PZL P.11c - Polish Fighter - IBG - 1/32

[Kaireckstadt]

What a progress Rob! You are really a high speed modeler in this case.

Awesome looking cockpit section. 
curious for the next update! 

[DocRob]

5 hours ago, belugawhaleman said:

Great build so far Rob. I'm enjoying this build of this unique aircraft.

Thanks a lot, I like to wander off the trotten pathes a lot. This kit draws you in, you don't want to stop and I haven't expected it that way.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

2 hours ago, Kaireckstadt said:

What a progress Rob! You are really a high speed modeler in this case.

Awesome looking cockpit section. 
curious for the next update! 

Thanks Kai, normally I'm not very fast, while building my models, but this one got me hooked. I had some stressful days, the last weeks, so it's a relief to find some distraction free time for the PZL.
This plane to me stands for the brave resistance, Polish people put up against the fascist hordes, invading their homeland.

Cheers Rob

[HubertB]

Great progress, Rob.

Some comments about the engine, if I may.

First, what you describe as « the ignition ring » is in fact a kind of pressure monitoring. It was typical of Bristol engines of that time, and, incidentally, of G&R engines, which were initially i spired by the Jupiter, which G&R built under licence.

Second, the engine was less monochromatic than you have painted it. The reduction gear crankcase, the pushrods’ casings (there were two pushrods, one behind another, for admission and exhaust, aligned on the center of each cylinder, and encased in a fairing which is what you see) and the casings of the valve arms, at the head of the cylinder, were black enameled.

Finally, the intake manifold was aluminium with a black center pipe.

Admittedly, most of the engine will not be visible, but maybe you’ll want to add some touches of color.

Hubert

[GazzaS]

Nice paintwork, Rob.  Saw some news on your neighborhood this morning.  Hopefully you're not getting anything from that volcano.

[DocRob]

17 hours ago, HubertB said:

Great progress, Rob.

Some comments about the engine, if I may.

First, what you describe as « the ignition ring » is in fact a kind of pressure monitoring. It was typical of Bristol engines of that time, and, incidentally, of G&R engines, which were initially i spired by the Jupiter, which G&R built under licence.

Second, the engine was less monochromatic than you have painted it. The reduction gear crankcase, the pushrods’ casings (there were two pushrods, one behind another, for admission and exhaust, aligned on the center of each cylinder, and encased in a fairing which is what you see) and the casings of the valve arms, at the head of the cylinder, were black enameled.

Finally, the intake manifold was aluminium with a black center pipe.

Admittedly, most of the engine will not be visible, but maybe you’ll want to add some touches of color.

Thank you Hubert, I'm definitely not an expert with the license build Mercury engine and haven't cared very much about historical correctness of the coloring. The pictures I viewed, showed different layouts and coloring. The cylinder heads sometimes are silver, sometimes half black,... . You are absolutely right about the push rod fairings and rocker covers, which seem to be black on the original engines. 

This to me looks like an ignition harness, albeit on some pictures, I saw spark plugs on the side of the cylinder head, but some seem to show this layout.

Like you said, most of the engines features will be hidden behind the fairings and I often do modelling with the sense of making it look right to me personal. I do  not claim to build historical correct and like my bit of free styling, but nonetheless, I' am very interested in your facts and opinions, as I like to learn from you all. I know, you spent some time with these type of engines, even doing CAD-drawings for 3D printing, so I can understand, when my approach lets your toa nails curl 

Thanks for letting me know Hubert

Cheers Rob
 

[DocRob]

16 hours ago, GazzaS said:

Nice paintwork, Rob.  Saw some news on your neighborhood this morning.  Hopefully you're not getting anything from that volcano.

Thank you Gaz, in the moment we are fine here and have no influences from the volcano other than some headaches and a bad taste, because of the ash and gases. The situation on La Palma is worse though, with more than 1000 houses destroyed and there is no end in sight, as the volcano opens new blowholes. The lava entered the sea and besides forming a new half isle, there are developing acid gases, which we hope will not be blown in our direction.
Today, we had some waves and I had a refreshing and exhausting long surf session, which freed my mind and felt good, because bad thoughts accumulate over time, with that eruption in the background.
One of the worst aspects with the volcano is, that nearly all forecasts by the scientists proved wrong. Sure, there is no exact predicting an eruption like this, but it feels like a total fail to me. It teaches us to prepare a bit more, as we are living on a volcano as well. I'm not a prepper, but we will at least keep our important documents in reach.

