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You got a cool electric WWII combat rig? This is the place to show it off!

Moderator: hbartel

Rabbit Leader
Posts: 1150
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2001 11:37 pm

Post by Rabbit Leader »

Since mr Loose-lips-sink-ships Liddle has let the cat out of the bag, I'll fess up and let you guys know what I'm building...

It's a Blackburn Skua....NOT

Yes, it IS a Nakajima KI-43. I can't take credit fro the full design, just the construction techniques. Lee's little quip about the canopy and cowling tell part of the story. I tend to peruse the ACES combat forum just to see what's going on in Europe, as abou 99 percent of cmbat flown there is scale. As far as i know, they have no open classes, with the exception of the Russians, and some club combat..everything else is scale. The planes are roughly 5 percent of scale, and most of the planes are built and finished to a high degree of quality. There's quite a few kits, plans, and parts that are offered for sale by various members, including plans by a gentleman by the name of Timo Starkloff. He posted a pic of his KI-43 around the middle of January, and I just thought to myself that it would be a nice conversion to 3696. I contacted Timo via the ACES forum, he got my address, and even went so far as to set up a Paypal account so i could get him the funds without having to get international funds. It was kinda pricey, due to the dollar-euro exchange rate, but what I got was a very nice molded canopy, a fiberglass cowl, 2 sheets of plans and instructions, and a catalog. He also threw in a Yak-3 thru 9 canopy gratis. He sent this via the German Post and I had it on my doorstep in roughly 8 working days...no Fedex, No UPS, the Post...unreal-go figure.
Now, Timo's planes are of all built up construction, ALL WOOD, and that's what he and several other pilots build for combat. The plans for the KI have the tip and root airfoil patterns printed, and the airfoil type, so you can cut a foam wing if you want, but the fuse is built up with wood sides, formers and sheeting. What I did is to use the fuse sides and firewall as printed, modified the 2nd former to a half former on the lower side, built the fuse "box" using the fuse sides, firewall, one former. coro doublers and sheeting top and bottom, then added the blue foam..sounds like a lot of work, but it's really very simple, and more robust than one might think. I probably have more time in cutting the parts out than building the fuse itself.
If you guys get curious, go to the ACES forum and look around, lotsa neat stuff over there. Best way to get to it is to google Aces Finland, go to the links, then go to the ACES international link. They're real nice guys, and there's a lot of info on scale birds there..

Cash
Rabbit Leader
Posts: 1150
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2001 11:37 pm

Post by Rabbit Leader »

BTW, timohas a free set of plans for a Yak-9. It's a PDF file, and you have to enlarge them, but it might give a guy a good start just for the dimensions alone..

Cash
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