Steve's Models

[Sailor Steve]

And another week of delays, mostly me being busy/lazy/depressed. I got the top wing on and everything ready a week ago today. Thursday I took it to the game to show what I had done, knowing it should have been finished at least a week earlier. Friday I was recovering from crawling around on my hands and knees - our game isn't for wimps.

Saturday I was ready to start the rigging when I noticed I hadn't put the exhaust pipes on. No collector stack, just six individual pipes. I had to carefully drill out holes in the side of the cylinders, then cut and mount the brass wire, then paint them.

Sunday I was ready to start the rigging again when I noticed something wrong If you look at the last picture there are three cabanes rather than the usual two. I had thought from the plan views that the front one was just to hold the radiator. What I noticed wrong was that rather than lead to the top or the bottom of the front cabane, the rigging line started in between the cabane and the inboard strut. That was just wrong - rigging wires are attached to the bottom or top of a strut, not to an unbraced rib. I looked through all the photographs until I finally found a good, clear front quarter view. Much to my surprise the second cabane was actually splayed outward to that midpoint, and the wire was attached to its upper end. There was also a matching one behind that doesn't show up on any of the plan-view drawings. I gave up for the night.

Monday I very carefully ripped out the second forward cabanes and measured and cut the new outward cabanes and glued them in. Yesterday I didn't touch it.

Today I finally stared on the rigging, almost a month after I started. The funny part is that it occured to me that if the Germans had the same sense of humor as the British they might have called it the "Two-and-a-half Strutter".