My next build will be GPM's most recent WWI subject - the Phönix D.IIa. The kit is in the same mould of previous GPM WWI models - Nice colours, excellent instructions and some design choices that I find somewhat dubious but, hopefully, manageable
Well, let's start with the usual pictures of the kit...
Phönix D.IIa - GPM 277 (1/33)
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Hello Ricardo,
you have begun a build report of a very intrsestning military construction of a plane from the WW I. I'll see your progress by the building this model. I wish that it might be succesfull like your other planes.
best regards
frettchen
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Thank you for the support, frettchen
As the wing formers look very complicated to cut, I bought the laser cut parts from GPM. Some of them are used in the first assembly - the cockpit. -
Ricardo, you certainly have good taste in selecting your models. Good luck with this bird!
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@ Royaloakmin - well, I am a good client from several publishers The stock of models to build keeps growing but the good thing is to have a lot to choose from
The cockpit gave no problems. The cockpit cover was a bit trickier because the only places to put glue are the front and back formers. There is nothing in between. Fortunately, the dark strips (part 17) help to hide the misery...
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The fuselage tail is well drawn. The solution to fix the rear landing gear is simple and effective.
There will be a bit of wire to support the horizontal tail. The hole for the wire is well marked on the fuselage parts but not on the laser cut structure. However, I noticed that the card is quite easy to make a hole in... -
The kit proposes to put a bit of wire inside all four legs of the landing gear. I decided to use a single, U-shaped, wire for the front two legs, in order to eliminate some degrees of freedom. Hopefully, the assembly will be sturdier. For the tyres, I used the usual rolled paper strips.
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hi ricardo,
very clean work =)!
gruss michael -
hi ricardo,
excellent to watch the progress... but could you describe the "usual rolled paper strips"-method?
cheers
zweispeer
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@ Michael - thanks
@ Zweispeer - please take a look here: [Fertig] BAC Lightning - Fly Model (1:33)
It is where I started using rolled paper strips for the tyres. Please feel free to ask for details, if you want
@ Norm - well, well, it would be a good companion to your Knoller =)The tail assembly is just a piece of cake. I used slim paper strips for the rudder actuator, instead of thread. It comes out straight more easily...
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Looks gorgeous..go on like that and we have another masterpiece.
GreetingsStephan
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Hallo Klebegemeinde,
Ein bischen was Historisches zur dieser Phönix:Im März 1918 orderte das Fliegerarsenal 48 Phönix D.IIa Jäger mit den Nummern 422.01 422.48. Quasi baugleich mit den Phönix D.II, wurde die D.IIa aber von einem 230 PS Hiero Motor angetrieben, da aber die Produktion der Motoren der Fertigung der Flugzeuge nicht nachkam, wurden etwa 20 Prozent der 422-er Serie mit dem 200 PS Hiero ausgeliefert. Die D.IIa zeigte die bekannten Schwächen bei der Motorenaufhängung, oftmals wurde dann mit Feldmitteln bei den Fliegerkompagnien nachgebessert.
Der erste Testflug wurde am 11. Mai 1918 durchgeführt, Steigleistung auf 5000 Meter war 17 Minuten, 20 Sekunden zum damaligen Stand der Technik eine sehr gute Leistung. Die D.IIa war bei den Jägerpiloten aufgrund dieser Leistung und der bewährten stabilen Konstruktion eine begehrte Maschine. Bei der FLIK 1 galt die D.IIa neben der Aviatik D.I der 338-er Serie als die einzige Maschine, die Abfangaufgaben ausführen konnte. Zehn Maschinen der 422-er Serie wurden der Kriegsmarine überstellt (J.21 J.30).
Die Maschine mit der Nummer 422.10 wurde bei der FLIK 55J von Offizierstellvertreter Josef Kiss und Feldwebel Mai geflogen. Kiss, Nummer 5 in der Rangliste der k.u.k. Jagdflieger mit 19 Luftsiegen, wurde am 24. Januar 1918 in dieser Maschine von dem kanadischen As Gerald Birks (12 Luftsiege) abgeschossen und starb bei dem Absturz. Kiss wurde posthum zum Leutnant befördert. Sein Gegner Birks überlebte den ersten und zweiten Weltkrieg und verstarb 1991 im Alter von 95 Jahren.
Verfolge mit Spannung Deinen Baubericht, viel Erfolg!
