Catalina PBY 6 flying boat

[octagon]

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.

[Michael]

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.

[Michael]

Wing:

Servos installed for ailerons; wiring internally; cowls constructed with carefully shaped plywood.

[Michael]

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.

[Michael]

Getting there.

[sihinch]

You are a man on a mission!

[octagon]

really nice.

[Michael]

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.

[Michael]

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.

[Wingnutz]

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!

[Michael]

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.

[Michael]

Progress.

[Michael]

Main structure is painted, but some touch-ups are and will be necessary.

Next step is painting the window frames.

[Michael]

An hour and a half spent masking off windows.

[Michael]

Painted.