SE5a CONSTRUCTION BEGINNING TO . . .

[Greyhead]

Squarehead


Glad you’ve found the thread useful; any specific questions just ask and I’ll do my best to help.


Grahame


Both top wings are complete and ready for the ailerons, so before I start on the bottom wings I decided to have a change and go back to the fuselage and build the under pan.


Some SE5a’s had louvers and some had holes; to aid cooling I’ve gone for the latter. It’s very important to have ample escape routes for the hot air; I aim for twice as much as the cooling air that enters the cowl. Here the under pan, made from 1/32nd ply is ready be covered with litho plate, which has been marked out ready for the “rivets” to be embossed.





The litho plate will be glued to the ply before the holes are cut out.





The litho plate is unsupported at the rear because it has to extend back further than the ply backing, for this reason the litho plate is best used non-annealed. Because there are only the 2 side bends and no compound curves the litho plate is still workable in this state.





The finished under pan in position; just the attachment “hinges” to be fitted but as these are quite delicate I’ll leave them till much later in the build.

[Greyhead]

With the top wings fitted I confirmed the positions of the flying wires where they pass through the lower wing stubs, built in the guides and covered them. Where the wing stubs join the fuselage there is a metal cover riveted to the wing and the front section to the fuselage, the rear section is laced to the fuselage fabric.


When forming litho plate it is sometimes easier to make a former rather than use the model and this is what I decided to do this time. There is a lot of forming to be gone so the litho plate is annealed; the photo shows the effect you get after annealing, the soap has turned very dark brown, nearly black in places.





A “generous” blank is cut; it does help to follow the shape to some degree.





Start the forming using a piece of suitably sized soft balsa until it gets to this sort of stage.





The excess litho plate should now be cut away to allow the final shaping; here the front has been completed.





When all the shaping has been done the part can be finally trimmed to the finished size.





Rivets are embossed using an old ballpoint pen and the lacing holes punched out with a pin. The cover is laced very loosely, glue applied to the faces and the lacing gradually tightened as the cover is manoeuvred into position.

[Guest]

A pleasure to see something take shape as always and, once again, using basic techniques and traditional materials.

Lovely job Grahame

[Greyhead]

I thought I deserved an easy weekend so it’s on with the top ailerons. As with all things SE5a there are some complications but they are for later, for now it’s just good old “balsa bashing”, very therapeutic!

[Greyhead]

As I’m going to sunnier climes for a week tomorrow I didn’t want to start on anything major today so looked around for some simple detailing.


First the luggage hatch. all that was needed was to cover the section previously remove with Solartex, add a couple of litho plate hinges and a brass fastener.





On this model there is no point in making the hatch openable so the hinges and catch are imitation and the hatch itself is simply glued in position.


Next the steps, being an SE5a they aren’t just holes cut into the fuselage sides as most WW1 planes used, they have a hinged flap that is pushed out of the way by the pilots foot, the flap then closes to fill the hole; this has definite advantages and disadvantages for modelling. The advantage is that there is no need to weaken the fuselage by cutting a hole in the fuselage in an area that is already compromised by the cockpit cut out, the disadvantage is that it is a more complicated build!


I used 2 layers of litho plate. First the “flap” is cut out then the “hole” with a generous surround, the rivets are embossed and the 2 halves glued together and the litho plate formed around the “flap” to give it some depth before finally filing to size.





To cut the arc of the hole the easiest way is to form a close “perforated” line using the point of the scalpel before cutting along the line again with the pointed scalpel, then tidy up with a file.


At this point I have to say that these are not the steps I’ll be using! I had previously drawn the shape to scale and stored it on the computer until it would be required. Today I printed them out onto sticky labels and got to work. When I glued them in place and sat back to admire my handiwork I thought, “WW1 pilots must have had dainty little feet to use them steps!!” A quick check on the size showed that they were in fact only 63% of the required size. Although this has never happened before for some reason the computer had resized the drawing to fit the labels and I hadn’t noticed! The moral is measure twice and cut once.

[Greyhead]

Now back in England and missing the sun, but I have to admit that I did suffer from “withdrawal symptoms” whilst abroad not having my daily fix of “shed time”!!


I’ve made new steps, this time the correct size, no point posting a photo as they look the same as the first ones, just bigger!


One of the rubber “O” rings I’d used on the undercarriage has broken; looking at it carefully it appears to have had small nick, probably by being stretched tight over a litho plate edge, which has subsequently caused the failure. I’ve now used small bungee cord, which should be a lot stronger and while I had the wheels off I fitted the wheel covers.





With all wings built I also tried a test assembly.





