As I mentioned last week this update is a few days late - sorry about that but the Surgeon had to fiddle about a bit longer than first anticipated. I'm sitting here feeling a bit sorry for myself and contemplating his assurances that the NEXT operation will be the last - yeah - right.- somehow I remember that assurance from once or twice before!
Anyhow - to things more pleasant. I decided to get all fancy and equip the Asso Champion with retracts and a "sort of" detailed cockpit. There is not all that much latitude for getting to fancy under the cockpit canopy because the floor gets in the way and to fully detail it would require major "surgery" - ugh - that word again. So I've settled for an instrument panel and a passenger - it is a two seater after all - and the pilot that came with the model has a smirk (lear?) suitable to accommodate a female passenger - photo soon. The model has cut outs already in place to fit the retracts - It's an "option" and I'm fitting mechanical retracts with a Futaba retract servo to operate them.
The Instrument panel - a piece of 1/16 ply, a piece of plastic from a shirt box and a couple of printouts from stock photos.
Instrument panel and the mechanical retracts I'm fitting
I'm pretty much restricted to doing jobs I can do while sitting down till I recover from the Surgeons knife so some of the bigger models have been put on the back burner until I fully recover. That means I've concentrated on the smaller models - the Wittman Tailwind and the Lanzo Bomber. Man handling a 90 inch Lancaster wing with 4 motors, half finished retracts and 6 servos is not going to bring me any thankyou's from the hospital if I bust something open.
By next week I should have the missing photos of the Lancaster build, a few of the Big Lazy Bee and an update of photos on the Fournier RF4 - my mate has worked his magic successfully and recovered most of them. The results are on the way back to me on a CD from the Mainland - Mainland Australia that is. I live in Tasmania which is that island to the south you can see on most maps of Australia - some times they forget we exist and leave us off.
I'm also posting a few update photos of the Wittman Tailwind and the Lanzo Bomber on their respective pages.
