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Workbench:
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When I first saw the opening issue of Workbench I thought it was a brilliant idea. I was not surprised to see that Pete Vill was the mind behind it and as Homer would have said, a man has to follow his friend's steps when they start a new path. You may finish sailing trough the Mediterranean if your friend is called Ulysses and in a nice pub if he is called Pete, but that does not really matter.
I follow impatiently all the building steps of Pete and his big MiG and I thought of adding a little contribution.
So here I am.
The subject of this one is going to be the Polikarpov PO2, allegedly the plane
build in bigger numbers in the history of aviation.
Over the last few years we have seen good quality products with VVS subjects and affordable prices coming from East European countries.
If I am not wrong there are two versions of this plane, the military version and the ambulance version. There is not significative price difference amongst them and the second one is exactly the same with the bonus of the stretcher pods.
I have enough with real ambulances in real life so I decided to go for the standard version.
It is the first time that I build anything from Gavia and I did like what I saw when I opened the box.
The kit includes 50 grey plastic parts, all nicely moulded and with good engraved
and surface detail. There is also a photo etched detail set and an acetate film
with the instruments dials and windscreens. The instructions are 3 D drawings
with a logical building sequence the decals sheet gives you 3 different options.
Building the Interior
First
step is to build the fuselage frame which will be visible trough the access
to the cockpit. The tubes forming the frame are of squarish section rather than
tubular. The distribution of the frame is correct. I did sand the engraved details
and replaced them with plastic ones. On top of the frame I glued the etched
parts indicated for this sub-assembly. There are some wires coming out of the
side levers and I did include them.
The second step was to prepare the pit floor and the seats with their structure. The sits given by the kit are solid and the real ones were a metal frame were the pilot seated on his parachute ( if he was in good terms with uncle Beria) . The seats are the most conspicuous feature of the cockpit, so I decided to make them properly. I used the plastic seat as a mould to bend a copper rod around its edges. Doing that you can conform the main structure of the seat, the rest was done with plastic rod glued to the main brass structure. Yes, if you just do that, you will increase the relative size of the seat, and therefore you will not be doing it into scale. Having that in mind, you may reduce it a bit. I did not realized that till I had glued the whole fuselage, so keep it in mind. Once the seats are done you may attach it to the seat structure and the floor, put the control sticks in place, rudder pedals with control wires (going towards the front of the plane).
The rest of the interior details are done and painted at this stage. Many PO2 were painted on what Erick said was called steel grey, a bluish medium grey colour.
A more attractive choice is to leave the interior as ôunpaintedö .The wood panels are left as plywood. The rear fuselage has been painted linen, the floor as wood.
Instrument panels were black. And the rest details I painted them following de colour pictures of preserved examples.
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The fuselage is now closed and I started to work on the wings. The upper wing is done in tree sections, and each section has been done in two halves. To my humble view that gives the modeller too much trouble and worse, room for error. The upper wing is not a flat structure. The central structure is flat but the outer sections are going a bit upwards (positive dihedral). When putting together the different sections the resulting gaps and the thickness of the wing is clearly excessive. Substantive filling and sanding is needed. As a result I did loose most of the rib and surface detail on them, so I had to remake those using thin strips of plastic card.
The military version of the PO2 had a rectangular hole on the right lower wing to allow the rear gunner /bomber/observer to release the load using a rudimentary bombing sight attached to de fuselage starboard side. That feature is not represented in the kit, so I cut a hole near the wing root of rectangular shape and filled the gaps in the wing thickness using plasticard rectangles. The lower wings are also attached to the fuselage taking again care to keep the right dihedral angle.
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Just a few words. (Out of context)
There are two main reasons because I like modelling: joy and peace.
Joy because I like to work with my hands, work on an idea and with considerable
effort and witness how it takes shape. And peace because while I am working
I can leave behind all human miseries, all those little things that make your
back bend, year after year.
Most probably you have never heard of a place called "Pozo del tio Raimundo"
("Uncle's Raymond dwell"). It is a small neighbourhood in Madrid,
were people like you and me lives. It was rather notorious in the sixties and
seventies during the peoples struggle against Franco and his fascist regime.