Strangely, although the SE5a has a wing span approximately 3 " less than the Elf, it has the appearance of a bigger model.

[Guest]

Nice work there Grahame and even better to see a pic of the whole plane, She certainly does look the part now, Can't wait to see her when she is finally finished.

You are right about the appearance, she certainly does look like a big plane.

Regards.........Mark.

[Greyhead]

Mark

All the major construction is now finished (it’s only taken 15 months!!) just the interplane struts to do but I’m trying to find some suitable spruce and it’s not easy to come by. I think the final detailing, painting and weathering will probably take another 9 months as hopefully building will take a back seat to flying over the summer.

Although the wingspan is less, the chord is about 50% more, I think this and the blunt front end is what makes the Se5a look that much bigger than the Elf.

Grahame

[Guest]

I can only agree with you there Grahame,

Nice to see all the hardwork done, the real beauty will be in the finish, sometimes it is a shame to cover all that hard work up but I am sure the weathering will take care of that. Having got this far to produce such a fantastic looking Model, No point in rushing it now to get it finished and potentially spoiling it.

I suppose in a way having got the model this far, you can afford to relax a bit now and do little bits at a time in the warm late evenings (hopefully!!) and still enjoy some flying time during the days with other models...best of both worlds !!

I think the final detailing and painting is where she will really come to life and I am really looking forwards to seeing the pics.

I would imagine she is going to be quite an awesome sight in the air with that Laser 4 Stroke on song too !!

Regards......Mark.

[Guest]

Those fairings on the landing gear really look good. (Well, it All looks great) How are they attached?

Steve

[Greyhead]

A good question and I wish I had an equally good answer, but I don’t! At the moment the fairings aren’t attached at all.


My idea is that the first few flights will be without them whilst I “fine tune” the bungees to get the correct amount of spring, which I’d want to do anyway, then once I’m happy with the undercarriage I’ll attach the fairings, possibly using silicon sealant if I can’t think of a way to make them easily detachable.


As I was answering Steve’s question I thought I might as well add this photo.


I’ve added a couple details to the decking, namely the transparent window and a (non-functional) inspection hatch; the side doesn’t look as empty now.

[Greyhead]

I’ve given up on the spruce for the interplane struts and decided to use strip pine wood from B&Q as I did for the undercarriage.


First the blanks are cut out and then bolted together for the final shaping of the profiles.





Once the profiles are correct, a couple of hours with the Dremmel and a sanding block and we have a set of reasonable struts.





The struts will not be attached rigidly to the wings but will be allowed to “swing” slightly in a spanwise direction. To enable this to happen the fixings are (at the moment) closed loop adaptors, which also allow for some adjustment in the effective length of the struts; they are screwed into hardwood blocks drilled and tapped to suit.





The struts themselves will be attached to the fixings by piano wire pins and the whole lot hidden by the interplane bracing wire attachment covers.





I’m having a few doubts about the strength of the closed loop adaptors for this critical job; they are made from brass and I’m wondering if I should really make my own fixings from 2mm threaded steel rod. I’ll certainly give it a go and if it’s not too difficult a job drilling a 1mm hole in 2mm threaded rod then steel fixings it will be!

[Guest]

After some time away I just caught up with this thread.

Grahame this is beautiful. :respect1:

[Greyhead]

I have decided to stick with the closed loop adaptors for the inter plane strut attachment points; after all I used them to connect the cabane struts and Warren girders on the Elf and they’ve stood the test of time. Some of the steel 14Ba bolts have sheared off and been replaced but the closed loop adaptors are still fine.


The aileron control horns are made from 0.5mm galvanised steel with 2 pegs soldered in place to make them more secure in the aileron leading edge.





The aileron LE has balsa blocks to support the hinges and one is routed out to also accept the horn, the plate soldered to the hinge pins will add further strength.





As there are 4 control horns, all of which will be interconnected, it is important that they are all as near as possible identical; therefore once they had been “roughed out” I joined them together with a pin through the main actuating hole for the final filing to shape and a jig ensured that they were epoxied in the same relative positions on the ailerons.

[Greyhead]

I’ve now covered the wings and I have to admit that the Solartex shows no inclination to “lift” from the under cambered section, the wood was pre-treated with Solarlac Clearcoat, which greatly increases the strength of the bond with the Solartex but I’m going to stick to my original idea and also stitch the fabric to the ribs just in case.





Covering is one of my favourite parts of modelling; it is at this stage that the model stops being a “construction” and starts to become a model aircraft. It always gives me a boost to see the “solid” shape of the model.


Then again the boost might just come from the use of copious amounts of Clearcoat in the confines of the shed!!!