Stearman build

Should sound lovely on that Zim can Kevin!

What are you doing for an air outlet for the can cooling?

Ive built a balsa box to reduce heat transfer to to fuel tank and will make 'suitable outlet holes into the Fuselage aft of the tank.

Stearmans are open cockpit so there should be plenty of exit area.

Updated - see balsa box for can and planned cooling

One bright side of being outside the EU is if the shop is set up to export to us they dont charge German VAT - a real blow. If you keep the invoice < £135 keeps you below the UK import duty threshold. The exhaust kit was sipped Thursday and arrived Tuesday.

When commencing this project, i was determined to make the field assembly easy which seemed easy in theory but putting my ideas into practice has stretched me somewhat. I also wanted to avoid having 12 chunky and unrealistic clevis to constantly adjust.
My solution was to create intersecting boxes in the wing structure. One box to accept the interplane strut and a second to accept a fitting which combines the paired flying wires and secures everything with a single screw. The wires are cosmetic only so will be tensioned by springs in the fuselage & upper centre section. The fittings are fabricated from stainless strip & half round brass block silver soldered in place. Then m2 bolts & commercial brass spacers.

Nice work Kevin, looking forward to seeing the model at Cashmoor.

Some of you may remember when i started this project 2 yrs ago I chose to base it on NC 9039H because I just fell in love with the red / silver colour scheme. I knew the full size had undergone a massive restoration and thought it had been retired to a specialist museum in California.

However, Ive recently discovered the aircraft was used for filming some improbable or impossible mission at Duxford last Nov by some guy called Tom Cruise whoever he might be. Personally i think a beautiful aircraft has been ruined.

Who the hell is Tom Cruise? :lol: His last foray into aircraft stunts, ie;Top Gun film we lost another famous aerobatic pilot - Art Sholl

Upper wing and centre section now complete but the T/E balsa was a bit soft and has suffered some hanger rash so i've reinforced these with 1.5 mm hardwood. Ready to cover.

Kevin - Looking very impressive now - seems a pity to cover up all that structure, what covering
material have you decided on ?
Regards

Colin.

The jury is still out with options of Oratex or a newer product Diatex used extensively by professional model builders "Fighteraces"

Brian recently posted about the product.

the upper and lower aileron profiles and pivot points are not equal so this mock up seemed preferable to my mathematics ability to determine the ideal pivot points for the aileron interconnecting rod. The critical objective being to avoid introducing adverse aileron differential.