Latest Work Completed Mantua, New Jersey
Original Site:
September 2004
E-mail: usav8or@yahoo.com
The Radical Radial Driver's seat.
June 9, 2013 Work on the fit and finish ???...
No... really ???
Ohhhh... you never think this time will come, but believe me, it comes along a lot faster than you'd think. And you know how long I've been working on this biplane...
I've been working on the layout of the instrument panels... putting them before the cockpit itself. Actually that wasn't the first thing I worked on that would be placed in the cockpit. I worked on the throttle quads many years ago. The seats too ! AND ?!
Anyways... I'm thinking about the size and shape of the opening on the cockpits. The look of the removable back-seat bubble. And... the windscreens. This all got me to playing with the DeltaCAD again (great little program to throw ideas up on the board... and it's quick AND quick to make changes or modify an idea).
Okay, so I'm playing with a few ideas and here is what I have so far... (click on the image for a larger version of it)
May 12 and 13, 2016 Sheet metal work...
put on hold ???
I played with the opening for the cockpits some time ago... can't remember where I put it ??? Must have been in the fuselage section... I sould go grab that I paste it here ?
Found it !
January 11, 2016 (moved on May 14, 2016) Faceted or flat-wrap ???
There's no debate.
I've been spending the last several days working out the sheet metal for the top and sides of the fuselage. So far I've come to the conclusion that I'll need to put doors on the port side of both the front and rear cockpits.
And now that I'm figuring out the curvature of the top of the fuselage I can start working on some other things... like the faceted windshields. I wanted them faceted because I think it gives the biplane a nostagic look (although many of the older biplanes had flat, wrapped plastic for their windshields). It's just my opinon...
Love the "Jug" and decided to look to see what the windshield on it looked like. And... I like it. It comes to a point in the front as opposed to a flat screen, with two glass sections on each side.
Unique ? Badass !!!
Click on image for close up.
I've been sketching out a few ideas that I'll be trying on the display board sheet metal tomorrow...
January
12 and 13, 2016 Faceted ???
Making
it work ???
Played with the look of the rear windshield for a while the
other night. Made up a few display board patterns. They look
good... tried them out. Let it set for a cooling off period.
Looked at it again today. Still looks good but the flimsy
display board ain't giving me a real good feel for how this
will look on the biplane. Found some triple-wall cardboard
and traced the pattern on it. It's plenty stiff enough and
with a little tweaking it looks great !
Before taking this much further... I'll need to get the actual
skin on the fuselage to make sure I'm making this to the right
shape. By the way... this ain't science here. It's an art...
the shape and size of the screen has a bearing on the wind
in the cock-pit. and... It seems that some sizes work for
some biplanes while that same shape and size doesn't work
on another. We'll see...
May 12 and 13, 2016 continued...
Okay... back at it...
My intent over the past few days was to figure out the sheet metal; or, at least begin fitting up the poster board to the fuselage again so that I can then figure out the shape of the cockpit sheet metal. I can play with it all I want as it is but nothing can really be done until I lock the firewall into position. Which brings me back to...
Nice shot of the Jacobs on this UC-78.
Awhile ago I contact a gentleman from the UC-78 (Bamboo Bomber) site. He has all the drawings for the UC-78 (civilian T-50). There's over 6000 drawings for the twin-engine airplane. He said he when he got a chance to look he'd see if he could find the fitting for the engine mount (the fitting on the fuselage that the engine mount would connect into). It's been several months and I just need to get things going with it so I contact him again.
Said he'd try and pull up the files to see if he could find it. The issue is that he's now running on Windows 10 instead of 7, or something like that. That night I figured I'd do a little research and see if I could pin point the drawing. I found a list of drawings that were posted on the UC-78/T-50 site and did a search for "engine" on the Excel spread sheet. Came up with a dozen finds and I narrowed down that to about six drawings. Sent the list over to him... got an email the next day (I must be looking like I'm anxious to get moving on this ???). He then explained the Window's thing to me and asked if it would be okay if he downloaded all 6000 drawings onto a thumb drive and send it to me. Rhetorical question to me, right ???! Said... heck yeah ! Let me know how much I owe ya !
Hope to have the drawings in the next week or two... and then I can get on with getting the firewall mounted. And then I can begin the sheet metal stuff and figure out the opening around the cockpits and get those doors fitted up and...
Above UC-78 image copied from flickr. No known copyrights.