You should have given me a shout Luke while you were up here- I would have bought you a bisquit and a cup of coffee
John

Thanks Luke. I will be out of the country next week, so I won't have a chance to check out the two canopies until I get back.

Luke I will be ordering a canopy when you get more , the other parts were great , I hope you kit a Interior kit like you did for the Corsair .

next time I am in Bama I will buy you a trip to Dreamland !!! "You dont know ribs less you gone to dreamland" !!!

Sorry John, maybe next time, I'm just in to much of a hurry lately to get everything done.[&o]

Well thank you and have fun, they'll be there when you get back, enjoy!

Now that sounds like a plan! I am doing an interior kit for this plane, no other way to do it! That's the last major thing on my to-do list!

I can't get my web site Paypal button to work so no canopies yet. If I have time later on this weekend I'll try and fix it, sorry for the delay.

You will all have to use your own masking technique on the canopies, if you have a favorite system or product for doing this I would like to have you share it with us here. We may learn a new way of doing it that is better, who knows! Anyone found a paint match for this bird? For those not doing the finish over that would be a big help, I might even offer a few prepainted.

Thanks,

Dion

OK, figured it out, every time I add a new thing to a page I have to compose a whole new one! I hate HTML, I don't want to learn how to write a web page I want to build! This has taken a lot of time but it's for you Cats!

Now back to my cockpit project....

Dion

Hey that photo of the engine pasted on plywood looks a lot better than most of the dummies I have I have seen. Its not cheesy and it definitely is no dummy! good job

Thanks. Here is the P&W R-4360 for my F2G Super Corsair:

Decal for an engine? LOL No offense Richard to your work, I know for you it was a quick fix and something to paste to the baffle. The electric small scale guys do this all the time, they can't afford the extra weight. You're right it is no dummy because it's nothing but a picture. Not cheesy? Well I would disagree, welcome to RCU!

I'm mounting my cheesy engine to a ply former that I will glue to the cowl. One of the advantages to a 2 stroke in this particular plane is the short crank shaft housing, I was able to move the engine back more than 1" in order to shorten the nose. A disadvantage is the same thing! When it comes to mounting a cheesy engine it has to be mounted so far forward, but this is just a sport plane anyway!

Now here is what I did, not only did I go with the cheesy engine but I went with extra cheese! Just the way I like it! I glued the engine to the lite ply and added some CA and Micro-Balloons to the inside. Also I added a balsa ring to the crank case for extra support.

Then I addes some small pieces of balsa to act as pushrod housings, then cut some pushrods out of plastic tube. Then just some electrical wire for the spark wires.

Paint the black backround first, then the cylider heads, crankcase and pushrods then the wires.

Dion

Here she is...

Luke OUTSTANDING keep posting

Bob T

I would have to say that both engine replicas have their advantages......

The picture is good for those who may not expect to have the arf long, want to save weight for electrics, dont have the time to invest in making the dummy radial look right, or intend for it to be a daily flyer and just dont care.,,,,

while as the dummy radial is more scale up close and personal and shows time/skill..... I think most people dont take the time to properly detail the dummy radials.

Both have their purpose.

Nice build!, looking forward to seeing it completed.

I agree with almost everything you say, in fact you repeat some of my same points. As soon as the picture gets any glare or is looked at from a side angle the illusion is lost completely. My point was that I totally disagree that a picture is better than a 3D dummy engine. That is my ONLY point, anything else is extra chatter. His post was directed at my engine, that is why I felt it needed to be addressed. If you take a plastic dummy engine and just paint it black with a gray crank case it will look great and the illusion will be the same from any angle, so I disagree with you on that point and on the point that a picture is a dummy engine, it's just a baffle. I want to say that I don't care what people do, but that would be insensitive and I'm trying to work on my sensitivity! I just had to correct a trolling nOOb!

You bet I will continue this thing, cockpit is going to be nice!

Dion

Drooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllll
Any napkins? I just drooled all over my keyboard!!
Love the posts keep them coming...
I am assembling my Zollner Corsair Cockpit right now...Love it... Top-Flite should learn a few things from Luke!!!!!!!!!!
Tomas

Great phot sequence there Luke. Love it! And it teaches me much. Which brings me to Richard's photo engine. I've been looking at this thread since day 1 and saw Richard's photo solution a while back. I did then and still do think it's a great solution especially for those of us just starting to hone our skills. My Hellcat is my 1st warbird, and I'm more worried about it having a short life-span as I try hard just to not crash it! I've thought all along that by my second... or third warbird, I would have the flying, ground handling, building experience to go for a much more scale look. Yeah man.. the full BASH! That's the great thing about this thread... it'll still be here when I get the skills to try some of the things Luke is demonstrating.

By the way Luke, you're darn FAST too! No way could I make daily posts with photos and everything. I sloooooooow LOL Keep 'em coming. I'm enthralled and learning.

Hi all
what pilot figure are you all using ?
got my Hellcat almost ready
Pete

Pietro, for what it's worth, I used a Hobby-Lobby pilot found here http://www.hobby-lobby.com/pilots.htm The item number is SIR165 Garry 1:6 Scale Pilot Head ..... $ 6.20
Not a lot of detail but a pretty good fit and a very low price. My painting skills aren't ready to paint my own. Other better pilot busts out there can be $45 or more.
I did see that AK-Models sells CMP ARFs now and the prepainted CMP pilot bust looks pretty darn good and is cheap too. BUT, they're out of stock. I've never found one of those in stock anywhere.

I just realized that on Hobby-Lobby's site in the section on unpainted pilot figures, there's a pretty decent guide how to paint their pilots in case anyone's interested.

Tom dont know if Deon pick one yet , but knowing him , he will cut a piece of wood from a tree and widdle a top gun canadate real quick

I did see some nice full bodied pilots from Century Jet on the Tower Hobbies site .

Yeah I want to see him vacuform a miniature of himself! Wow... if I could do that, then I could actually eb seated at the controls of all my models!

Back to the business of Hellcats. Luke, what prop are you using? I just purchased a Graupner 15x8 3-blade and hope that'll be a good match with my 1.20 4-stroke.

Dude if he can make a mini me of anyone , i want Pamela Anderson in my plane , LOL

Dude, that will make the plane topheavy [X(]

Pete

No 1.20 4-stroke can swing the Graupner 15x8 3-blade except for the supercharged YS 120. All naturally aspirated 1.20 4-strokes can only swing the Graupner 14x7 3-blade.

You would want a 1/7 or 1/8 pilot bust since this plane is close to 1/8 scale. The 1/7 scale pilot bust from PerfectPilot would look good.

Thanks Richard
do you have a web site for Perfectpilot ?
best
Pete