HOW TO BUILD AIRCRAFT DIORAMAS

[JohnReid]

I would like to share the following with you.I found it shortly before starting my Nieuport 28 diorama.

Until one is committed,there is hesitancy,the chance to draw back,always ineffectiveness,concerning all acts of initiative(and creation).There is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:that the moment one definitely commits oneself,then providence moves too.All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occured.A whole stream of events issues from the decision,raising in ones favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.Whatever you can do or dream you can,begin it.Boldness has genius,power,and magic in it.Begin it now.

Johann Wolfgang Von Gorthe

Cheers! John

[JohnReid]

Take a look at the latest very creative work of matrixone over on www.finescale.com , go to dioramas.Great ideas for taking pics of your dioramas.Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

check out some great pics of ww1 airplanes and their cockpits at www.airmuseumuk.org/index.htm go to Spring Air Display 2003 Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

The sides of the fuselage are now in the building jig complete with turnbuckles and wires.I am presentley just finishing up the horizontal struts with their fittings and wires already attached.

Snags encountered so far:
1/bottom longerons at station 11 do not rest on the jigs frame(all others do)
I followed the plan view for the fuselage sides exactly so this must be a problem with the jig at station 11.

2/wood supplied for bottom horizontal struts at stations 4&5 are 3/16th X 1/8th (not 3/16ths X 3/16ths) I have found on occasion that the wood supplied is the nearest thing to but not the exact sizes as called for in the plans.This may be due to a manufacturing supply problem.I used what they supplied me with but I made sure that the holes for the fake hinge pins were centered.This is a kit compromise as on the real aircraft it is steel tubing.
The cock pit floorboards will cover this area anyway and will not be visible in the diorama.Maybe this would be a good time to explain my philosophy of compromise when building a diorama, which basically is,if you cant see it dont worry about it.If I was doing a model a la Ken Foran ,I would be concerned about every little detail but as a dioramist I can cheat a little here and there, if it looks ok and cannot be seen by the viewer that ok by me.

3/Struts at station 3.My 1st major screwup(and it wont be the last)I discovered this problem only after glueing in these struts.The jenny Canuck has no downthrust engine there fore I thought that by leveling the hole for the engine support beam I could compensate for this.Well ,I now think that it will be more involved than that.The position of the hole for the engine suupport beam will probably be lower,which will screw up the mortises,which will mean that these struts will have to be replaced.I would suggest to anyone doing the Canuck to leave them out for now or just put in temporary ones until the engine placement is finalized.(see fig.3-2)From what I can see on the comparitive drawings on pages 32 & 36 of Scale Aircraft Drawings it looks like only the engine bearers,nose plates,radiator and off course the struts at stat.3 will be affected.One thing that I forgot to mention when installing the horizontal struts.Install the lower struts to their longerons first to leave yourself enough room to work.
To be cont......

[JohnReid]

An interesting thing that I discovered on the Jenny was the idea of longeron splices just aft of the rear cockpit.It seems that from that point forward they used oak or ash wood for its strength,I guess and aft of that point they used spruce for it flexibility .I know that ash can readily be bend into various shapes like at the nose of the Jenny. I suppose that that was also a major consideration.The splice was wrapped in cord to bind the two pieces together.Does anyone know if this was peculiar to the Jenny or was it standard practice at the time?

So far I have discovered what looks like 3 different radiators that were used on the Jenny.The one used with the OX5 engine with downthrust,the one without downthrust and a 3rd round bottomed type used for the Hisso engine.Anyone have any info on this? Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

OK, I think that I have solved the engine bearer problem.Rather than make a whole new part for the struts at stat.3,I have modified the positioning of the nose plate so that the engine bearers are level.I did this by raising the nose plate 2.38mm or 3/32in.I also cut a 1.5mm notch in the aft support beam where the U bolts attach the engine bearers to the support beam.The engine is now level with no downthrust.I have checked my references and do not contemplate any future problems by doing this and none of the mods will be visable upon completion.In fact some of the 1:1 pics that I have of Jenny re-builds seem to suggest that they may have done somewhat the same thing during different engine installations. However until the engine is built up and fitted, I am not going to glue these parts in permanently.
The tailpost is now finished and everything seems to line up ok. see fig 3-10.In order to get the correct taper on the inside ends of the longerons I took a double sided nail file (grit on both sides) and slipped it between the longerons that were held together with a rubber band.Now its on to complete the struts at stat 11 with their steel rods, and installing the cockpit floor. to be cont....

[JohnReid]

Ross Moorehouse has kindly agreed to post some pics for me to this thread.I hope to have them up in a few days.Cheers! John.

[JohnReid]

somehow I just lost my latest update to this thread in a computer snafu.Well here goes again.Test,Test.

Fig 3-9 struts at stat.11 .I built this as one piece. 1/32 should read 3/32 struts
Fig 3-13 floor boards.Instead of 3 seperate boards I built this as 1 piece with 2 very faint pencil lines representing glue lines.Floor board supports require lot of test fitting to get the floor level.
Fig 3-13 floorboards no snags
Fig 3-14seat rails no snags
The drawings call for no firewall at stat3.I will however install a firewall during the engine installation as firewall will require holes for hoses ,pipes and linkages.
Longeron splices:drawing shows only top longerons have splices.1:1 pics confirm both top and bottom were spliced.
Instrument panels:my next step.Castings look good ,some minor de-burring.No instrument faces supplied with the kit. I used JTEC R/C 1/12th scale reduced on a photocopier to 1/16th. For some great 1:1 pics of a Jenny panel go to www.wwi-models.org look under Jenny. To be cont....

[JohnReid]

Took a bunch of pics today.Should be posted in a day or two.Cheers! John.

[Ross_Moorhouse]

Ok here are the pics John wanted up in this thread ...







More in the next post...