Gruß, Reinhard -
Hello Stephan, greetings from Portugal
@ Tallyho - Well, my German has improved from a big bold zero to a slightly slimmer and smaller zero. Anyway, I got most of the history and let me thank you for taking your time to put it here. Regarding the Hiero engine, there it is I'll deal with the exhausts latter on, after gluing the engine to the fuselage. -
Well, sorry Ricardo, I´m a bum Here in English:
Flars (Fliegerarsenal i.e. the organization responsible for the testing, production and acceptance of all army aviation equipment, aircraft and materiel supply and its technical development) ordered 48 Phönix D.IIa fighters in March 1918, numbered 422.01 to 422.48. The new type was structurally identical to the D.II but was powered by the new Hiero 230 hp engine.
On May 11 1918 flight testing was performed and clocked an exceptional time of 17:20 minutes to reach 5000 meters (16,405 feet). All in all the output of the new Hiero engine was insufficient, so some 20 percent of the series 422 fighters were delivered with the 200 hp Hiero instead. Like the D.II, the engine bearers proved weak and had to be strengthened in the field.
The D.IIa was highly regarded by fighter pilots who appreciated the extra power and its rugged construction. FLIK 1 at Igalo pronounced the D.IIa and the Aviatik D.I series 338 as being the only fighters capable of performing interception missions.
Ten D.IIa fighters were transferred to the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine, designated J.21 to J.30.
422.10 was flown at FLIK 55J at Pergine airfield by Offizierstellvertreter Josef Kiss and Feldwebel Mai. Kiss, number 5 in the ranking of the Austro-Hungarian aces with 19 confirmed victories, was shoot down in this plane on May 24, 1918 by the Canadian ace Gerald Birks (12 victories). Kiss did not survive the crash. His opponent Birks survived the first and the Second World War. He passed away in 1991, aged 95.You will find a profile of Kiss´ 422.10 on Grigory Ivanows website wings palette:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww1/f/179/175/1/5
Your Hiero looks great!
Greetings, Reinhard -
@ Tallyho - Oh dear! Thanks a lot for taking your time for translation
The wing structure is interesting but Im not completely happy because, spanwise, it is not very stiff. It fits very, very tightly inside the skin, too. I had to remove a bit, in order to put it all inside the skin. Another not very good solution is the large cut on the upper surface, near the wingtip. It allows the paper to be curved to simulate double curvature but wouldnt it be possible to design the parts with cuts exactly along the structure lines? That way, the cuts would be reasonably hidden. This is definitely not the case here :(. Mr GPM, please think about it for your next projects -
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Originally posted by Ricleite
Another not very good solution is the large cut on the upper surface, near the wingtip.Very nice work, nonetheless. The wings look great!
QuoteIt allows the paper to be curved to simulate double curvature but wouldnt it be possible to design the parts with cuts exactly along the structure lines? That way, the cuts would be reasonably hidden.
That's exactly the way I do it. The wing can be designed with a cut along the outside of a rib, on the upper surface from the leading edge to about halfway back. Takes a little trial-and-error to get the right shape (at least for me - I scratchbuild) but in the end you get a nicely-tapered wingtip without any glaringly obvious joints. Here's a Morane-Saulnier I did in 1/48 to illustrate:
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@ Eric - You got exactly to my point! It looks much better this way, doesnt it? By the way, I think that this method also models better the real shape of the wing tip because the fabric, being in tension, tends to get straight between wing formers. Near the leading edge, the more marked streamwise curvature adds a nice 3D effect to the fabric shape but I guess that it can only be reasonably modelled by deforming the paper
Your Morane looks great I particularly like the rigging and the airscrew but the whole model is a beauty. I enclose a couple of pictures of your Moranes German brother, the Pfalz E.I. It is a scratchbuild, too -
Of course it's too late now, but I'll bet you could scan the wing skins and rotate the tip section out to put the cut along the rib. It's an easy fix. The hardest part would be adjusting the color so that the scanned and printed parts matched the original kit parts.
Great job on the Pfalz, too!
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You are surely right about scanning, correcting and printing again, Eric. The fact is that I am all too lazy to modify kits to that extent However, I often add (hidden) parts to ease assembly. That was the case in the nose and the engine cowling. There was virtually no place to put glue on
The laminated airscrew is an interesting idea but, again, the thick paper doesn't help. Each slice has front and back and gets very thick. I'd very much prefer to have single slices (not arranged in pairs) to get a smoother finish. The drawback to have to paint the rear face would not be a real problem as it is already necessary to paint the many edges... -
To assemble the upper wing in the correct position, GPM provides card templates that are very useful. For the struts, I put a bit of wire inside every one. The wire tips enter small holes on the connection points.
