Evening good people,
The play goes on at the table and another full inspection of the fusi found no damage from yesterday's pre-flight...
Stunning work allen , its a thing of beauty already , i love it . Good to hear the clothes pin drama didnt cause any damage ( except to your nerves , but a few cold ones soon settled those im sure ) keep up the good work mate , cheers tony
Thanks my friend! All is back to normal today and the couple of Weizens last night did the trick to get me back in the groove...
Yo! Youngerthanme,
Just caught up on your build - and when I got to the camo painting, thought you had gone back to your childhood... But no, you recovered and made the job look fantastic. I commend your skill and work here.
That's it time to sober up...
Olderthanyou.
Much appreciated Olderthanme! Happy to see you looking in on me, buddy. I hope your finger is healing up well and I see you are playing scratchy a little too...
Just gets better and better Allen. :smiling3:
Some fantastic detailing for sure, pleased to hear that it's early,"pre wing" flight was damage free too.
Thanks Andy! I really thought it was the end of the line for this puppy and my meager attempts. I do have to finish it now, for sure...
Great work with the oil wash. It's worked a treat. Lucky with the pinging clothes peg, could have been much worse. I have CAed some strips of soft rubber into the jaws of a few pegs to stop them sliding off. It only works up to a point though.
Thanks too Jim! I was happy they worked out as good as they did. The oils had totally slipped my mind, and I have a lot of them. The clothespins are with rubber pads in them. That's why I bought them in the first place. Maybe it slipped off because of the oil wash on the cowling. I don't know and probably never will...
So. we painted up all the brass turnbuckles with black and finally glued the bridge in place over the cockpit. While letting it dry, I put a new piece of rigging in the tail to replace the one I broke off early in the build. I used the same method as the rigging for the cowling. A bit of round stretched sprue with the rigging end CA'd to it...
The kit has 2 clear parts in it. One is the fuel line gage on the top wing bridge and the other is the wind screen. After playing around, trying to find a way to affix it, I gave up. This Halberstadt is not going to have one, as it was shot up in a dogfight. End of the story!!!...
As I also mentioned earlier, the rigging from the cowling up to the bridge was going to be the hardest of them all. I would need at least 3-4 hands to do them. I made up a fusi thang holding tub so at least I could try it with 2 hands,

Just a foam piece, a supperware container and two weights to keep it from tipping over. Armed with 2 sets of tweezers, I went on with threading the line through the eyelets,

It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. Once they were threaded, I pulled them forward to the front and clipped the end with a red clamp (in the background), to make it taunt. With a flat shaved toothpick with a drop of CA on it, I attacked the eyelet from behind and coated the line and the eyelet. I did the same with the other side. All went well and is holding so far,

I just had to nip the excess line off carefully and Viola. The hard part was done!!! I do have to glue the fuel line end under the right wing to the fuel tank outlet, next to the strut eyelets. I then did a test fit of the landing gear assembly to see how everything would line up on the fusi thang,

It doesn't look too bad and the fit was good. I do need to do some paint touchups on the cowling and wing roots though.
Then came a terrible shock from hell!!!

Damn, we were losing the match against Erfurt!!! There was still plenty of time and we still had a chance, but after 90 minutes, we lost 2-0.........
Heartbroken, I sadly went back to work at the table and did another test fit,

The wings are the heaviest parts on the Halberstadt and the landing gear assembly is the lightest......And it does wobble a bit. The wing rigging will have to be done with the plane upside down so the landing gear has no stress on it. Not a big deal, and I'll have to break out my larger wing thingy tub to do it, either way. Another pic,

I also glassed the wing compass with a big drop of M Krystal Klear. It's all looking up and in the right direction now. I removed the landing gear and put my baby to bed until tomorrow...
It's a holiday tomorrow, so work will continue as usual. Thanks again folks and enjoy the day off, if you have one...
Prost
Allen