Luscombe Silvaire 8A Update 12/6

Finally got a little bench time and managed to glue down one of the ribbed panels.  tail feathers all all in place but the wing is just sitting on a block at the moment.

And the 1:1  I need to take out the curve of the front of the vert stab.

It really bothers me that there are no kits (or at least I don't know of kits readily available) for some of the greats in civil aircraft.  In addition to the Silvaire, it would be nice to have kits for the Champ and Stinson Voyager (or even Station Wagon).  There are Pipers and Cessnas, but those are about the only light planes available in kits.  But when you  walked around an airport in the forties or fifties you saw a lot of other aircraft.  Yeah, mostly Cessnas and Pipers, but the others had a lot of character.  To bad a plane, in order to be kitted, has to be a military plane. I build military too- not that I have anything against them, but it would be nice to see GA represented in kits.

You bring back memories of one of the first outfits I worked for, a small FBO. One of the bigger customers had a Luscombe, an E model. That was fun to work on, especially the toe brakes in the cockpit. That was one pretty little bird.

Also, at the same airfield was another Luscombe, an air ambulance version. I didn't know what it was, although it looked vaguely familiar(the ambulance version had a big piece of blown plexiglass over the aft turtle deck). It was more a hangar queen than anything else, as the owner had a big past due bill for maintenance on it, and the boss wouldn't release it to him.

Nice fix on the fuselage, Marc.  The cowl and forward fuselage have interesting shapes on the Luscombe, too.

Hi John.  Sorry for not responding before now.  Interesting indeed.  So far it has been fun figuring out hot to make things work... so far!  I am used to finely molded parts in the hundreds.  Not crudely cast parts in the tens.  Low tens even.  The wind details definitely looks like they were going for fabric.  I am not putting this kit high on the accuracy scale.

Back in the day when I built RC stuff I remember that if you needed to cut a bunch of pieces the same length,, you had to use the 1st one cut all the time to mark the length.  If you used the last 1 cut each time the pieces would get longer a little each time.  I used that to my advantage here. I glued layers of .30 plastic and traced the outside each time and cut a new one.  They did in fact get a bit bigger and only needed a little sanding to be a smooth progression.

I sat there thinking I was real clever until I tried the wing. Left out a few of the words that make my wife say, "And you find this relaxing?"  The fuselage needed to widen and flatten to join up with the back of the wing. Some thing plastic was taped to the fuselage and the cavity filled with resin.

Some filing and sanding and it blends nicely.  The reference lines drawn off the LE notch show the notch is too far left.  That, and the oval window, will be filled and moved.

And what a PITA air bubbles are.   Fill 'em, sand 'em, expose more that were under the surface then fill 'em, sand 'em, expose more that were under the surface.  You see where this is going.  This 1/48 kit will be 1/144 by the time I fill all the air bubbles. 

Looks like an "interesting" project, Marc.  I'm wondering if the reason for not much fabric detail on the wing is because they were trying for the metal wing that was on most 8E's and 8F's?