**** DONE: GB-45 1/48 Gloster Gladiator - BoB/Foreign Service

rochie · Feb 4, 2020

Andy.

look here Rich and Greg's Airplane Page: GLOSTER GLADIATOR REBUILD

details of whats going on under the engine cowl

Crimea_River · Feb 4, 2020

Airframes said:
Good stuff so far Andy. Those 'trumpets' are, I believe, the carb and possibly oil cooler intakes.
Looking at the parts fit, if I decide to do a second Gladiator, I think I'll use the old, but still good, Inpact kit, also released under the Pyro, Lifelike and Lindbergh labels. When first released in the mid 1960s, it was way ahead of its time, and even by today's standards, the detail is still pretty good. Built one around 1970, and was impressed at the time.

Thanks Terry. I shouldn't be too negative about this kit as there's lots to go yet and there appear to be many virtues. It just bugs me when I see wrong stuff and I always struggle with just leaving such errors. The reason I'm not sure about those "trumpets" is that I would think the carb air intake is the one below the cowl seen here:

However, Karl's link (thanks Karl - you da man!) does identify them as the intakes for the oil cooler and cockpit heat. So, that's now solved!

Airframes · Feb 4, 2020

Yeah, wasn't sure about the carb, seeing as the intake is below the engine, but thought that at least one of the trumpets was the oil cooler intake.
I've had a quick look at my kit in the stash, and overall it looks OK, but, from memory looking at an Inpact kit a year or two back, I think the older kit may have an edge here and there and, with a bit of extra work in the detail areas, could urn out very nicely.

rochie · Feb 4, 2020

Crimea_River said:
However, Karl's link (thanks Karl - you da man!) does identify them as the intakes for the oil cooler and cockpit heat. So, that's now solved!

i have my moments

Donivanp · Feb 4, 2020

Nice work. I'd have destroyed the gun trying to drill it out.

Wurger · Feb 4, 2020

Snautzer01 · Feb 5, 2020

Crimea_River said:
OK, here we go. The first thing I assembled was the cowl which, for some reason, is provided in 3 pieces. One is a full semi-circle and the other two are quarters so why the latter two could not have been made as one piece is beyond me. None of the pieces have locating pins so it's a matter of slip-slidin' the pieces together until they kinda line up. Lining up the parts is not made any easier given that the thicknesses of the mating parts vary. At any rate, here's what I ended up with before tackling the seams:

View attachment 568642 View attachment 568643

One reviewer mentioned that he found that the small troughs for the machine guns on the sides of the cowl opening (seen in the pic below) didn't line up with the troughs in the fuselage. Heck, I don't even have those so I'll need to cut these into the plastic once I get everything lined up.

View attachment 568648

The engine isn't too bad and is made up of 4 major pieces: the cylinder heads, push rods, crank case, and intake pipes. There's a prominent piece that is not featured and that is what I believe to be the oil sump that sits between the lower two cylinders. This, along with some piping, is something that I'll want to add. All of the parts go together reasonably well, though I had trouble fitting the crank case to the push rods as the hole in the former was too small. I ended up having to file down the flange on the push rod assembly and relied on the Tamiya glue to soften everything so that it would press together firmly. Now here's the thing: there is no positive means of locating the crank case relative to the cylinders so you have to carefully eyeball the piece so that the straight part on the top is perpendicular to the vertical axis of the engine. The two intake trumpets were also drilled out - still trying to figure out what these are.

View attachment 568644

Now, a similar issue occurs when fitting the engine to the firewall. Again there is no positive means of centering the engine so I marked the centers and used my Mk I eyeball to make sure the top cylinder ends up vertical.

View attachment 568645

The same thing will now happen again with the cowl and I'll need to make sure that everything lines up visually.

With the cowl cured, I started to work on the seams and things are complicated by the amount of detail that one has to avoid removing. The seam I'm working on below runs between the raised rectangular details and you can see that, despite trying to take care with my file, I managed to flatten the high point of one of the cylinder head bulges

View attachment 568647

Sprue gates are plentiful, often large, and oddly placed. The one below behind the cockpit sits half way on top of a raised panel. Go figure.....

