There was a 6-foot wingspan Aeronaut Catalina PBY flying boat model sitting at AJ hobby for more than 8 years. Now it's mine.
It's an ARF, but it will still take a couple months to build. It can be built for land or water, so I'll build it for water, but still fly it from the grass.
In the meantime, I have to decide on a finish. The photo below is a vintage Canadian version, but I did this on my DC3 and my Albatross.
Any suggestions?
That looks magic!
Or this one?
PBY 5-A Alaska Coastal Ellis Airlines
Easy to see when flying in cloudy day or sunset.
go for a star wars theme
I'm considering a minimalist approach.
Noooo! This.
Yikes! I hope you didn't pay the price on the box!! I asked Arden for a good price on it a couple of years ago, and even at the half price he offered, I felt it was way too much. I would have jumped at 1/4 price. I won't ask you here what you paid for it... but I WILL ask in person... between you and me. ;D
But a VERY nice kit!!!
the aluminium falcon is very minimalist and as a plus you get to quote these awesome Star Wars lines:
"punch it chewy"
"this float plane made the kessel run in under 12 parsecs"
"i have a bad feeling about this"
"the float is strong with this one"
see the fun is endless ;)
There are many more than 100 pieces to put together, and the wood parts have to be finished, so this isn't a 2-night project.
Anyway, I fit the plywood wing hold down-parts, glued them, measured and measured, drilled holes, cut (threaded/tapped) the holes, and fit the wing.
We're on our way.
Beautiful!
Over the last 2 days, I made the fin/rudder hinge; not exactly ARF speed.
It was a fair bit of work (measuring, fitting, filing, cutting, gluing, sanding, etc.), and it took a lot of thought, but it's done, and it swings freely and accurately.
There's still more work to be done on the fin (top, bottom, and cut-out for the stabilizer/elevator center.
looks great Mike. I just came up from the shop after spending about an hour getting the incidence right on the lower wing of the Newport 11. I think I nailed it. Need 1/2 to 1 degree of negative incidence. Downloaded a neet app for my iphone that measures angles.I will join you at Rogo tomorrow.
Rob - what's the name of the app that measure the angles? I wonder there is one for Android.
Hi Oscar. It is called Tiltmeter. It is pretty cool.
My vote for finishing:
https://youtu.be/Idxae5NnCuo?t=3m30s
I was in that exact plane. I was an air traffic controller in London Ontario. In the summer of 1973 it landed there. Cousteau owned it but it had not been refurbished yet, and was on it's way to California I think. What I remember about it was how big it was and how slow it flew. We could see the plane miles away and it never seemed to be getting closer.
Progress has been slow, as each step seems to take hours of careful and fine work.
Fuselage work:
The bell-crank linkage for the elevator was delicate and difficult, but ir works well after many hours of adjustments.
Latch for the canopy/hatch; the hatch with carefully shaped and fitted, glued-in front and rear plywood formers.
Servo base built, installed, and servos installed.
Wing:
Servos installed for ailerons; wiring internally; cowls constructed with carefully shaped plywood.
Tail:
Bottom rear of fuselage and stationary center of the aileron carefully carved to shape out of blocks.
Everything fits carefully (after lots of sanding and adjustments.
Getting there.
You are a man on a mission!
really nice.
Tip floats.
Tip floats on the full scale plane are retractable; down for take off from or landing on water, up all other times. Since I want to fly this plane off water, and I want to keep things simple, I decided to build the tip floats in the down position, full time. Problem is, other than the plastic shell for the floats, no other parts are included in the kit, so I fabricated my own.
These photos how I carefully marked and cut out the top and bottom parts, and then sanded them smooth.
These photos show the parts I fabricated out of balsa, plywood and hardwood dowel, and then assembled with the plastic float parts. The upper blocks will be glued into the foam-core balsa-sheeted wings.
Another Rogozinsky build...do you ever sleep Michael? If you're still open to colour scheme suggestions, how about this one? Not the simplest, but...it's Canadian!
That's nice, Bill. I'll think about it.
Anyway, I spent 5 evenings working on these tip floats.
The pictures tell the story.
They're not completely finished nor glued in yet, but the basic construction is done.
Progress.
Main structure is painted, but some touch-ups are and will be necessary.
Next step is painting the window frames.
An hour and a half spent masking off windows.
Painted.
Great work Michael. Looking forward to seeing her fly.
Progressing.
Almost done.
A few more touch ups, a few adjustments, battery placement, measure amp-draw and decide on props, throws, etc.
I moved the nacelles out about an inch each to allow for more prop clearance.
Very nice Michael.
Nice looking plane, you did a awesome job.
There's quite a bit of small things to be done, but for now, I'm going to finish the battery installation, balance and set the throws. I will then hang the plane up and leave it for flying, and only then, do more detail work.
Looks really spectacular Michael. Good job. Good idea too about seeing how it flies before spending hours detailing it.
I tested 3 sets of propellers.
9/6 2-blade APC electric props drew 26 amps at full throttle at the battery.
10/5.5 2-blade APC electric rotor/drone props drew 36 amps at full throttle at the battery.
9/7 3-blade Master-Airscrew props drew 35 amps at full throttle at the battery.
3-blades win because they look more scale. ;D
Wow! The Cat looks fantastic!
Hey! Where did you find those pilots, and what scale do you figure they represent?
Scale wingspan is 104 feet, so I figured approx. 6% for the height of a scale pilot.
Model wingspan is 72".
6% of 72" = approx. 4" or so.
I found nice 4" military figures at Walmart, cut them and glued them to a sheet of plastic, now mounted inside the canopy/battery hatch.
The location of the pilots inside the cockpit roughly looks like what I've seen on Google.
Hmm.. O.K. I need about 7" and 5". I'll check out the toy section when I'm ready ;D