SI's Sopwith Tabloid has a fiery impact - UD 4/2 initial assembly & fuselage

[Silent Invader]

For my 'Tommy And Fritz' Belgium 1914 project .....

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=72573.0

I shall attempt to scratchbuild a British early-WWI scout plane, the Sopwith Tabloid....

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith_Tabloid

For 'rescue the pilot games', the plane will be crash landed with an engine fire, much like in this image (not actually a Tabloid)....



More soon.

[Captain Blood]

Ooooh. Interesting...

Flames from Green Stuff and superglue? 

[Eric the Shed]

Ooooh. Interesting...

Flames from Green Stuff and superglue? 

I am sure that superglue is flammable

[Silent Invader]

Flames from Green Stuff and superglue?  

 

I'm pondering streaks and peaks of clear silicone sealant to which has been added either red, yellow, orange or black acrylic paint..... Though might get a bit messy in the making  

[gamer Mac]

Cool idea Steve

[Silent Invader]

For the plans I found an almost 'ready made' solution, which is the 'cut and stick' paper plane models by Fiddlers Green:

http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/

As luck would have it, they have the civilian Sopwith Tabloid floatplane that won the 1914 Schneider Trophy race, which is especially useful for sizing the wings and the fuselage of my proposed Sopwith Tabloid scout in 1914 British service.

Having downloaded the pdf plans, I resized them to 1/56 (a simple matter of printing the pdf at 100%, measuring the distance between the wings, then reprinting the PDF at the correctly scaled percentage).

I have ended up with drawings that have a wing tip-to-tip of approx 140mm versus the actual scaled at approx 139mm.

My plane won't be made from paper: I anticipate a mix of plasticard, wood, metal, wire etc though much of the materials and process will be made up as I go along.

First stage was to stick plans of the main parts to 1.5mm plasticard:




I used pritt-stick as the adhesive and so after it has set and the detail has been scribed through the paper I can wash/scrub the paper/glue away.

[OSHIROmodels]

Definitely looking forward to seeing this one Steve 

cheers

James

[Constable Bertrand]

Brilliant!

[Blackwolf]

Great idea from a master!

[Duke Donald]

This is looking very promising ... but I was wondering whether there isn't a risk a 1/56 plane will look too small next to 28mm minis, which are arguably are 1/56 in height but not in proportion. I did quite a few checks at some point and felt that planes, even more than cars, looked better when slightly oversized.

[Silent Invader]

Thanks but each to their own and 1/56 is my personal preference (the vehicle scale debate has been covered many times both here and elsewhere and isn't something that I want to digress over in this build thread  ).

[Andym]

Ohh, sounds interesting! Any thoughts on how you're going to do the fire?

[Silent Invader]

Regarding the fire:

I'm pondering streaks and peaks of clear silicone sealant to which has been added either red, yellow, orange or black acrylic paint.

Probably with flickering LEDs in the silicone.

Not 100% sure as will be doing a bit of experimentation.

 

[Malamute]

Not 100% sure as will be doing a bit of experimentation.

 

Heard that before

Can't wait to see this unfold

[Silent Invader]

 

It's the end of day 2: the plans were scribed onto the plasticard with the paper then scrubbed off using warm water and detergent, after which I started on the cutting out and parts-assembly.



Some of these parts might be too thick, in which case I'll have to remake them using a thinner plasticard.  The dry assembly will be telling and I see shaving, filing, filling and sanding in my future.