View attachment 568646

This kit will keep me on my toes.

Bustedwing · Feb 7, 2020

Liking this !

Crimea_River · Feb 8, 2020

Thanks guys.

I have some cockpit work to show you today. Another omission from the kit is the bulkhead behind the pilot seat. Whether the cockpit is posed open or not, this is an important feature that would easily be seen so I set about making one from scratch.

Work started by cutting out a piece of styrene card and shaping one side until it fit properly against the contour of the inner cockpit wall.

Once the shape was correct, the centerline was drawn on the bulkhead. I did this by measuring the distance from the fuselage seam to the inner cockpit wall along the lower edge of the bulkhead. The line was drawn and adjusted a couple of times by placing the bulkhead in the fuselage and looking straight down the aircraft axis from the nose until the drawn centerline lined up with the top and bottom fuselage seams. I then placed the bulkhead on my work surface and stuck some tape on the back so that the edge of the tape lined up with the centerline (below).

The tape was then cut along the edge of the bulkhead:

Then it was peeled off and stuck to the front, aligning the tape edge to the centerline. In this case, I actually moved it out a little to given me some wiggle room for adjustment - better to cut the piece too big than too small.

The first trial fit revealed that the bulkhead was too wide at the top so I began making it narrower using a file. I was careful to remove the same amount from both sides so that the part stayed symmetrical.

After a couple of trials, I realized that the fuselage halves were actually both a bit warped and that this was messing with my adjustments. I was risking cutting the bulkhead too narrow so I assembled the halves together using tape to hold everything (not a simple task with no locating pins!). I continued to adjust and check for proper fit again, this time with the rear canopy piece dry-fitted as well to make sure everything would line up properly.

Once I was satisfied, I cut the upper part of the bulkhead to the proper shape and CA-glued it securely to one side. Details were then added.

That's today's episode. Thanks for following along.

Bustedwing · Feb 8, 2020

Nice work !

Wurger · Feb 8, 2020

Gnomey · Feb 8, 2020

Lovely work so far Andy!

Donivanp · Feb 9, 2020

Everyone else said "Nice" and it is but I don't want to sound like everyone else, so SWEET!

Crimea_River · Feb 9, 2020

Thanks Don. Did some more last night and will post some pics "soon"

Crimea_River · Feb 9, 2020

Did some work last night and a bit today. The structure behind the cockpit was built up with card and the basic kit radio was added. Before I got too far ahead, I painted what was there. The closeups, as always, show some areas that could be cleaner and I'll see what I can do about those.

Forgot to mention that in the last pic, the moulded diagonal brace was scraped away and a new piece was added to replace it further inboard.

So much for not adding too much detail . I'm well on my way to doing just that.

Wurger · Feb 9, 2020

Donivanp · Feb 9, 2020

To much, not enough, just the right amount. It's all in the eye of the beholder! And you be beholden!

nsmekanik · Feb 10, 2020

The anvil is taking a beating as you pound this one into submission with your usual flair Andy, lovely to see

Gnomey · Feb 11, 2020

Good work so far Andy!

Crimea_River · Feb 11, 2020

Thanks guys. I can throw up a small update here, though work has progressed beyond what you see here. Got on a bit of a tear and didn't stop to take pics so I'll post another update tomorrow.

I played with the instrument panel a little. The kit decals for this have nothing but black discs so I wonder what the philosophy of the clear panel is supposed to be? Option 1 is shown below. I decided to try painting blobs of white on the back of the panel and then scratch away where I want the black to be, leaving a semblance of dials and numbers. Result - FAIL. The Tamiya white, being acrylic, came off in flakes, plus the clear plastic is so thick that the back of the instrument would be barely visible, even if I painted the faces perfectly.

Option 2 entailed painting the front of the panel Tamiya Rubber Black and working with that. So much for the need for a clear panel.

The instrument faces will be made using some old Mike Grant instrument decals for jets that I have.

On the fuselage sides, an abundance of reference pics made it hard for me to ignore missing detail so I built what would be seen. Below you can see the start of the added detail on both sides.

A short update yes. More to come.

**** DONE: GB-45 1/48 Gloster Gladiator - BoB/Foreign Service

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