Fairey Firefly MK5 from Vance Mosher plan

Hi all, i'm back again! Its been a busy last 2 years but I have now retired!   I had to spend the last few years pumping up my pension fund. The challenge of two divorces! 

Anyway, i'm back on it again. The Firefly has not progressed much in the last two years. I'll post what i've done soon.

Nice to see you back on here Ralph as i do enjoy your builds

I've been working on the gear and gear doors. The shape of the doors on Vance's plan is not correct so I have had to scale them from photo's. This took a lot of time and lets say my frustration levels were test to the extreme. Also the rake angles of the gear was out so had to 3D print some wedges to get the rake right. Once this was sorted then the doors opened correctly to the full size. Still a bit of fettling and detail to be added but at least most of the work is done.

Doors open
 

doors closed
 

Had a bit of fun designing and printing the inner frame to replicate the full size. It also adds a lot of strength the the fiberglass door. The black clips are printed from ABS - carbon filled filament. They will be screwed to the oleo legs. 

Gear door attachment and detail
 

 

I've been jumping around a bit with this build. I've given the gear doors a rest and moved onto the cowl. Added some detail and trial fitted the exhaust stacks. They need final detail painting but the fit is looking good. I've made them removable. I dont know why, probably because I can! Why make things simple when you can over engineer them! 

 

Still got a lot of work to do on the cowl before painting, but getting there slowly  .

They are excellent Ralph are the printed

No BB. I carved one exhaust from balsa, then cast a silicone mold around it. Poured light weight resin into the mold and cast 12 of them. Laborious to say the least but I wanted to try something different. Each one was hollowed out with a dremel then glued onto a fiberglass backing sheet.

Recovering from a minor hernia operation yesterday so no heavy lifting or strenuous activity I decided to tackle the instrument panel. I dont seem to be able to find any decent images on the web that show the panel head on. They all have a slight angle to them. So with a bit of manipulation in Autodesk Fusion I manged to get something that resembled a panel. Did a trial 3D print in PLA+. Finished item will be in ABS Carbon to prevent distortion in the heat of summer. Well that assumes we have a summer.

 

Next problem was instruments. I tried to copy images from the web and reduce them down to size using a piece of illustrator software. That didnt work so gave up with that idea. Searching through my 'must keep that as it may come in useful in the future box' (a big box!) I found a decal sheet for instruments at 1:5 scale. How lucky was that! So copied them and reduced down to 1:6 scale, printed 3 of them on photo paper and they came out OK. Definition and colour is good enough to use.

 

Placing the instrument panel over the printed sheet the dial size on the 3D print is slightly too small. So will adjust and reprint. Hopefully this will work.

Well that didn't go to plan. Had the hernia op, then the wound built up fluid with a slight infection. Ended up back in hospital for a second op to drain the fluid.   Now spend every 3 days back in the hospital having the wound checked and cleaned. What a PITA! So not done any modelling, just haven't felt up to it. I'm going stir crazy doing nothing but sitting around and watching YouTube videos. Hopefully i'll be back at it next week.

Thats bad luck Ralph, i had mine done and was out and carrying on as normal the same day,  hope your soon well and back to the modelling

Get well soon Ralph and look forward to seeing photos of you flying again.

Back onto the Firefly build thanks to the inspiration from BB and his build. Hernia is all sorted so no real excuse now. 

A month or two ago I wanted to sort the canopy installation but found that the vac forms I had were scratched whilst sitting around the workshop. My own fault, ham fisted!   So contacted Bob at Heritage Wings RC, who has taken over the Vanguard plans and kit business after Vance Mosher passed a few years ago, and ordered a new set of canopy vac forms. Bob was still in the process of getting all the bits together so was dealing with each order as it came in. He had to reinstate his vac former and clean up the plugs. This took a month or two. Parcel arrived today from Bob with two sets of each canopy (I only ordered one set) and a spare set of wing tank forms as a gift. A real pleasant surprise and has given me a bit of a boost.

So this morning I flatted off the wings with 800 wet and dry and put fine putty into any marks. The plan is to get the airframe in paint by the end of August. The wing is leaning against my rotten fence panel (another job that needs doing) to give an idea of how big this plane is.