de Havilland DH 82 Tiger Moth

My model of a de havilland Tiger Moth is built from  a Revell-Germany 1/32 kit.  The model is not of a real aeroplane, but is a fictional aircraft.  Floats have been attached to this aircraft so that it can take off and land on water. My 'back-story' for this fictional aircraft is that it is owned by a fishing lodge owner who uses it at his lodge for recreational flights over the lodge property and over the adjoining lakes, rivers and forests.  The registration code (CF-HGO) is also somewhat fictional- it was the code temporarily assigned to the film company who made the film "Captains of the Clouds" in 1940.  CF-HGO was the code of protagonists Noorduyn Norseman bushplane - so this is a nod to that aircraft.  The rigging of the float rudders was very complex, and so I've attached a photo or two to try to show this. The front cockpit is covered over by a removable waterproof shroud, and the pilot flies the aircraft from the rear cockpit.

Many de Havilland Tiger Moths were made in Canada by de Havilland Canada during WW2.  They were used as primary trainers by the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP)  Many Canadian towns and cities had flight schools located in or near them.  DHCanada DH 82C Tiger Moths were slightly different from Moths made overseas, for one, the wing struts were of metal, not wood as were the English craft, also Canadian Moths often had canopies attached to them, and the engine exhaust pipe had a heat exchanger attached in order to warm the draughty cockpits.  The de Havilland Canada Tiger Moths were labeled as DH 82C's while the English Moths were DH 82 A's.  My Tiger Moth is a DH 82C with its cockpit canopy removed for warm weather operation.

 

From the You Tube video, 'How to fly a Tiger Moth' (see at bottom of this post, the first of the two videos)
 
The de Havilland DH 82 Tiger Moth was a 1930s biplane designed by de Havilland and operated by the Royal Air Force and others as a primary trainer. The Tiger Moth remained in service with the RAF until 1952 when many of the surplus aircraft entered civil operation. Many other nations used the Tiger Moth both in military and civil applications and the ubiquitous little trainer still is in great demand worldwide as a recreational aircraft.

Design and development
The Tiger Moth trainer prototype was derived from the de Havilland Gipsy Moth (DH 60). The main change to the DH Moth series was necessitated by an effort to improve access to the front cockpit since the training requirement specified that the front seat occupant had to be able to escape easily, even wearing a parachute. Access to the front cockpit of the Moth predecessors was restricted by the proximity of the aircraft's fuel tank directly above the front cockpit and the rear support struts for the upper wing. The solution adopted was to shift the upper wing forward but sweep the wings back to maintain the centre of lift. Other changes included a strengthened structure, fold-down doors on both sides of the cockpit and a revised exhaust. It was powered by a de Havilland Gipsy III 120 hp engine and first flew on 26 October 1931 with de Havilland Chief Test Pilot Hubert Broad at the controls.[4] One distinctive characteristic of the Tiger Moth design is its differential aileron control setup. The ailerons (on the lower wing only) on a Tiger Moth barely travel down at all on the wing on the outside of the turn, while the aileron on the inside travels a large amount upwards... this is one of the ways the problem of adverse yaw can be counteracted in an aircraft's control design.

From the outset, the Tiger Moth proved to be an ideal trainer, simple and cheap to own and maintain, although control movements required a positive and sure hand as there was a slowness to control inputs. Some instructors preferred these flight characteristics because of the effect of "weeding" out the inept student pilot

General characteristics
Crew: 2, student & instructor
Length: 23 ft 11 in (7.34 m)
Wingspan: 29 ft 4 in (8.94 m)
Height: 8 ft 9 in (2.68 m)
Wing area: 239 ft² (22.2 m²)
Empty weight: 1,115 lb (506 kg)
Loaded weight: 1,825 lb (828 kg)
Powerplant: 1× de Havilland Gipsy Major I inverted 4-cylinder inline , 130 hp (100 kW)
Performance
Maximum speed: 109 mph at 1,000 ft (175 km/h at 300 m)
Range: 302 miles (486 km)
Service ceiling: 13,600 ft (4,145 m)
Rate of climb: 673 ft/min (205 m/min) 




Three photos of de Havilland Tiger Moths

from the 'Vintage Wings' website

Be sure to check out these two great videos from You Tube -

Stinson Reliant

from Wikipedia (and I choose Wikipedia because it is always to the point)..

