Answer Ki-43 Hayabusa (Oscar) 1:33 / finished

    Quote

    Original von Sparrowhawk
    So this IS an oil cooler. I had wondered about this since first I saw a KI-27, even our friend Yu could only guess. Neat!


    After intensive search, I could not find out any explanation why they put oil cooler in front of engine.........


    As Gloomy-san said cowling, engine and spinner are impressive!

    prepare for landing... gear! :)


    as for the oil cooler, as Martin wrote, it sounds pretty logical to place the cooler shaped like this one right behind the propeller - but I'd guess it's not the best solution for a military plane, as every hit means high risk of damaging oil cooling system - so it probably wasn't a great idea to engage in a head-on combat...

    Japanese engineers went to great lengths to streamline the plane to achieve required performance while having inadequate engine.
    being in this position you cannot really slung anything under the wings or fuselage or you will add extra drag and loose maximum speed.
    The only option they really had was to stick the oil cooler in a place where it would get maximum airflow without adding any drag and that seems to be where it ended in Ki-27 and Ki-43.
    At least that is what I think their reasoning was :rotwerd:

    it's done! :yahoo:


    hopefully, i will add some photos tomorrow when Oscar gets back from Prague papermodellers meeting...

    P.

    Burn the land and boil the sea
    You cant take the sky from me

    Edited once, last by pawell ().

    Ok, here are the images - with poor lighting, since it's rainy today. I'll wait for a better day and retake the pictures for the "true" gallery.
    The display base is not my original idea, I've seen something similar (japanese flag in shades of gray) somewhere in plastic kits gallery, but I can't find it now - but the credit belongs to the original unknown modeller...

    Hy pawell,


    outstanding build, outstanding display - i truly salute you !


    i think you deserve a :prost: ,


    woppy

    In principio erat glutinis
    Gründungsmitglied der HobbyModel-Gang und Luft46-Gang
    Den Kartonbauer in seinem Lauf, hält weder Bogen- noch Klebermangel auf!

    Hi all,
    thank you for positive echo.
    I'd like to make a final conclusion that could maybe help anyone who will build this plane, so let's do it:


    The design is very good and everything fits well without a great effort; I'd like to point out only a few minor issues:


    - the main landing gear is not very strong - it's glued to the walls of wheel wells only, so it doesn't provide a firm support. I would suggest using some kind of additional support - e.g. a hollow needle glued to the wing's frame, into which the wire supporting the landing gear could be inserted.


    - the inner and outer part of canopy frame have the same size - so the inner one is not possible to glue inside without modification


    - the two propeller blades are just mirrored, which means that the weathering printed in the kit is on leading edge on one blade and on trailing on the other one - but this can be fixed easily


    - the white-blue strip on the fuselage behind the cockpit doesn't continue on wing-to-fuselage fillet


    As for my mistakes, I'd like to focus on two of them:


    - the upper surface of the wings is not as smooth as I'd like it to be; after gluing the skin onto the frame, everything was OK - I used chloroprene glue to avoid deformations of the skin from water contained in PA glue. During the next steps, the formers became visible anyway, probably because holding the plane in my hands by the wings. I'll need to think up something to avoid this next time, but I'm not sure yet - maybe putting some kind of filling between the formers (polystyrene?) could do the trick... I'll try it on my next plane and keep you informed.


    - for the antenna, I've used a synthetic wool called Chemlon - the thread consists of a huge number of small fibers, which are incredibly flexible - great so far. The problem is that it's necessary to use two or three fibers in this scale - and this means that the antenna wire itself produces a lot of tension; the antenna post was not strong enough so I needed to modify it several times, which resulted in some minor damage of fuselage. Next time, I'll need to prepare a "hard point" in advance to fix the post.

    P.

    Burn the land and boil the sea
    You cant take the sky from me

    Quote

    Original von pawell


    - the main landing gear is not very strong - it's glued to the walls of wheel wells only, so it doesn't provide a firm support. I would suggest using some kind of additional support - e.g. a hollow needle glued to the wing's frame, into which the wire supporting the landing gear could be inserted.


    One of annoyance of aircraft kits in common is easily broken landing gear.
    To prevent it I always use 0.8 to 1.0mm dia brass wire as core and in addition to that make all formers from 0.5mm thick card board instead of 1.0mm, which is generally employed, and hollow some parts of formers for wings and fuselage so that total weight can be reduced and results in less burden on landing gear


    And thanks for your tips