weskel

I have not read all 22 pages of the posts but I always wanted to build an avenger.

Could someone point me in the right direction for avenger plans?

I would like to build one around 80-90 inch wingspan.

Thanks

butlern

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Long ago I read that Nick Ziroli once offered plans for an Avenger. Maybe you could call or write him (631-467-4765, www.ziroliplans.com) and see if he still has them available.

Although Avenger plans are not "officially" listed on his website, if you click on the gallery page, he shows a picture of an Avenger dropping a torpedo, so you now have a very good excuse for asking him about the model and the possibility for purchasing the plans.

Other than Ziroli, I know of no other plans for an Avenger in the 80-90 inch wingspan range. Jeff Q enlarged his Avenger to 124 inches from .60-sized plans published by Wendall Ortzel.

Hopefully someone else will jump in here with some info soon.

Good luck,

Noah

butlern

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Weather finally shaped up for painting here in Iowa, so it's back to the Avenger.

Nearly finished with the panels lines. I only have a few more to do around the tail, as well as add some inspection hatches using the foil tape, but I'm now very close. There are areas of overspray that also need to be wet-sanded, too. It's coming out very well. The lines are a bit hard to see in these photos, especially on the fuse in the garage, but they look nice to the eye.

I have also been practicing again with the rivets, both raised and flush, so I'll be ready to hit the ground running on the rivets just as soon as I finish the panels. I have a pretty light week at work, and with the long-awaited arrival of daylight saving time, I think I can get the lines and rivets done over the next week + weekend.

The F7F is on hold until this Avenger takes to the air.

Noah

lkahn4

Hey Noah,
As always you impress to no end, saw Charlie at the WRAM show and ordered the cockpit kit. As an update, it turns out that with all the pix I posted of the fuse no one including us noticed that the bomb bay doors were 2 formers short of the size they should be. So we are in the process of redoing them to the RIGHT length. Always something. Almost finished with the gun turret.. every time I think I'm done I come up with some thing else to do. We cam up with a pretty neat hing system for the door and hatches which I will post after the door is attached, only need a MINOR modification if you like it, 2 robart pin point hinges (4) 1/16 magnets an wahla almost like the real thing.
Was at the Cradle of Aviation museum here today, the have a full size Avenger there, too bad I couldn't get closer to see how some of the things actually were done.
Keep up the good work and I will post some pix as soon as we get the new bomb bay doors finished.

Keep warm

Larry

redtail

My Feedback: (15)

Hello Noah and Larry. Glad to see you are back to work on the Avenger, both of ya. Larry could you be more specific on the correct measurements on the bay door length? Noah, could you please send me some close photos of your panel lines and what technique did you use to make the lines? Many thanks, healing is taking longer then I thought. Chic

lkahn4

Hey Chic,
Check the side view of the fuse carefully, the bomb bay starts behind F1 and goes all the way back to the angled former.. we started at F3 and had to cut out the balance of the lower fuse and epoxy it to the plug we already had for the doors, then we monocaoted and fiberglassed. Wednesday we ill do a final sanding and filling before priming and affixing the ribs and stringers then the fun of cutting the 4 door sections

We kind of love this on the job traing for building a scale model since neither of us has ever done this before.

Just take your time and check everything twice before proceeding


Larry

butlern

My Feedback: (15)

I purposely ended my bay doors at F-3, due to the modifications I made surrounding the Moki radial engine I'm using. I hope thay my earlier posts detailing my bay door installation did not confuse you, Larry. I was trying to make it clear that I deviated from the plans regarding the front formers/bay doors.

Chic, Larry is correct, the way the plans are drawn, the bay doors go all the way from F-9 (angled) to F-1 (the actual firewall). As I recall there is no F-2, so Larry you're only one former too short on your bay door length.

I'll get some photos of my panel line process later tonight, Chic. All the panels on the Avenger are overlapping, so I used painters tape along each line, sprayed several heavy coats of high-build primer. Once the tape is pulled, there are sometimes areas of overspray that need to be knocked down. The panels overlap from back to front on the fuse, and from tip to roots on the wings. I am placing the lines based on the 3-view drawings and the Accurate Miniatures plastic model I bought.

Again, I'll get some photos that show this in greater detail tonight.

Speak with you soon,

Noah

F4u5

My Feedback: (81)

Looking very nice. I am close to purchasing some of these from Charlie. Gotta hold tight and finish current projects first[:@]

Jeff

butlern

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Yes, you need another project, Jeff!

But now for the real question...

Are you going to enlarge Charlie's plans?!?!

