royal_chris

Hi there,

had a busy weekend on the val. The sanding of the cowl mold is finished and ready to fiberglass. Will epoxy 2 layers of 163g/sqm glasscloth and finishing will start afterwards soon. It all depends on weather, since I have to laminate/ add polyester filler outdoor.



Also started on the wheel pants (the lower part mounted to gear)
First cutting it with the good old jigsaw and then added thick balsa to it. Total width has to be 68mm. It's really huge. Aerodynamically spoken, no great idea, but it looks really heavy metal

royal_chris

Hi there,

since a received a couple of email about the val, a short update:

I did a complete 3D redesign with some minor changes, a bit less weight, better shape, completely new planset with four CAD sheets...those who are interested in ordering a kit, please write me a PM here, I tried to answer emails forwarded from rcu but it didn't work.

New plans are finished, the cowl, wheel pants and canopy are in the making. I might have a serious update for a full gear set custom made for this plane next week. This took a long time and several approaches with a lot of unreliable suppliers. Keep your finger crossed. This is the reason why there wasn't much progress and the wing building apart from adding wing joining tube, balsa webs and sanding stuff. Christopher

royal_chris

As I mentioned before, I did a complete redesign (it's actually 90%+ new) of the val based on my building experiences. This actual second prototype will be build by Larry an american mate, who followed my val built on rcscalebuilder from the beginning. A nice guy and definitely more experienced than I am, really excited about his approach. 

new plans look like these:


On my actual val I finished the aileron and flap installations, servos and so...ready for sheeting. For any servo I did a maintanance access door of light ply.

Servos are secured with two screws from above. Kieep it simple and strong



Access doors are cut out from sheeting. The aileron steel wire is guided through the tips as well for removing if necessary (hopefully never).

royal_chris

Finally the gear is ready, this is the prototype for my val. Just some tiny issues will be looking different in the series, but it's full functional and 100% german quality (sorry to mention that, but this was one of the very few manufacturers that kept his promise)

I can now finalize the wheel pants and of course close/sheet the wing bottoms. Man, this has taken far too long, but the result is great and solid. Since this is fixed and in front of the CG permanently, the little extra weight doesn't really matter.

jymster

My Feedback: (9)

Hi Chris,

I am following this thread with great interest. I really would love to learn how to design a model in 3D. I will have to talk to you about it some time. I am currently designing some 1/4 scale struts for a PT-19, and I too was hoping to have them mount to the spar in the scale way, just like you have done with the Aichi. Are you able to share some more detail with me around the mounting of the gear to the spar? Much appreciated.

James.

royal_chris

Hi James,

the mounting is rather easy. A heavy 6mm air-ply plate is epoxied between the main spars with 4x drive in nuts M4. It's about two rib fields long. All effected ribs have 1,5mm air-ply doublers, this whole area is drawn pretty solid. Thr gear mounting block is screwed to the plate first with the rest of the gear removed. Then add wheels and secures them, check straightness and secure them twice in the mounting block. That's it.

I have considered a 1° plus the wing incidence to have the struts about 2° forward.

Edwin

My Feedback: (2)

Subscribed. I've been following this build off and on since the beginning. I was planning on doing my own Val design when I saw this one. Watching with interest.
Edwin

ARUP

I'm with you, Edwin! I'd like to purchase plans and wood to build one. Maybe Chris would develope a Nakajima B5N 'Kate' in same scale, too!

royal_chris

Thank you guys

Chris is currently finishing a 1/5th scale Hawker Hurricane and has already started working on a Spitfire MkIX same scale.

All the best :-)

royal_chris

Hi David Ch. I received your mail though rcuniverse but I am not able to answer (no clue). I will update this thread very soon will new photos of building progresses, but will ship no kit until this lady has maidened. Thanks for your patience. :-)

royal_chris

I had some wing LE finally shaped and sanded, ready for the dive break.

1/2 Val wing, actually a huge surfboard



The trailing edges received some thin plywood (0.6mm) for some extra strength and very straight edge. Just sand the balsa a bit down, glue the plywood strips (grain 90° to balsa grain > extra strength!) and some light filler to sand to shape. Just a few minutes of work.



