Hawker Osprey *** DNF ***

[JohnRatzenberger]

Well, going from a Tiger Moth with floats in silver wings guise, I almost for got the Hawker Osprey. While I initially thought I'd have to do the Merlin version, I then found I had forgotten the Aeroclub kit comes with vac-floats, so here we are.



This is good as it lets me get back to an older kit and to too-slowly-building collection of Silver Wings .... especially those very beautiful aircraft from Hawker Hart family ....

Small and simple parts count, but helped by the white metal interplane struts which will make it easier to erect the top wing. From there it will be a matter of cutting the included strut material for the center-section and various bracing struts. There are no "instructions" for the float struts, so I'll have to do a bit of 3-D measuring off the plans for them.

I have a huge stash of Silver Wings decals and will have to look through them to see if I have a scheme other than the kit provides, which seem to be useable.

I may not start for a couple days, but I'm here ....

[DavidWomby]

Here I was thinking I'd have to type all sorts of commiserations because this would be the Merlin kit but, no, you have one of John's Aeroclub gems. I'll follow this with interest.

David

[Arcwelder]

Such an attractive aircraft.. looking forward to seeing this come together.

[JohnRatzenberger]

First I had to look through my references; I think there may be a few more but ....



The Mushroom book has a few good period shots of float-Ospreys that will be useful.

The prize is an original manual (1932, updated to 1936) for the Hawker Hart that pretty much describes the construction and components of the Hart. Of course I'm not going to go into that much detail on this build.

One reason is that the fuselage walls are so thick that adding internal detail would be a waste of time. The kit comes with a seat and a stick.



Here are the main parts, I've cleaned up the plastic ones and cut the vac-float parts from the sheet.

Anyway, we're off .... I need to take a deep breath and do some planning. The kit is the wheeled version. The floats are thrown in and I'm supposed to figure the float strutage myself. I think some of the dimples in the fuselage for the gear will be useful, after all these could convert back & forth, but ....

[PaulBradley]

Very cool! I look forward to seeing this one come together.

[JohnRatzenberger]

An interlude, because I haven't been able to do anything since last post ....

IIRC, the very first floatplane I built was the Monogram 1/48 Zero, to which I fitted carved balsa floats to make a Rufe +/-. That was back a ways ....

[JohnRatzenberger]

I knew I had more references ...



one of which has this cutaway, giving me about everything needed to kick in my AMS ....



OTOH, the Profile has this nice little cutaway which I have used to make a little fuselage detail ...



and tomorrow I'll dive into the parts bin to see what I might have to flesh it out ...

[martin hale]

Nice start! It would be a crime not to use such great reference material!

Martin

[TobyC]

Looking forward to seeing this develop

[airjim]

Neat project!

Jim

[JohnRatzenberger]

Still here, a bit distracted ....

Got another book, thinking it might give me more details on British catapults, but it is mostly about the aircraft.



I had looked at some preview pages and there was a lot of text about various catapults, but i'm still looking for something with drawings and etc, so I could possibly model one.

[jssel]

That is some very clean interior work John. Nice start.

[martin hale]

I think I need that book!

Martin

[JohnRatzenberger]

It should be obvious this thing is going nowhere fast, so a couple days ago, I threw a few more pieces in the fuselage and just buttoned it up. Today I got some filler laid down. I am OOT about 5 days toward the end, but I am going to try to get this done.

[DavidWomby]

You can do it!

David