Eindekker cowling was not 'engine turned' as seen in modern replicas. Slope Pilot- shorten the nose a little, add wires and dirty the covering. Consider pull-pull cables for rudder. This is great practice and Chad V stated. Otherwise build it as it is... a sport scale airplane. Lucky Dog has some nice tips on his build. I've seen his in the flesh and it looks very neat! Maybe we'll see your Proctor Eindekker build here, soon! Yes?

Flite Metal, that's a good idea. I planed to use Flite Metal on my P-47D that I will fly at Warbirds Over The Rockies.

I've been waiting a week to post these photos! The first shows the metal cooking pot that I used for a cowl on my EIII as well as the random squiggle pattern used. The second photo shows the very nice 66" span AerodromeRC EIII which has scale outlines and full-flying rudder and elevator. I also like the way this model design uses the thin full-span ailerons to fake wing-warping.

It's really a very nice model...BUT my eyes are immediately drawn to the non-scale "swirlies" on the cowl. Why, oh why, do modelers who otherwise clearly know what they're doing, do this again and again on eindecker models???

Great. Just frickin' great. [:@] The upload "works" but it doesn't.

Flite Metal, that's a good idea.
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Before I found a metal cowl, I applied FliteMetal to the BUSA ABS cowl. It's possible, but not pretty since you have to do it in sections. I also used it on the cheek cowls that I ended up making myself since nothing from the BUSA kit was useable on a scale EIII. I carved molds for the cheek cowls out of balsa, the stretched heated styrene over them. I remember it being very hard to get the FliteMetal on smoothly. But then I was a complete model building novice back then.

It's also possible to do the patterning on FliteMetal/Aluminum tape but you have to go easy.

If the upload process for your photos doesn't work, could you post a link to the photos uploaded elsewhere, or a link to a photo showing what the "random squiggle" pattern should look like. It would also be interesting to know how you did it.

Here are those two photos. Again the first one shows what the random squiggles should look like (more or less) and the second photo (of the AerodromeRC 66" EIII) shows the nicely done but historically inaccurate "engine turning" swirls.

Nicely done!!

Where did you get the metal cowl? Any comments about how you did the "engine turning"? Did you use the dremel brush in a drill with steel wool trick, or something helse?

http://www.kirkhammotorsports.com/book_aoe/aoe_18.pdf Some of the pictures you can see the squiggles. The cowls were hammered. the dark spots are the low craters and the light are where a file has knocked off the tops. Planishing is how you get rid of it; this using a power hammer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u98PnW-_2yA or can be done by hand. The English sometimes panel beat and planish but also they had the English wheel which automatically planishes. The English were known for their quality metal work and still are; plus, they are building airplanes away from war for the most part. Gave them time to make prettier parts.

It was part of a cheap camping cooking set I found at the Army Navy store. The cheek cowls were made by pulling sheets of heated styrene over balsa molds.

I borrowed an electric eraser from my brother-in-law who is an architect. But I'm sure there are many other ways. I also bought a couple of cheap aluminum pans from the $1 store to practice on. Once I had a pattern I was happy with, I moved on to the metal camping pot. What worked best for me was to apply 2-3 second "bursts" of the eraser and then move randomly to another area, doing this until eventually the whole cowl was "filled" to a density that looked good.

TFF, while that's a great tutorial on sheet metal working, I highly doubt that the squiggle pattern seen on the EIII cowl is merely a remnant of the process of hand-forming the cowls. Look at original photos. It's actually far too "regular" to be anything other than a purposeful process. As I said, there's still debate over the purpose of finish sheet metal in this way (or using engine turning). The two schools of through are 1) It's just pretty and 2) It somehow relieves stresses in the metal caused the metal working process.

On the other hand, both the engine turning and the German random squiggles may well have been used to "hide" less than perfect metal work.

I think the German ones are from a power tool randomly run across instead of a straight file, but I dont think the lows are real low just a couple of thousands different. Power hammer or hand pounded, the faces would have been about the size of a 5 pound sledge or better. Might be similar tools but used at different stages from the English. Here is something on engine turning.http://www.workingpsychology.com/div.../jeweling.html I tried looking at the Science Museum pictures and it has a smooth cowl; I guess a modern replacement?
http://www.ddclassic.com/ferrari_body.html look for the nose picture. These old cars looked like that underneath but modern restoration removes the old handwork The cowl is a much simpler shape than the car; I think that is why it has more regular shapes.

Here are three close-ups (from the EIII datafile) that show the pattern very clearly. It's obviously the work of a practiced hand...and more "regular" in some ways than my random squiggles. Note, in the third photo, how the worker has gone "back and forth" on part of the area under the wing. This was practical work...not art.

My problem was after studying Arabic in college and spending 12 years in the Arabian Gulf, my "random squiggles" were starting to look like Arabic words!

The only reason, to me it no matter how it is created, is to stop reflections from giving position away, or you would polish it. It does not add protection. Under the wing does look intentional but to me the cowl looks more random and less staged. One done to match the other? There was a decent pic on the Aerodrome as I dont have the Data File. It is probably a little in between recognizing the effect the rough metal had and going so far with planishing then finishing it. An Obscure factory picture would sure be handy for yea or nay.

In terms of the original question of this thread, we've gotten way off topic. But what we can say is that adding little swirlies (of whatever kind) to a cowl with the wrong diameter and length isn't going to do much of anything to make the model seem more scale. Painting stripes on a horse doesn't make it a tiger.

So here are the BIG changes that might actually make a difference:

1. Full flying rudder and elevator (at scale size or at most a 10% enlargement)
2. Scale length and diameter for the cowl (which will require an inset firewall)
3. Stick-built rather than slab fuse sides (and since you're making this change and also using full flying rudder and elevator, you might as well make the fuse scale)
4. Put the wing panels on wing tubes (so that you can have a real cockpit).

Of course, if you do all this, you'll find there's not a lot of reason to have started with the BUSA kit to begin with. If you want a reasonable scale model, it's ultimately more economical to start with the AerodromeRC kit...which while it costs a bit more than the BUSA kit, you'll actually end up using the parts. And for those of you who care. it's also made right there in the Ol' US of A.

I Like the strip aileron idea. You can do a gap seal with covering and try to make it invisible. It would be pretty easy.

So it seems that, yet again building of the kit has been canceled due to the my Top Flite P-39. I might build both of them as I have plenty of time to Warbirds Over The Rockies where I plan to fly this year.

If all you want is a nice Sunday sport flier, you can have the BUSA kit built and in the air in less than a month. You could have it framed up in a couple of days.

If I can keep working on it without getting distracted!

Six weeks from start to maiden! And this model has TWO wings!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db4SEClA9-s[/youtube]

Show off! Very nice build. I like the photos showing how the flying wires were set-up. It seems I learn something new every day.

Teo

Nice job.</p>

Well, it's not so pretty any more. After almost five years of nearly constant flying, I "re-kitted" my Puppeteer today. On the fourth flight of the day something went wrong and the model would only spin in a tight left spiral. Back home after the crash, I reconnected all the radio gear and the rudder, elevator, and throttle servos are all working normally. But there is no response on either of the aileron servos (one plugged into the aileron Rx slot and the other in the FLAP slot for differential). Could I somehow have saved it with just rudder inputs?

I also did one flight on the EIII but banged up the UC on the landing.

****

Upon further examination of the radio gear, I noticed that no matter which servo I plug into the aileron slot, that servo doesn't function. Does it seem possible that a single channel can fail on a receiver (or the Tx)?

That sucks. What radio were you using?

Airtronics RDS8000...see the other thread I just started.