Building Jan Müller's DH88 Comet - in 1/16 scale (finished)

Dear Rutz,

I've been kind of busy with other sectors of life, but the Comet is resting right in front of me, standing on its nose to protect the underside, which is sorely lacking a rather complicated landing gear.

Perhaps the Christmas period will set this right. We'll see.

Thanks for asking! - Leif

In the last post containing any building, everything was finished but the landing gear. And even there some parts were made. That was some three-and-a-half years ago. Continuing from there, the first task was to prepare the main landing gear legs for receiving their cross-beams:

(Above) The top and bottom ends were hollowed out in the Proxxon dremel. The cross-beams could then be glued in place with their supporting pieces:

(Above) The main legs were glued up in a sort of jig, one dowel at the top, a thin wire at the bottom. The thin nylon tubes which later will be glued in the wheels were slided on to the wire, in order to act as a correct distance piece.

Other details visible in the photo are the jig for glueing up the rest of the landing gear structure, and the small pieces of grey-painted dowels they will be assembled from.

(Above) These are all the landing gear details, glued up permanently or temporarily. An extra cross-beam was fitted to the dark grey part for increased stability during mounting. (It could be removed later, but I let it stay - it's inside the wheel well, and no-one is going to be the wiser for it).

(Above) Mounting the main gears I felt very much like a dentist - a lot of tools going into a very small opening, and always the danger of doing some damage to the "patient".

(Above) Grey structure going in. All joints were reinforced with small pieces of paper. Then the joints were touched up with paint, and the whole structure was varnished. (This was before mounting, of course…)

(Above) Last touch - the landing gear covering parts have been mounted and are now varnished. They were made as simple as possible, only one layer, painted grey on the inside. The kit contains an inner skin, plus a part which would be inside the wheel well when the landing gear was down as here. I don't think I could have managed to mount that. But it is good to know it was there in the kit, for those who wish to build the landing gear retracted.

So this is what the model looks like today - finally finished! The tanks (rechargeable batteries) are topped up, the engines (electric motors) running on idle, the navigation lights are on, as is the landing light at the front and the interior lighting (of which I don't believe there was any in the original aircraft...).

Leif