Looking forward to seeing your Spitfire in action. Almost finished with it?

Noah

lkahn4

Jeff,
You can always buy Charlie's plans and take them to the local blueprint house and have THEM emlarged another 50%, that would give you a 13-1/2' wing span, just big enough for an old VW bug engine...lol
Let us know what you're doing, I love to see other people angst over a build

Larry

F4u5

My Feedback: (81)

I do plan to enlarge Charlie's plans, but only because the gear I have are from my old 124 inch TBF. I spoke with Charlie at Deleware last year...great guy. The 12 foot Spit is in the final stages of primer before I apply all dim rivets and panel lines. It should fly late summer. I really drug me feet on this one.

lkahn4

Jeff,
Very cool, would love to see more pix of the build

Larry

butlern

My Feedback: (15)

Jeff, that sounds like a good plan regarding a replacement Avenger. Looking forward to it down the road.

Chic, I tried like heck to get some good photos of the panels lines, with tape in place and after tape removal, but my camera washes everything out pretty bad. So I just took an old photo and scribbled a couple of notes on it so you could get the general idea.

First, draw all your panels lines on the wing and fuse in pencil. Then lay down some painters tape (or equivalent) along the line. The tape will protect the surface, and the exposed edge (that lays on the pencil line) will form the overlapping panel. For example, for the wing panel lines that run the span, place the tape behind the line. That way the paint will build up in front of the tape. This will give the effect of a panel that overlaps the surface that was protected by the tape. work in sections, and try to protect the wing from overspray as much as possible (unless you dont mind sanding the overspray off). Once the span-wise panel lines are done, repeat the process for the lines that run chord-wise. Where the span-wise and chord-wise panel lines intersect gets a bit tricky. You just have to do your best and sand away overspray. Hard to explain, but once you start, you immediately know what I'm talking about regarding this trickiness.

Here's my crappy picture:

butlern

My Feedback: (15)

Well the first 500 of 20,000 are in place... I have the bottom of one panel finished with the raised rivets. There are a few areas where I will make a double row, so to be honest, it's really only partly finished.

I should also note that the front half of the wing (top and bottom) will be flush rivets, while the rear half (top and bottom) are covered with raised rivets. The fuse will is to be covered entirely with raised rivets. The canopy frames will also get raised rivets.

Have not started the flush rivets yet. I thought I'd start with the raised first.

In spite of practicing applying the rivets and experimenting with glue/water mixes, once I started on the actual wing I was a little shaky and it took a while to get into a rhythm.

There are a few rivets that are too large, and a few that are too small, but overall it's turning out pretty good (besides, it's just the bottom of the wing that will be rarely viewed).

As I gain more experience (and grow less nervous) I'm confident that it'll go pretty fast. The other good thing is that if a section looks really bad, a damp cloth easily removes the mess and I can start over.

Back soon.

Noah

butlern

My Feedback: (15)

Chic,

I just dug-up some photos that Charlie sent to me many months ago. They show how he was laying the span-wise panel lines (left picture) and chord-wise panels (right picture) down on the wing of his AD-5.

Hope some of this stuff is helpful.

Noah

lkahn4

Hey Noah,
Excellent work, but I do have 1 question... 20,000 Rivets, I know I'm anal but 20,000. I think to speed things along we're going to have to draw the panel lines and hope they pass muster. Tomorrow night we put the stringers in the new and improved (read length) bomb bay doors and start to cut the ribs to fit the doors. Wasn't too bad, the only thing was buying 4 more piano hinges, if the wife ever finds out how much $$$$ is in this plane I'm a dead man, so if you see my obit you may want to let the police know she's the PRIME suspect. I will probably be found with a 12" x 6" propeller sticking out of my head...LOL

Keep up the good work, as always it makes me strive to keep up with you.

Larry

butlern

My Feedback: (15)

20,000 was just an estimate, Larry. I think the real number might be closer to 18,000.

Glad to hear your bomb bay is back on track. One step forward....two steps in another direction (not always backwards). That's the way it goes sometimes when constructing these models.

Hitting the wing panels hard tonight with the rivets. I thought this process would be therapeutic... you know, mindless, repetitive... not so. I'm going to go mad before too long, I think.

At least there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel!

butlern

My Feedback: (15)

Only got as far as finishing the outer wing panels and flaps so far. Hopefully I can get a large chunk of the fuse finished this afternoon/evening.

The raised rivets cover the aft half of the wing, top and bottom. Flush rivets cover the leading half.

