Hmmm,,,
In one of my more hairbrained schemes I decided to have a go at the Airfix Tiger Moth 1/72.
This is how it stands at the moment and Im beginning to wonder if what remains of my sanity can take it, :-)


Nige

You are a loony :-) :-) :-) Have you managed to tie yourself up yet :-) .
Looks good so far Nige, can't wat to see this finished.
Andy (++) :-)

they all look like that at the start :-)
nigel i tracked down the web page i used for most of my reference when i built mine, and something i thought of, do you know that the elevator cables actually pass through the front of the elevators? the box art kind of shows this but not quite, on this link theres a nice close up pic of this
Cybermodeler Online - de Havilland DH.82 Tigermoth Photo Walk Around

try again!
http://www.cybermodeler.com/aircraft/tigermoth/tigermoth.shtml

Good grief, it looks like it's out to catch something. Nice one Nige
Mal

Cheers Phil.
That is a great site and some fabulous TM photos.
I had noticed the elevator wire ran over the top,through a hoop of somesort.
What I havent drilled is the hole for the wire underneath the elevator and also the rudder is a double wire.Front and back cockpit I presume?
I will have to see if I can get in with the pinvice to drill that one. That will take it up to about 40 holes in total.
Hopefully I can get the top wing on tomorrow night and then on Tuesday have a go at connecting all this madness up!
Strange thing is,,as it stands at the moment,Im actually thinking of doing another one cause Ive spotted where I can improve on this one.
I really must be loosing the plot!!
Nige

Nigel




Don't worry about it. I've yet to finish any model without having that feeling. That's what makes our hobby so exciting...there's always room to do better next time.

Keep going. We learn more from our mistakes.

Cheers

Bill

Very true Bill

Nige you put me to shame, I really must stop dallying and build a plane with rigging.
Mal

Latest instalment guys and lurking girls
This is how it stands after 2 hours of trying to get the struts all lined up.

It was a real battle because some lunatic had glued nylon thread to it previously!
I have now walked backwards away from it very slowly and will leave it to dry til tomorrow afternoon.Then I think I'll tackle the undercarriage and decals before I start the jostle with the rigging connections.
Im going to experiment to see just how slack I can leave it and get away with heating it to shrink it up.

Yes Mal,,I would like to see you do something with rigging,,and a nice lozenge camouflage scheme,,
A tri plane perhaps,,in 1/72 :-) :-)

Its certainly something different and a bit of fun between the "warbirds",and I agree that the beauty of this hobby is watching how each completed model betters the one before.
I noticed a big leap between finished kit 4 and 5.(Mosquito and Hurricane),but the enjoyment level is as high as the very first. I guess some of the "skills" ( if you can call my hamfisted attempts skills),from my teenage years must have stayed with me.
Right,,,nobody breath,,,its holding steady!!!

Good news and bad news.
The bad news is,after 5 hours of angst and headache from attempting rigging it has been dispatched to its box and stuffed at the back of a shelf out of my sight.
So far I have burnt through about 10 pieces of rigging(replaced),put 3 scorch marks in the plastic from the heated paperclip,and the paint is rubbing off the wings from continual handling.I have tried and tried to tension the rigging and as one part goes taught another goes slack. Ive also tried to tension it by holding the plane over a lightbulb and all that achieved was warping one of the struts.

Oh yeah,,nearly forgot the good news.
The good news is that I managed to hold my temper just long enough to refrain from smashing it into a thousand pieces.
Phil,,I take my hat off to you.You must have the patience of a Saint!
Maybe in a few months I'll have another go,but for now its just lucky it hasnt recieved a direct hit from the Worcester anti aircraft defences!!!

Thanks Nige, I will bare that in mind when I rig my first bi-plane You are supposed to hold the heating element close to the rigging, not touch it Full marks for trying though
Mal

nigel, there is some more good news, what you just described happening to your moth is very similar to the problems i had with my DH2. leaving the moth alone for a while until the next moment of madness is probably the best thing to do (although my DH2 was left alone for 18 months) plus you've put wires on aerials which, believe it or not i sometimes find as tricky as any biplane rigging

Thanks guys.
I think it will be a bit more than 18 months before I have another go at this one though.At least I managed to refrain from destroying it:)
Im thinking that if I do have another go it will be with a new model.At less than £4 its not worth the grief of trying to resurect this one.
Think I'll stick to the "warbirds" for now but it was fun while it lasted
At least I'll have a couple of spare struts and a spare decal sheet

Well done mate, at least you had a go at rigging. It sounds a bit like the heating of the rigging lines to shrink them made them shrink at different rates. It seems that the way to go is to work from the inside out and get the tension right as you go, or is this what you did I hope to be building my Sopwith Camel soon so you will be able to watch me suffer (hopefully not)
Mal

Hi Mal.
I tried a few different methods and sequences on this.For me the biggest and most frustrating aspect was when you had tensioned one wire nice and tight,tensioning other wires slackened wires tensioned previously.
I can see Phil nodding his head with a wry smile on his face when he reads this.
I will certainly give it a go again sometime this millenium,but I will get a fresh kit.
Still,,it was great fun for £3.60 and I can laugh about it now :-)

So are you saying that all wires need tensioning, before gluing?
Mal

I think getting as much tension as possible in the wires before glueing would be the way forward.Also maybe thread is not the ideal medium for this.
Im sure Phil can give a lot better advice on this as sofar all I can advise from my experience is how to it up! :-)

my ears are burning! it will make any rigging easier if you can tension up your wires as you go, which means its sometimes a good idea to drill all the way through lower wings on biplanes and pull the thread through. but looking at my tiger moth i did'nt use this method. the fishing line i use stretches a little and is easy to tension using a lightbulb. any rigging i now do will be photographed in detail for an eventual feature
in the mean timethis is an avro 504 that i've never put on armorama, due to getting the skid spectacularly wrong! the turnbuckles are etched items from a set of turnbuckles and control horns i have, all other etch is a PART set

Hi Phil.
i will look forward to that with great interest.Im determined to have another go at a Tiger Moth at some point in the future,as I really want one in my collection.
Maybe you could call it,,
"Biplane Rigging Out Of The Box!

nice one! :-) i originally wanted to build one rigged aircraft and describe what i did, but it may be a better idea to describe rigging methods from different aircraft, basicly something like "from spitfire aerial to DH2"

Blimey Phil!
Just as I was feeling good about building up the motivation to have a go at another Tiger Moth,you go and put photos up of a great Avro with PE Turnbuckles!!!!.
I have no idea how you managed that!
Brilliant job,and the skid looks fine to me.
Can we expect some of your biplanes to make an appearance at Hinckley?

That is a fantastic plane Phil, so whats wrong with the skid, its looks fine ( says me who knows nothing of biplanes :-) ).
Will you be including how to rig ships in your feature as well .
Andy (++)
P.S sorry to hijack your thread Nige .

the skid should be parrallel with the fusalage rather than the 45 degrees-ish i ended up with, problem was, that at that, the prop was hitting it so i shaved some off the ends of the prop and adjusted the angle till it missed. on the ship note i intend to do some rigging on my ark royal, so i'll tet you know!