Tips were sanded from solid balsa, a pain in the a.. without sanding machine, but it's ordered, I am convinded now . Just a bit of filler to add:



Before I am doing the dive break part, I had to build a new horizontal stab, the original had to much twist due to some ironing when sheeting with balsa, a method I will never use again!

I took the chance to build the new stab from the new cut files, a bit lighter, less ribs, but the method and hinging is still the same.

royal_chris

Since the weather is getting better here in Germoney, I did some stinky stuff outside:

I received my orbit sander today (about 5" diameter) and did some fine sanding on the cowl moulding (grid 400), did some filler work on the top (2k polyester fine car filler). Some work to prepare the actual surface detailling work:


I prepared a jig to actually glas and fill both wings at once. Secured and stick to this jog with the 30mm wing joiner both vertical (to glass at once) and filler (horizontal). I will put some extra weight to the bottom piece for a solid stand:


The wheel pants were adjusted a last time, finally some 163gr glass cloth to sand and filler tomorrow.


all the Best,
Christopher

jeffp51

Chris Schönes Flugzeug!! What are you doing in Germany? I lived there about three years myself, and am teaching the language now. Your plans put anything I have ever drawn to shame. Keep it up.

royal_chris

Hi Jeff,

vielen Dank. It was actually my first CAD design, the latest plans are nearly 100% new. Besides this built, I am currently finishing my 3rd design, the Hawker Hurricane Mark IIC 1/5th scale. Christopher

longdan

Guten Tag Chris.
I just want to say what a cool looking plane you are building. I love those old radial warbirds, regardless of whose side they were on.
This is a great example of using modern CAD/CAM technology to help build a plane that most people would shy away from because of the difficulties in producing all those intersecting curves by hand.

royal_chris

The cowl moulding growing...


All panel lines were marked

Phil's Chartpak (fighteraces UK) was used. Needs a lot of time and patience, usually several tries until it's straight.



A couple of filler coats afterwards (2 of 4), we need some thick layer here to perfectly sand the surface and add all rivets afterwards.





...to be continued.

Thanks Christopher

PS thanks for all of your nice mails and interest in a val kit. Let us please maiden one of the prototypes first for security reasons. After that, of course :-)

royal_chris

I was done with fine grid sanding, panel lines were added with chartpak and all was fine. Refused to have a flat and nicely sanded surface and decided to go for metal plates for more "rock'n'roll". Cut the sheets to pieces, did some grid 100 sanding on the cowl as well as the litho plates.

The cooling openings ( what's the right word?) are already done, I ordered plates of different thickness and some tiny brass rivets to add more details, as far as my books show it (not that deeply investigates as I wish).

I like it so far.



Christopher

royal_chris

I worked hard on the cowl, might be a bit too much of dent and crinkle...but I like it. What's your opinion?
Christopher

All Day Dan

My Feedback: (5)

Chris, It looks great from here. Keep up the good work. Dan.

royal_chris

Thanks Dan, 

I was not fully satisfied and had another approach. This feels a lot better. I tried a different type of taping and heating, used balsa blocks to stretch it wherever it should go. I will continue this way to finish the alu surface.

Cheers,
Christopher

Hydro Junkie

I'm curious, are you going to use the color scheme shown in post 11? If so, you will probably want to change the striping and last two digits as the plane's ID number is for the carrier Soryu, dive bomber 31. This number changed to the Hiryu just prior to the Battle of Midway when Rear Admiral Yamaguchi transferred his flag from Soryu to Hiryu. As for the number designation, it was read as follows:
B=Carrier Division 2
1=flagship, 2=second carrier
-
1=fighter, 2=dive bomber, 3=level/torpedo bomber
last two digits are the plane number

Since Hiryu and Soryu never carried that many dive bombers, you might want to consider changing the number to somewhere between 01 and 18, that is unless you really want to model Soryu's LtCdr Takashige Egusa's aircraft.
As for the stripes, a single red stripe was from Akagi, two red was Kaga, one blue was division two's flagship, two blue from the other carrier of the division, depending on whether you are modelling Midway or prior. This all changes after Midway as Shokaku and Zuikaku became Division 1 and aircraft complements were changed. In any respect, there couldn't be 31 dive bombers on any Japanese carrier due to lack of room, regardless of which carriers were assigned to Carrier Division 2 carrier either before or after Midway

royal_chris

Hi,

seems we have an expert here I will look it up in his book "Fist from the sky". The scheme was done by a french artist. As far as I remember I read something about 17 or 18 Vals on Hiryu somewhere, so you might be absolutely right.