The PZL build is another good medicine for unrest souls like me, which make it hard to leave it on the bench. Today though, I will relax and probably not build any further with the aching muscles of my arms and Tomorrow, it's NFL's early game with my fav Cowboys on the screen.

Cheers Rob

[Peterpools]

Rob

Glad you are safe and sound from the volcano and our hearts go out to all those who lost their homes and more.

Thoroughly enjoying your build and tip my cap to your NMF treatment of both the aircraft and the engine. The added details add the right tough and the overall effect is perfect.

Keep 'em comin

Peter

[DocRob]

13 minutes ago, Peterpools said:

Glad you are safe and sound from the volcano and our hearts go out to all those who lost their homes and more.

Thoroughly enjoying your build and tip my cap to your NMF treatment of both the aircraft and the engine. The added details add the right tough and the overall effect is perfect.

Thank you Peter, since today we were hit by the ashes of the volcano as the win is now from the north. Nothing compared to what the people of La Palma are going through, but here things are turning black now, literally.

I was surfing in the morning and on my way back home, I snapped this shot of the ash clouds.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

The last days, were full of distractions from the volcano thing, which nags always in the back of the head, as you can do nothing about it, a strange feeling. These distractions were mostly not modelling related, but I managed to close the fuselage and attach the tail.
I glued the fuselage firs on the bottom side, because I noticed a small, but closable gap on the upper side. After curing, the upper side was glued without troubles with the help of some rubber bands.
The rudders are a bit strange designed and you should test fit and open the holes for the rudders with a 1mm drill bit. 

Cheers Rob

Waiting for the glue to cure. The surface detail of the kit is absolutely top notch.

Like most times, not to much of the cockpit area remains in vicinity, but the silver color helps a bit.

 

[harv]

That looks sweet !!....harv

[Peterpools]

Rob

Fantastic progress for sure. Your careful and delicate work looks unreal.

Keep 'em comin

Peter

[HubertB]

Very nice, Rob.

and I confirm that this is not the ignition harness. On these engines, the spark plugs (two per cylinder) were located on the side - left and right when wiewed from the front - of each cylinder.

Hubert

[GazzaS]

Nice!

[Kaireckstadt]

Really nice Rob! 

[DocRob]

@harv, @Peterpools, @GazzaS, @Kaireckstadt: Muchas gracias Amigos.

@HubertB, I knew, I should have looked deeper into some source material . Now I know, that my engine lacks the ignition wiring. I will spend a lot of work on the fairings, to distract from my failures with the engine. 
I ordered an ICM Gloster Gladiator MK.1 kit yesterday, so I will have a second chance with the Bristol Mercury. 

Cheers Rob

[HubertB]

Don’t worry too much about the ignition wiring, Rob. My P-11 is stalled because of my AMS on just the ignition wires ( but it’s just a lame excuse, because I could finish it anytime now). They run from the sides of the cylinders to the base of the intake manifold, on the rear of the engine, and will be barely visible behind the engine fairing, through the aperture of the cowling. Only the experten (like me) will know.

Hubert

[Martinnfb]

That volcano situation seems super scary, stay safe Rob. Hopefully the ash is the all of it. What a marvellous build, I am following with excitement.

Cheers

Martin

 

[DocRob]

11 hours ago, Martinnfb said:

That volcano situation seems super scary, stay safe Rob. Hopefully the ash is the all of it. What a marvellous build, I am following with excitement.

Thanks for the pics Martin. It almost seems as if the IBG kit has more surface details than the one in your photos. They must have got the original wrong for sure .
The stressed skin effect looks great with the harsh lighting, IBG didn't care about that.

Other pictures of the Krakow Museum PZL show a very glossy paintjob, but in your pictures it looks more realistic matte. Does anybody know, if they repainted the PZL or was the gloss only photoshop magic?