For the raised rivets, I have been using a mixture of 75% Titebond glue and 25% water. It's important that if you're thinning the glue that you mix it VERY well, as the consistency of the rivets will change over time as you apply them to the plane. I have been applying the raised rivets with a 5 mL syringe and 20g blunt needle.

To start, I went around the perimeter of all the overlapping panels that I made with built-up primer. After that, I filled back in along lines that I drew based on where the ribs and longerons are located (using 3-view, not the models actual ribs). The same was done for the inner and outer flap sections.

I have a recommendation for those of you planning to do this technique... make sure you have ALL the panel AND rivet lines mapped out and drawn on the wing before you start building up overlapping panels with primer. I did not do a very good job of coinsidering how the ribs and longerons are distributed on the full-sized Avenger, so when I went to draw lines to map out the rivets (ribs and longerons), after the overlapping panels were sprayed, it became a bit of a mess. In the end the wings have come out looking fine, but I could have saved myself a lot of time with a little planning up front.

I also added some rivet detail to the trim tabs on all control surfaces.

butlern

My Feedback: (15)

After the raised rivets were applied, I then moved onto the flush rivets. For this, I used the standard approach of brass tubing fitted into a low-watt soldering iron. Fitting the tubing into an iron generally requires slipping a series of brass tubes within one another until you step the tubing size down the the size of the rivets you wish to apply to the model. The rivets on my Avenger are made from 1/16 brass tubing. I'm using a 23 watt iron.

It goes pretty fast, but you need to clean primer out the tubing every 10-15 rivets. I think once the final paint is in place, it's going to look really good.

In the last photo, it's actually a bit hard to see the flush rivets, but they are there along all those lines of ribs and longerons.

Top of the wings are finished, too, but no pictures... looks essentially like the bottom (good, in my opinion!!).

Back soon with some fuse updates, hopefully!

Noah

butlern

My Feedback: (15)

I stumbled upon this a short while ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMWY3gXTFfE

It's a short video tutorial on how to apply flush rivets on scale RC models. Phil from FighterAces.com put this together.

Here is part two of the flush rivet series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quDty...eature=related

Here's a similar video that outlines how to apply raised (mushroom head) rivets:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s7mg...eature=related

If you've skipped these details on your last build because you think it's too complicated or takes too long to add rivets, have a look at the videos and you'll see that it actually goes fast when you have the right tools and you take a systematic approach.

Noah

butlern

My Feedback: (15)

Got some of the fuse done. Just taking a little break right now.

Focused first on the inner wings (top and bottom) and the bay doors. I also burned flush rivets around some of the access hatches on the wing surfaces.

Just a few minutes ago, for the first time, I actually stepped back and studied my work thus far... sadly, it reminds me of a really bad plaid suit. Man, oh, man! I wanted to mimic the actual rivet detail as much as possible (and there are many many rivets on the full-size), but now I'm experiencing a bit of regret. I hope I didn't over-do it. Maybe if I had used smaller drops of glue and smaller brass tubing it would have come out a little better.

Too late to change it now!

Onwards and upwards.

lkahn4

Noah,
I think the rivets look awesome and no way there are too many... when I saw the real one a week ago I couldn't believe the amount of rivets. I have the gun tub almost finished (as long as I dont look at another picture) and will post pix as soon as I mount the unsight and ammo chute.. keep up the good work..it's awesome

Larry

butlern

My Feedback: (15)

Thanks for encouragement, Larry. I think it'll look OK after final paint is applied.

As I indicated above, a little time spent carefully mapping all intended longeron/stringer locations goes a long way towards getting the best end result, so I'm re-drawing the longeron rivet lines along much of the fuse. I just wasn't happy with the my first layout. The panels that overlap along the formers look fine, thank goodness, so I wont have to sand those off.

Anyway, it might take me a few more days than I originally anticipated to finish the riveting on the fuse.

Back soon.

Noah

butlern

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Finally finished (with the riveting)!!

There are a few areas that are not the smoothest, but overall I am very satisfied. I would estimate that I spent 7-8 hours applying the rivets. That's not too bad considering the size of the plane and the number of rivets I chose to apply.

Doing some final work on the gear doors and little odds and ends here and there, like permanently installing the crew door... but should be able to start shooting paint this coming week.

Back soon.

Noah

lkahn4

well, all i can say is, MAGNIFICENT, you are truley my idol. You're patience is a credit to the hobby. We just finsihed putting the stringers on the newly made bomb bay doors, next week we will put the ribs in and qurter the doors with our fingers crossed. Just putting the finishing touches on the gun tub, I'm NOT looking at any more pix cause it will only make me angst that I missed something on mine.
Really nice work Noah, keep up the excellent work

Larry