Having put in the Airwaves interior, I went nutsoid and added more formers and stringers, probably far too many. I am still doing interior cockpit owrk, etc.
I also built my Valom torpedo with MAT. The provided MAT was too long by about a third so I modified it appropriately. I have also been working on the bomb bay, the doors, and how to hang the torp correctly. This has got me all confused again. The Valom bomb bay doors are same size as Airfix but have a line (see black line) denoting, I believe, the two parts of an articulated door. Evidently when it opens the inner (center) parts are pushed out and ride up along the smaller outer part. You can see this best in the photo of the crew loading up a torp. But Valom doesn't not represent the doors that way when open. I hung them and they were way too far down.
The next point of confusion is getting a really clear shot of the doors "closed" around the torpedo. Now we know the torp is too long for the bomb bay and the MAT won't fit anyway, so that says the doors cannot completely close, or seems to say that. No drawings are provided. I know the ventral gunner station is "raised" to provide clearance, but does that mean enough clearance for the torp to stick out the closed doors, at a slight angle, just below the raised gunner station.
All this comes back to the original bomb bay doors. Several books say the "outer" (upper 1/3) of the bomb bay doors was fixed open. Some say the center section was removed, but I don't know what a "center section" is on these doors. I am beginning to think "fixed open" didn't mean open-open, but rather that the inner part was slid into the outer part permanently.
Thus, I think that I should cut the Valom doors along the line, mount the inner part inside the outer part as if it had slid up, then glue the combined part in place, closed. Thus will leave a space between the closed doors for the torpedo. (Unstated is that all this will be too thick and I'll have to make my own doors, or at least part of them).
I think I understand what I said. For those confused, I wish to portray my Hampden with torp loaded and ready to go, so the doors need to be in take-off/flight position, not wide open.
