I am just starting the Classic Airframes Curtiss BF2C. The kit has an empty ring below and behind the engine cowl. In previous Hawks this was the location of an oil cooler. An empty (drag producing) ring protruding into the airstream makes no sense to me. Did CA just forget to include an oil cooler in the kit?
Well, I've got a cut-away drawing of the BF2C where the circular doo-hickey is labeled as, "Auxillary tank wind cowl".
Which doesn't set off any flashes of understanding for me - but perhaps someone else can puzzle out just what that means or what an "auxillary tank wind cowl" was supposed to do and how it was supposed to do it.
The drawing does show the doo-hickey as clearly empty though.
Cheers,
ISTR that ring showing up on a Hasegawa kit for that bird. "Scale Modeler" did a build article on the kit in the '70s but no explanation of that ring was included. I'm curious what it was used for.
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
As I understand it, the ring itself has tubes all through it and the oil circulates thru it to be cooled. This was a little different than the usual core type cooler but it seems to have worked.
Bill Shuey
some racing bikes in the 60's-70's used coolers like that. on the brakes.
"Bill Shatzer" wrote
I suspect that it was for when an auxiliary fuel tank was fitted. Some sort of gizmo that modified the airflow to reduce drag due to the tank, reduce buffeting and vibration, something like that.
KL
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