WheresMyMojo's Red Baron's Fokker Dr.1 crashes and burns

[WheresMyMojo]

Well, 2PM, no pics as I'm just signing in to say I'm going to have to leave it for a while and come back to it this evening. I've had my lunch, and I need to make a visit to the laundrette, which also means a bath so that I look vaguely human,

[WheresMyMojo]

no laundrette after all, I found some workshirts so thought booger it, had me bath, went for a walk and did some stretching instead.

Lower and middle wing glued together and guns fixed. I just hope they stay in place while I'm fiddling with the rigging. I drilled holes into the upper wing, and just caught two of them as they were about to pop through! I can just see a couple of marks on the upper wing surface but it's not too bad. I've dry-fitted the outer struts to keep the wing height consistent, but there's a little discrepancy with with alignment. The higher the wing, the further forward it sits, but this is pulling the struts forward too so they don't line up into the holes properly. I'll have another look into this when the top wing goes on and decide what to do then.



As folks are posting tunes they've been listening to, I thought I'd chip in too

[WheresMyMojo]

Despite the outer struts bearing the same number part, I solved my little problem by simply swapping them round, currently sitting here squeezing one glued strut to ensure it attaches properly! Guitar wire also super-glued into the upper wing. Instructions almost useless, had to Google pics for placement. it remains to be seen whether they'll stay in place whilst being bent into place, or just break off the wing.

EDIT: I've just realised that I spent 13.5 hours yesterday modeling (if you count washing sprue s prep rather than modeling), so that just gives me till 9PM to finish..no way, I knew I would be pushing it close anyway, but thought I had till 10:30...damn. Also, I just broke a strut, though I'll still try t finish the model....mumble grumble fokker fokker

[ShaunW]

Time is tight with this one Mojo, it's going to be a case of seeing how far you can get before the time runs out. I've only done two blitzes and failed on the first occasion and finished on the second go with minutes to spare. Blitzing is a fair old challenge, that's for sure!

[WheresMyMojo]

GAAAAAHHHHH!!! And, GAAAAAHHHH again!





I put the inner struts on back to front . I didn't realise at first and made things worse by trying to press the wing into alignment, which just squashed up the delicate strut joints. The rear fuselage joint is fairly large and it was easy to place, but I just couldn't get the front strut to sit in the joint, it's now melted short, maybe too short to fix. As the pics show, the result is a bit messy, with the wing joint on the outer strut also all gunked up so I couldn't align the wing. Re-glueing everything just melted the little pegs and the wing strut slid out of alignment.

It may be fixable but would take a fair amount of cleaning up. A weekend project just to fix this I think. With hindsight, it would have been a better idea anyway to do the central struts first, then when dry, to carefully bend the wing end up to glue the outer strut in place.

The wire rigging actually did as it was told, the rear wires sliding into the holes drilled for them, though now it's on it does look a little thicker than I anticipated. If I was to try the other rigging using guitar wire, I'd need some kind of super-glue accelerator, which I've not had a use for before.

[Clashcityrocker]

Breathe in.... hold.... breathe out. Repeat until a calmness descends on the workbench.
Good try. Don't think I could even come close to finishing a kit in 24 hours.

Nigel

[Sissel]

Ah, well you did come a far way. It's a good attempt. Fair go, mate.

[WheresMyMojo]

Normally it'd take me all my time to finish a simple single wing plane in the time, but I couldn't resist having a go at the rigging, which complicated things a bit. If I was paying more attention I wouldn't have messed the wings up and would have been much closer to finishing. A bit more fiddling showed that the front wires wouldn't have actually gone into the holes I'd drilled. Even though the guitar wire I used was quite thin it's still a little over-thick for using as rigging, at least at the angle I was attempting for the front. Next time I try rigging it'll be with the more conventional elastic thread.

After a closer look at the struts, I've realised that they're now unusable. To fix, I'd need to scratch some new inner struts, guessing the actual length as they're now overly short especially at the front, remove the wire rigging, clean up the wing and front fuselage without damaging the guns, and sort out that broken outer strut as well, which being quite thin may not want to play ball. Not sure I want to go through that rigmarole; if I still wanted build the Fokker it'd probably be easier to start all over again with a new kit.