The volcano is indeed threatening here too. After I removed ash for some hours yesterday, today I awoke in the middle of the night with itchy eyes and the feeling, I could only breath with half of my lungs and had some bad headaches . The eruption doesn't seem to stop soon and I never looked so often for the wind prognosis.

Cheers Rob

[HubertB]

The glossy appearance in Krakow is a recent repainting.

Here are the ones I took back in 2011. Btw, I had forgotten I took a pic of the engine next to it. Although the color of the crankcase and pushrods' casings is anything but prototypical, you can see the ignition wires running from the plugs on the sides (remembering I had those would have saved me a looooong internet search for my own P-11c).

 

HTH

Hubert

 

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, HubertB said:

The glossy appearance in Krakow is a recent repainting.

Here are the ones I took back in 2011. Btw, I had forgotten I took a pic of the engine next to it. Although the color of the crankcase and pushrods' casings is anything but prototypical, you can see the ignition wires running from the plugs on the sides (remembering I had those would have saved me a looooong internet search for my own P-11c).

Thank you Hubert, for passing the information of the repainting and your detailed and beautiful pictures. The layout of the ignition is completely clear now, but I wonder, what IBG molded onto the front side of their cylinders, looking like a spark plug and being connected to a screw in the crank case with the PE-wire. There is no trace of that in your picture.
I cropped one picture of the Bitskrieg resin engine, which featured the same thingy on the front side near the casing for the rocker arm, but they also seem to show the spark plug placement on both sides of the cylinder.

Cheers Rob

I

 

[Bomber_County]

Rob, yet again I blink and you have closed up…l.stunning build……..hope the volcano doesn’t get to nasty for you guys…

[HubertB]

The engine shown is more likely a Pegasus than a Mercury (assuming the prop is prototypical, 3-bladed ones were fitted to the -24, not the -11) and the designs evolved over time anyway.

As I mentioned, the « blob » on the front is a kind of pressure monitoring device. It was standard on the Bristol Jupiter and its derivatives like the Mercury. It was also used by Gnome and Rhone, who first produced Jupiters under licence, than went their own way, but reused some engineering features of Bristol engines.

It was certainly present on the G&R Mistral 9 which I designed when Marcin and I wrongly assumed, for a few days, that the Paris Air show 1932 P-11 c prototype had a Mistral fitted rather than a Mercury.

Hubert

PS: … and the spark plugs show on the sides of the Bitzkrieg cylinders

[DocRob]

17 minutes ago, HubertB said:

The engine shown is more likely a Pegasus than a Mercury (assuming the prop is prototypical, 3-bladed ones were fitted to the -24, not the -11) and the designs evolved over time anyway.

As I mentioned, the « blob » on the front is a kind of pressure monitoring device. It was standard on the Bristol Jupiter and its derivatives like the Mercury. It was also used by Gnome and Rhone, who first produced Jupiters under licence, than went their own way, but reused some engineering features of Bristol engines.

It was certainly present on the G&R Mistral 9 which I designed when Marcin and I wrongly assumed, for a few days, that the Paris Air show 1932 P-11 c prototype had a Mistral fitted rather than a Mercury.

Thanks Hubert, the smoke clears more and more. 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Today I added the wheel struts, which are reinforced with a PE strip, to get the angle right, easy, after the CA settled, I glued the plastic struts into their holes in the fuselage and let the weight of the kit taught the PE strips.
I installed the wing guns, which were fixed into a bent PE bracket and pre-painted. Before gluing in the guns, I removed their barrels and drilled a 0,5 mm hole instead to mount the burnished brass barrels after painting.
Next was gluing the wing parts together, no problems here, but you have to be careful, not to destroy surface details with gluey fingerprints, as they are not easy to replicate with the corrugated structure.

For a while, this will be the last view into the fuselage. I plan to show the panels in open position finally, but will glue them in place temporally with a tiny amount of white glue (They fit like a glove). The machine guns will be added later, along with some detail painting.

This is only a mock up pic, with the wings only dry fitted onto the fuselage. I plan to paint fuselage and wings separately and join them after decaling.

Cheers Rob