The last picture shows the radiator and the airspeed indicator. I guess this one could only be used by pilots with above average eyesight!... -
Hello, Ricleite
Well... beautiful work, as usual!What do you use to paint the edges of details.
may be you've already wriiten about it, so I possibly missed it.Regards,
Sergey -
Hello Ricardo,
well done, the engine, and the whole build so clearly, so far.
best regards
frettchen
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@ frettchen - I should be able to post pictures of the completed model tomorrow or Friday...
@ Sergey - To paint the edges, I always use pens. Usually ABT dual brush pens because they have a huge set of colours. They are quite expensive but, to paint the edges and not a lot more, they last for a long time :). It is often adequate to paint with a neutral grey, instead of a seemingly more appropriate colour. A bright colour will tend to pop up the edge, instead of concealing it
@ Norm - I did press a bit on the paper, particularly close to the leading edge. It is just noticeable there. Frankly, I was a bit afraid of pressing the paper more firmly as there could be an accident. You managed to do a lot more on the Knoller and it surely looks more realistic. Answers paper is less thick than GPMs and that may help but I guess you used other tricks a lot of white glue to soften the paper, maybe? This is something I have to try on another model, with spare paper.
Anyway, it is all too easy to overdo the effect. It is usually significant near the leading edge, where the streamwise curvature is greater. The leading edge itself was often reinforced with a wood part that locally eliminates the effect.
On another note, the resulting wing structure on the model is very unsound! Think of a main spar cut down to pieces, hardly glued together, and fixed to a wrinkled upper skin. I bet that, with time, the whole thing will tend to deform. I enclose a picture of a model built in 1997. The wing structure is made of rather thin paper boxes, glued to the skin, with just a bit of thick wire in the middle, to fix the dihedral. The sewing thread rigging has never been adjusted since then and I see no sign of it getting loose.
That said, this problem should not appear in your Knoller because the triangular structure between the wings is made of struts that can work both in tension and compression. Together with the wings, the struts form a very stiff beam. The model structure works the same way. Cable stabilized structures in the real world, when modelled, tend to have a completely different behaviour. The cables are just for show and the beam is inside each wing. Much slender and with a very tiny fraction of the stiffness -
@ Norm - I looked again, more carefully, to your construction pictures and yes, I have no doubt that 'your' wings are solid You didn't use the parts provided in the kit and may well have been a very good choice! Just another question - did you leave a place on main card part for a bit of wire? I guess that the two half wings are linked that way.
The Knoller wing structure is not unlike the lower wing / floaters structure on the Brandenburg W12. With this solution, there is no need for wing bracing! I very much like Brandenburg floatplanes. Maybe sometime a kit pops up of the W-29. I'd be a ready buyer, if the kit is good... -
Well, the model is complete Let's go to the pictures...
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Walking around, at ground level...
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... and the last ones.
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Hello Ricleite,
congratulations, once more you have done it: A perfect model !
As for the Brandenburg W.29: It has appeared a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.kartonmodellshop.de…29-Answer-STM-1-2009.html
Kind regards
Zaphod
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Congratulations, Ricleite!
A beautiful flawless model. And you've done it in less than a month... unbelievable! =) -
Hi Ricardo,
you made a very good job with the Phönix, it's an excelent-looking plane, a really cleane built model. Congratulation for finishing it!
best regards
frettchen
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Well done Ricardo!
John -
Superb!
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Hi Ric, awesome built, I got to do some "Doppeldecker" as well.
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Hello Ricleite,
A wonderful piece of work!!!! A very clean build, with great photos showing it off. This kit will be a "must have" for me at some point.
Cheers...
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Thank you all for the comments
@ Zaphod - that's what I call a coincidence! Do you know if the kit will be available at moduni, or GPM? I'm pretty interested =)
@ Norm - quite amazing I'd never think of doing it that way! Well, the lower wingspan of the Knoller is very small but, nevertheless... -
Another great model, Ric. You may get your wish on the HB W29, as I believe MPModel is coming out with it in 1:33 scale.
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Jan Hascher
Moved the thread from forum wbb.board.AVIATION_CREPORTS to forum Construction Reports.