ORIGINAL: JohnMcGowan
Luke, on your gear doors; I used a robart 4 inch wheel and the your gear doors were designed for maybe a 3 inch wheel or so (?). 2 questions for ya: how would you recommend making them fit a 4 incher and whats the preferred way to attach them to the strut?
Also, when you get ready to paint , are you going to use modelmasters acrylic (waterbased)
paint? Also, what will you need to do to fuelproof your work , posibbly spraycan hanger9 lustercoat or something equal to it? About how much does it need to be thinned to come out of a small sized airbrush?
What do you think your all up weight is going to be like or is it too early to tell on your plane?
John
No problem John! I usually make stuff up as I go, that's just how I like to work. You are working ahead of me a bit, if I think to far ahead I get distracted and sometimes overwhelmed so I avoid it and just live in the now!
I'll try and answer what I can. On the gear doors they are scale in size for a 4" tire. On the full scale Hellcat they did not have a 6" over hang on the door to wing fit, look at the picture below, you can see that the doors were almost the same diameter as the tire. I don't recommend the use of 4" tires for a few reasons. One they look to big and two, the slop in most model aircraft landing gear requires the wheel well to be to big. If the wheel well is a little bigger than the door I don't see why that's a problem, especially if you are going with the overall glossy sea blue finish. The wheel wells on the Hellcat were the same color as the bottom of the plane, so this would help to hide the fact that the doors are a little smaller than the well. If you want you can add some flight skin to the door to enlarge the flange area by 1/4" or so, I would not do this though.
I'm not sure what I'm going to paint it with yet, I do have the Model Masters paints and I also have some Perfect paint. The Model Masters would probably be the best bet to keep the plane light. For a fuelproofer I may try the Klass Kote clear
http://www.klasskote.com/
The best way to learn about airbrushing is to do it. Practice on something first and get the hang of it and understand what the airbrush is doing. Mix your paints well and experiment with thinning when you practice, you'll get the hang of it!
Not sure what the final weight will be, I've done everything I can to keep the weight within reason. Like I said before, the tail wheel is the only real weight penalty but I've done everything I can to keep everything in front of the CG, we'll just have to wait and see!
Dion