily, thanks to a T-word - this one is for Martin - bench. Which is why you can count 5 in the tray, when, of course, the number used is even, 52) If you wonder, the hook is the tool used to wind the eyelet, after it is inserted in a pin vise. Des Delatore's website is still up and his tips for WWI rigging are invaluable. By the way, the long double eyelets will have a fairing built around their base, to reflect the Potez 25's original system. Once all eyelets were inserted, I fixed them in place with a drop of CA, using my very high-tech glue dispenser : It is a sewing needle, of which I ground the tip to keep the eye open, and inserted in a pin vise. When it becomes clogged by CA, a dip in acteone will clean it, and in the last resort, three seconds in the flame of a lighter and the CA is gone. One last bit of work this afternoon. When printing the new parts, I managed to get very thin walls, for instance for the carburetor intakes. The walls were 0.25 mm thick. Unfortunately, this also means they are fragile, and, of course, one of the carburetor intakes did not like all the handling : I decided to replace it with a part made in brass sheet: even if it was knocked, it would bend rather than break and that would be easily fixable. My soldering skills still suck, but I managed to solder a replacement inlet in the proper cone shape : And in position : You may have noticed that the left inlet is bigger than the right one. The Lorraine engine was a W12, and the left and upper cylinder banks were fed by a single carburetor, bigger than the one for the right bank of cylinders. hence the larger inlet. Btw, this is another detail that Lukgraph missed, with two identical inlets supplied. Et voilà ! Hubert

How easily you can be fooled 😂🤣😂 ! Hubert

Great idea and worth a try. Thank you for the tip, Carl. Hubert

Great progress. A question though : is it just an optical illusion, or does the front end seem misaligned with the main fuselage, judging by the cockpit opening which looks « staggered » or offset to the right ? Hubert PS edit : looked again at the last pic, and it is an illusion created by the canopy rail. Sorry about it.

Magnificent ! Are the turnbuckles for the elevator and rudder cables Gaspatch ones ? Hubert

Well an update. Nothing really spectacular to show, but an update nevertheless, and some progress towards the goal of finishing this one. First, I was mentioning in a previous post that the .obj files resulted in slightly faceted look of the printed parts, when the .stl files did not. An illustration with a side-by-side pic of the radiator, left a .obj one and right a .stl one. The difference is marginal on the pic, but more visible on the real part. Now for the progress : When I was researching the weight elements to be printed on the rudder, in typical French fashion, I stumbled upon a piece of information that I I had already read, but which failed to make an imprint on my mind. The Potez 25 TOE was heavier than the A2, and therefore the wheels grew to accomodate the higher weights. The A2 wheeks were 800x175 (that is diameter and thickness in mm), when the TOE were 900x200. Lukgraph has correctly represented the A2 wheels, and when designing the extra spare wheel, I slavishy copied the kit wheel. But now, of course, I had to redesign the wheel to match the correct dimensions. Easily done. I just had a few trials to attempt to represent at best the slight protrusion of the wires under the fabric of the wheel cover. Then there was the preparation for fitting the wings. I already mentioned that I had printed new cabane and interwing struts to be able to insert reinforcement rods through them, and have the correct angles. These are the cabane struts. I have inserted in them a 1 mm dia steel rod. They are taped - to avoid mixing them - to the a jig I have prepared, that will allow to have the correct spacing, both laterally and longitudinally between the cabane struts. Then the interwing struts. I inserted a 1.5 mm dia brass tube, and a 1 mm dia brass rod in them. Should be strong as well. The elevators and rudder have been prepped with metal rods to fix them easily. As the rudder post will support the rear of the tail skid, and therefore a part of the kit's weight; I had to make sure the weight would be properly transferred to the kit's main body and not just rely on a glue joint. Ditto for the ailerons on the mainwing. I have also drilled the holes for the struts in the proper positions, and although it is not really visible on the pic, all the holes for the rigging have been drilled, at approximately the right angle. I managed to break only one bit in the proces, yay ! The underwing profile of the lwer sesquiplane has been restored, followng the heavy surgery to insert brass tubes spars... ... and the upper surface of the lower sesquiplane has been drilled with holes for the struts and the rigging. I have also drilled the holes for the rigging in the fuselage : And glued the fin in place with the proper offset to right : And I have built a jig to ensure the cabane struts are glued at the proper angle, both laterally and longitudinally, even though I have already bent the steel rod at what should be the « right » angle. Finally, I have also designed and cut the masks for the markings : The pennant on the fin with the admiral's four stars was just demanding too much of the Silhouette cutting accuracy. I have just prepared a mask of the outline for a white background, on which I will put the decals I have prepared and printed. Ditto for the markings on the rudder. In the background, I am also continuing the paint work on the camels and the figures that will go on the small scene. And I have designed, printed and already painted a surprise element, that I will reveal only with the finished pics. I am pretty happy with the effect I have achieved TTFN Hubert

Me too. But I consider the bench like the kitchen Patricia can testify that, not only I am a good cook, but also that the kitchen is immaculate and clean when I have finished cooking, and all kitchenware washed, dried and back in the drawers where they belong ... Who said "monomaniac" ? Hubert