Christopher

Hydro Junkie

I got my information from a book called "Shattered Sword", written by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. In appendix 7, the authors go into tail codes and some of the markings used on the aircraft of the "Kido Butai"s first and second divisions. In another appendix it goes into some detail of what happened to some of the planes and aircrews that actually fought in the battle. It may come to the surprise of many that only the dive bombers from the Akagi and Kaga and the torpedo bombers from the Soryu had any hand in the battle prior to the ships being bombed by Dauntless's from the Enterprise and Yorktown. Of the Hiryu's air wing, about a third of the torpedo bombers were lost over Midway and after the attack on the Yorktown, only five remained of of the 18 planes embarked. Of the Hiryu's dive bombers, only 5 of 18 survived the attack on the Yorktown. One interesting fact given in the book was that prior to Coral Sea, none of Japan's six large carriers had been scratched and only Akagi had bombs dropped anywhere close. Another tidbit was how the Japanese naval commanders felt about getting the Zuikaku back into action in time for Midway. Unlike Admiral Nimitz who felt the Yorktown had to be included in the US forces, the Japanese had what was left of the airwings of both the Zuikaku and the heavily damaged Shokaku on board the Zuikaku, almost a complete airwing in total. Due to these being mixed from both ships, the Zuikaku was left in port "until the squadrons could be reconstituted", resulting in Nagumo and Kido Butai facing the American fleet from a less than even situation. Nagumo had 3 less ships(25 American to 22 Japanese), 248 aircraft compared to the American's 233 on the carriers and 127 on Midway, and was even on runways with four each, including Midway itself for the Americans meaning one that couldn't be sunk by any means. As for the rest of the Japanese fleet headed for Midway, as stated in the book, they might as well have been on Mars as they wouldn't be able to help Nagumo if he got into trouble

royal_chris

Hi,

I took a look into the Aichi D3a1/2 Val (Crowood Aviation) of Peter Smith. There's some list of vals squadrons included at Pearl Harbor. He is mentioning 18 Vals from Soryu including Egusa as leading commander, other carriers launched more than that (20+) according to that book.

Several sources mention Egusa's marking as BI-231, I have to look deeper into that. 

Christopher

Hydro Junkie

It is very possible that the Akagi, Kaga, Shokaku and Zuikaku all carried and launched considerably more planes than that for the Pearl Harbor mission. In "Shattered Sword", it was mentioned that the 6 carriers of "Kido Butai had expanded squadrons due to stripping aircraft from other commands". I don't have the book with me at this time to check but, per the book, Hiryu and Soryu were much more limited on space than the other four larger carriers due to their smaller size(along the lines of the American Ranger and Wasp in size but closer to the Ranger's aircraft complement) and, therefore, storage room on the hanger decks. One thing that most don't know is that the Japanese commanders, during the early months of the war, stayed away from doing the American practice of "deck parking". This meant that the flight decks were clear except when spotting, warming up, launching and landing aircraft in the belief that the planes were safer below deck. This seriously limited the amount of aircraft the Japanese ships could operate. Due to the totally enclosed hangers used on the Japanese ships, aircraft couldn't be warmed up below like the Americans, with their open hanger bays, could and this limited the size of the deckload that could be launched since each aircraft required at least 20 minutes of warm up time. Spotting the deck and engine warm up took at least 45 minutes so a full airwing strike from each carrier was impossible at anything greater than minimum range due to the required hour needed to launch the first deck load, spotting the second deckload, warming up and launching the second deckload and then forming up and flying to the target.