Sir Blue Henry

I bought a fibreglassed fuselage / foam winged Harvard a while back and was instantly upset with how non - scale it was. Decided to improve it, and in the ned realised I might as well be doing one from scratch. Started researching year back but stalled. I want to get this going now.
The main intention is to produce a good quality fuselage in Fibreglass including moulds. Wings are not a priority. I will work on that if the fuselage turns out ok.

Sir Blue Henry

Centreboard is done. Now busy on Wing Centre section Upper surface design.

Sir Blue Henry

A lot of planning and analysis of Centresection upper surface as well as finding my original NACA2215 drawing as obtained on the net was not as accurate as I had believed , and after finding a Vector drawing NACA2215 far better, I am now confident with the profile as applied to Centre section and where this fits to the fuselage.
Starting on jig / plug for Centre section upper surface

Sir Blue Henry

Sir Blue Henry

Centresection framework jig is coming on. Not too long and I can start pressing hundreds of rivets into my sheetmetal upper surface.

Sir Blue Henry

Have ordered a set of blueprints for the Texan. Hope its a goos and usable set from which to create cross sections and bulkheads.

Sir Blue Henry

Have been doing a number of fibreglass trials to test various layers and thicknesses. That has gone pretty well.
Then decided to try my first mould - of a small boat - first attempt was a failure - but a lesson worth learning anyway.
Next trial on the boat moulding will be in tghe next week or so, with at least 2 parting boards

Sir Blue Henry

Analysis of wing join plate and angle of incidence has been Ok.
Work in Corel draw on the Centresection upper surface has also been going fairly well - but without blueprints, the positions of rivet lines are a bit off.

Sir Blue Henry

Sir Blue Henry

Billy J

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beautiful work !!! Looks like u been around full scale planes

Sir Blue Henry

Yes, and I was lucky enough to do miltary training on harvards. Just love the aircraft. This will be a slow project but hopefully well worthwhile

Sir Blue Henry

progress on next round of trying to make the boat hull, which is of course just preparation for being able to do the Texan. I dont want to stuff up when it matters, so Im just doing a lot of smaller practice exercises with fibreglass and resin.
Next I need to seal and polish - lots of prep - sigh

Sir Blue Henry

more progress on boat hull, so far so good although various aspects have been a learning curve.

Sir Blue Henry

Sir Blue Henry

ok - well that seems to have been successful. need to just make the rear part and then I can start moulding boats, but of course need to get back to the main issue, so will soon start on various bits for the Harvard

Sir Blue Henry

Produced my first boat from the moulds and it worked out pretty well. The learning curve is very worthwhile in preparation for making the Harvard parts and just getting skill with Fiberglassing.
I need to get a proper paste to use for the parting boards, and also PVA for separation. The wax works but it still takes major effort to coax the part out of the moulds, even with soft taps with rubber mallet.

Sir Blue Henry

With the large amount of work going into this model, my original thoughts of doing a 1/7 and then a 1/3 come into question more and more. Wonder if I should do a 1/5 rather than 1/3?
or if the effort is worth it. As it is, even considering selling a few fuselages to make back some of the funds invested, would be a time consuming thing as making parts from the moulds is not the quickest thing to do, and also, this Harvard will have so many parts, not just a simple fuselage and 1 or two parts.

Sir Blue Henry

OK - time to get back to work on the Centre section upper surface and jig etc.

Sir Blue Henry

Busy with last bits of detail on the Corel drawings of the upper surface. then to print out in reverse and lay against the metal sheet, which will then go onto the jig

Sir Blue Henry

Busy with last bits of detail on the Corel drawings of the upper surface. then to print out in reverse and lay against the metal sheet, which will then go onto the jig

Sir Blue Henry

Decided to buy a set of Blueprints off ebay - lets see what I get. Good quality hopefully.

Sir Blue Henry

Finally my CD of blueprints has arrived. Delayed by customs inspections! A quick inspection shows medium to good quality. Lets see if I can find the drawings I require amongst the 1600 images

Sir Blue Henry

well there it is - my long awaited Harvard blueprints.
I have been through a few hundred files so far and the quality seems consistently ok to good.
Found some very good stuff so far which will help me a lot.
maybe every 15th to 20th image is a major drawing, with the rest being minor detail drawings which will not be relevant.
So finally the project can go ahead.

Sir Blue Henry

NAA badge as on the main 3 view blueprint