It’s definitely better, Carl, but « tidy » … 😂 Let’s agree we do not have the same understanding of the word, shall we ? Clean-bench monomaniac Hubert

I do not know what is more anachronistic : the yellow Reliant Robin, or the fact that it still is on its three wheels 🤔 Hubert

TBH, there are not many airframes of the era which, designed as a single-seater, were not seriously bastardized by the move to twin-seater. The F-100 and F-105 survived it, the F-104 passably so, but the Mirage III, the MiG-21 just to name some, did not benefit from the second driver’s position. But the Brits compounded the issue by the side-by-side requirement. And what about the EE Lightning 😱 ? Hubert

Ok. « In the kingdom of the blinds, the one-eyed are kings » Hubert

It looks like Revell have announced a 1/32 Hawker Hunter T7 (you know, the one where the Brits demonstrated brilliantly their unmatchable knack to turn a beautiful airframe into an ugly errr… something 🤮) Good for those who had missed the Fisher conversion, though. Hubert

I had missed this one until now. Great result ! I have a very definite bias towards yellow wings, but the finished kit is a beauty ! Well done ! Hubert

Very nice, Rod 👍 ! Which kit is it ? HK ? Hubert

Have you tried glass-fiber pens to wear the surface ? Hubert

Looks more like s#&!!y design than shrinkage at this level 😱 ! Hubert

I love yellow wings. This one is a great addition. Well done Kriss 👍 Hubert

I remember very well your PZL painted with oils, Rob. i also lifted your idea of making a larger paint box using a plastic storage box. The led strip all around the box makes a HUGE difference when spraying my parts Hubert

I have, literally, dozens of paint tins / bottles / vials of various brands like Tamiya, Gunze, Hataka, Alclad, Citadel, Prince August, AK, Vallejo, even some 30 years-old tins of Humbrol and Revell enamels, plus some other brands I forget, but I find myself reluctant to use any of those in an airbrush, because of the thinning issues. The gooey mess that clogged my airbrush when I tried to use Vallejo’s black primer thinned with Mr Levelling Thinner has left me traumatised for some time … So I am always going back to MRP as soon as I have to fire the airbrush. On the other hand, acrylics are my goto solution when using a brush (but not Tamiya, which are awful with a brush). And, as I am trying more and more figure painting, I find myself keener and keener on using oils. I bought some tubes that I thought were oils, by AK or Vallejo, and found to my dismay they were acrylics. Gimme some old Windsor & Newton, Rembrandt or Abteilung anytime over these acrylics I do not know how to dilute. In spite of my initial reluctance on oils, because of their drying time, they are unbeatable for pigments’ fineness. And turpentine is OK for diluting oils. I even used oils for painting the radios of my Potez 25 in the Sandbox GB. Looking forward to watch your trials, PW. Hubert

You know you have an open table at home, Francisco ! Hubert

+ 2 ! What Chris and Mike said 👍 ! Hubert

I built my stock of Archer decals before Woody retired. One of them is to represent the stitches in rib tapes of WWI aircrafts. In fact, when checking the Lukgraph’s wings through my Optivisor, the rendering looks more like rivets than stitches. Not really accurate or representative of the real aircraft, which was very much « updated » WWI technology. But I will go, for consistency, with the kit’s depiction, for the sake of simplicity, even if it’s a compromise with scale accuracy. I am trying to educate myself in fighting my AMS, by putting myself in the shoes of the casual viewer … Not always easy 🙄 … In passing, I discovered some « interesting » issues with the slicing software (Chitubox) for 3D-printing. The historical file format for sending 3D-created parts to a slicer was .stl (for stereolitography). It produces a « map » of the 3D voxels of the part. Based the resolution you define for exporting your file, you can end up with VERY big files. For instance, the cockpit-coaming part with windscreens results in a close to 9 Gb file in the highest resolution … Which is why I chose to export the files in a .obj format, which is a kind of 3D-vectoring format, and produces far lighter files. BUT, I found out that some of my parts imported in Chitubox with a .obj format had a strangely-faceted appearance. I thought it was a display artefact of the software, but it is not. The facets are visible on the printed part, when they are not on the designed part. And they are not visible, either on the software display or the printed part, when in imported in .stl format. Another lesson learned : the display of Chitubox is not « simplified » but an accurate rendition of the future printed part. And It’s therefore better to go for .stl files. I need to fine tune the resolution of the export, though. High resolution is « heavy », and low resolution can result in round part appearing square - literally. Hubert

That’s a technique I would not use … Nothing makes me run faster away from the threat than Patricia using hairspray 😱 Hubert

Beautiful work Hubert

I'm not in Quinta do Anjo anymore (it was near Palmela on the Setubal Peninsula). I now live In Santo Estevao, 40 km south of Santarem, in an area called "Ribatejo". It's about 1 h 20 from your place. As you live near Tomar, bookmark the "Festa dos Tabuleiros" in 2027. Unique and absolutely a Must See. Hubert.