There were two reasons for it; they were amongst the poorest in Madrid and they
were a stronghold of the working class activism.
On the 11 of March a bomb went off in "El Pozo" and in another two
places. It killed 200 persons so far. They were workers and young students,
common people. They were Spanish and Poles, Rumanians, Moroccans, Colombians,
Ecuadorians ... They were Christians , Muslims or had no religious beliefs.
They all have one thing in common, they are dead and they shouldn't be.
There is no point in killing people in Baghdad in the same way there is no point
in killing people in New York, Madrid or anywhere. Just by killing nobody will
win, nobody will convince.
Painting
Being
the PO2 a biplane is probably better to paint it before finishing the assembly.
The upper wing is painted on its own and the fuselage with the lower wings too.
I started by the lower surfaces using my own blend of A II Blue. I prefer acrylic
paint, mostly to avoid the "fumes" of synthetic thinner. The wings
have a solid front edge and a fabric covered structure. The front and the ribs
are represented in raised detail. To paint it I want to achieve the visual effect
or the change in colour shade, depending on what is the underlying structure,
together with the appropriate weathering of a front line machine. I try to achieve
it by changing the colour shade, clearer in the raised areas, darker in the
lower ones.
I start by spraying a uniform coat of the base colour. After it is dry, I thin
out the paint left in the airbrush using either a clearer blue or white. The
paint has to be much more thinned than you will use for normal spraying. I cover
the areas not to be sprayed with masking tape.
To paint the darker areas I mix the original paint with black or dark grey and
go through the same process. After treating all areas with the different blue
shades, I start to weather it. Again using a extremely thinned paint I go to
the areas that are more likely to be damaged by use or smoke and apply different
colour shades: grey and brown mostly.
For the upper areas I go trough the same process. First a coat of AII green
(own mix) , then the AII light brown ( it should be called strange yellow by
the look of it) and finally the black bits.
For masking I use blue tack, which will give a soft edge depending how you spray
it. Try it first changing the distance of the airbrush and the thickness and
shape of the blue tack until you know how to get a semi soft edge.
Then I go trough the same process of changing the shade and weathering. Here
you can go a bit more free hand and try different effects. If you don't like
it, you can always cover it and try again.
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Painting
Once
the painting of the fuselage and upper wing is finished, is time to move on
the next building Stage. I did first the fixed landing gear and tail.
PIC 1
After that sub assembly is done is time to prepare what I thought it was going to be more complicated, and that is to attach the upper wing to the rest of the plane. After a lot of thinking I decided to first star by the external strouts, attaching them first to the lower wing. The struts have an N shape and not even dents where to fix it to the wings. I drilled a very thin hole through the vertex of the N angles.
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Inside of the drilled hole I glued a very thin needle.
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That will help to make a stable join and more important to keep it in place till the superglue works. The next thing is to drill a hole in the lower wing exactly were the strout is men to go and finally to superglue the lower part of the strout to the lower wing taking care to angle it a bit outward
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After
this operation is done I did repeat the same process with the upper wing. It
is crucial to make the drill exactly in the place were they should go; otherwise
it will be twisted sideways to the longitudinal axis of the plane. Dry fit it
until you are either bored or sure you got it right.
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The
only trick is to get the length of each arm right. It is very easy if you use
a measuring compass as shown in the picture.
Then I go trough the same process of changing the shade and weathering. Here you can go a bit more free hand and try different effects. If you don't like it, you can always cover it and try again.
Once the upper wing is in place, most of the worry is over and considering the thing has the look of a Salamander if you look at it in the dark, looks like a plane.
Now is time for all the rigging, bits and bobs (propeller, machine gun, windscreens
etc.)
It does not pose any other particular problems and only requires patience. At
this stage I am always short of the last item, particularly concerning the rigging.
By The way, I know that PO2 propellers were painted were not wood finished but I just liked it. I promise that one of those days I'll change it.
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