On Jan. 24th of this year I bought the Hasagawa 1:16 Wright Flyer. I have been working on it on the average of 1 hour a day since then. I estimate I will have it done in about another 7-10 days. So far, so good. It is a fairly difficult kit with some problems that must be overcome to get it built right.
I am looking forward to building NOTHING for a month or two.
I will be posting to alt.binaries.models.scale once I get it completed. I did take nearly 1000 construction picts if anyone is interested, post here and I'll post some over on alt.binaries.
Excellent!! Have you considered writing up a construction article for Aircraft Resoursce Center, Hyperscale, Internet modeller and the like? I'll bet that they'd be interested to run it on Dce 17th...
Would love some pictures & maybe a few hints of biggest problems solved. I have just started mine & am still fiddling with how to make the plywood (edges) not look like plywood and correct a couple irergularities.
I have some disappointments in the kit for the $$.
I too looked at the Jenny, very closely. In the kit that I looked there were many miss-cast or poorly cast parts. Make sure that you get these replaced by Model Airways. They replaced about 20 miss-cast pieces on their Albatross D-Va for me a couple of years ago.
To some extent I agree, would have been nice to been made of wood. My solution. I painted them to match the color of the wood supplied in the kit.
No big deal, the Wright's painted the wood props with a silver aluminum paint to make it more difficult for probing eyes to figure out what they were made of, and I've also heard to make them easier to photograph!!?? I seen the real thing recently and they are painted silver/aluminum.
I used Bestine solvent/thinner to get rid of the wax coating. I stained the wood and it worked out just fine. I reshaped the wood pieces by sanding within reason. Not perfect but close enough.
True, I tried covering a couple of practice built-up wing sections using the diagonal approach and ended up with warped wings both times. I just accepted it and built it using the method suggested in the kit and the rice paper provided in the kit. VERY delicate after this stage. I should have used Japan Silk, the kind used for covering balsa models. It would have been much sturdier.
The biggest bitch I have about this kit is that several parts are miss cut or cast too short/long. For example, on my kit, the W3 Main wing spars for top an bottom wings............... the notches for the connecting struts are not the same for both pieces. I had to renotch them in 4 places to make them match!?? Good thing to catch before you cover the wings. I found this problem to exist on 5 other unbuilt kits at my local hobby shop.........beware!!
The other big problem I had was the longer drive chain cast piece was about .25" too short. I had to cut mine, use a metal pin extension and refinish the piece to make it fit correctly!! I was so discouraged at this point I almost drop kicked the whole fricking kit out the 2nd floor window of my studio. BUT.......... I stepped away for about a week and returned with a fresh perspective and continued on.
Also, the Flyer didn't exactly have much of a cockpit but Hasagawa managed to leave out about 30% of the pieces for a finished cockpit area. I gathered reference picts and scratchbuilt the remaining pieces.
Overall I've learned a tremendous amount about the Wright Brothers and their Flyer 1. It has taken me longer to build the model that it took the Wrights to build the actual aeroplane;-)
Hope this helps you and anyone else that is considering building this great model.
Thanks for the heads up - hope they've got it under control by now. I did notice that the cast parts in the ad photos even look a bit "rough".
How about the wood parts? Hoping for big thinngs, being laser cut and all...I also like the large DiVinci flyer. Seen one built - nice looking contraption.
I don't recall any major problems with the wooden parts, my Albatross was fine. To be honest with you the wood parts are not as critical to me as I have access to a friends incredible wood shop and anytime I need to make a piece I use his shop.
I know that doesn't do you any good. However, nothing stood out as being a major problem as far as the wood in the Jenny.
I have seen a couple of the DiVinci flyers and yes they are very nicely done.
Just take your time making your decision about that Jenny. It does look like it would make a beautiful model......... good luck.
I spent my high school days side tracked into building scale radio control models, and I'm suspecting the Jenny would be a similar building experience to that - still have all those tools, too. I agree - the Jenny is a neat looking model. I've also thought about covering it in clear Monocote - an iron-on, heat shrinkable mylar covering - and putting markings on the clear "fabric". That would make it a bit more "maintainable" once it's built...but I'm also thinking it would probably look better bare. Decisions, decisions...
You did the Albatross, eh?..that's another one that I'd be tempted to do, except I'd also be tempted to "finish" it - i.e.; skin and cover it. There's just too many great looking paint schemes out there for the Albatross.
That was the one thing that I had a difficult time accepting too. I tried to come up with some way of creating it, looked at other models that do have the droop (Arizona Model Crafters) for example. After figuring out that I would have to completely redesign the wings that idea was out. Like you, I built the wings straight.
Anyway, I'm getting really close to being finished with the model and am quite pleased with the way it's looking.
I'll post to this group when I put my picts up on alt. binaries.m.s
Good luck on your build-up. If you need picts of any specific building step let me know. If I took a picture I'd be happy to send you a copy.
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