"The Stinson Reliant was a popular single-engine four to five seat high-wing monoplane manufactured by the Stinson Aircraft Division of the Aviation Manufacturing Corporation of Wayne, Michigan.

1,327 Reliants of all types were made from 1933 to 1941, in different models, from SR-1 to SR-10. The final commercial model, the Stinson Reliant SR-10, was introduced in 1938. A militarized version was first flown in February 1942 and remained in production through several additional versions (all externally identical) until late 1943 for the US and British armed forces.

Reliant production can be broken into two distinct types - the straight wing Reliants (all models up to SR-6) and the gull wing Reliants (all models from SR-7 and after including the militarized V-77/AT-19) with there being little in common between the two groups of types. The straight wing Reliant had a wing of constant chord and thickness which was supported by two struts each side with additional bracing struts. In contrast the taper wing Reliant had the broadest chord and thickness of the wing at mid span, with the outer wing trailing edge heavily angled forward and a rounded cutout on the leading edge root, all supported by a single strut. The taper wing had a significant step up between the fuselage and the wing, and the changes in wing thickness gave it a distinct gull appearance from the front."

Here is a photo of one of the straight-winged Reliants, an SR-5a.

Here are two photos of the 'Gullwing' version...

And a photo of the luxurious interior

...

The model I made is vintage AMT 1/48 scale Stinson Reliant SR-9 of the 'Gullwing' series. The model kit was very old (mid 1970's) so the decals provided were dried out and useless. At the time of building the kit, a 'What-if' group build was taking place on Aeroscale. I don't do many 'What-if' models, but I joined the group and marked my Reliant as a 1930's aircraft as used by the German Air Force, 'as-if', WW1 had ended early in the war after the so-called Christmas Truce of 1915. Furthermore,'as-if' Nazism never had existed (hence no swastikas). I used spare decals from my stock of WW1 German decals and added typical pin-striping of the 'Golden Age' of aviation, plus red wing trailing edge highlights - more typical of WW1 biplanes. The 'Iron Cross', or Eisencreuz, markings were those as used in WW1 up until the spring of 1918.

Below are some photos I took during the building of the model...

here is a link to video, on Youtube, of a real Stinson Reliant (I haven't figured how to make this link 'work', so for now just copy and paste into your browser.) The Reliant was a people mover - pilot plus 3 or 4 passengers in comfort.

This is a video of a four passenger model SR-8 with a 245 HP Lycoming 9 cylinder radial engine.

Hawker Fury Mk. I


I recently completed model for a Group Build on the 'Aeroscale' web site on the theme of "Fixed Undercarriage Fighters of WW2" (http://aeroscale.kitmaker.net/)

My contribution to the GB was an Airfix 1/48 scale Hawker Fury Mk. I.

From Wikipedia :

"The Fury was the RAF's first operational fighter aircraft to be able to exceed 200 mph (322 km/h) in level flight. It had highly sensitive controls which gave it superb aerobatic performance. It was designed partly for the fast interception of bombers and to that end it had a climb rate of almost 2,400 ft/min (730 m/min, powered by a 525 hp/391 kW Kestrel engine)." The Fury first entered RAF service in May, 1931.

As the clouds of WW2 were gathering, obsolete and near obsolete aircraft were sent to fledgling commonwealth airforces to give them a boost. A number of Fury's were sent to South Africa.

The subject of my Hawker Fury is of the 1 Squadron S.A.A.F. #205 as piloted by Patrick Rushmere stationed at Wajir airfield in Kenya, close to the border with Ethiopia.


On March 8, 1940 he and Robert Blake (flying Hawker Fury #203) shot down an Italian Caproni Ca.133 bomber.

Some photos taken during the building of the model...

Below is a photo of another one of my models - a Pyro 1/48 Hawker Fury I, and the Airfix kit. The silver Fury is a pre-war RAF aircraft

This photo is grouping of four biplane fighters of the 1930's. Clockwise from the Fury is a Russian Polikarpov I-152 (which served in WW2), a Bristol Bulldog (which was replaced by the Fury), and a Czech Avia B.534, which was introduced in 1936 and was still used by some eastern european air forces at the end of WW2 (this particular model depicts an Avia serving alongside German Luftwaffe aircraft during the Polish invasion of 1939) All of htese will likely be subjects of future blog entries.

Finally, a photo of a real Hawker Fury Mk. I.

Welcome to my new blog. The focus of this blog will be on scale modelling. There'll be photos of my completed models, and articles relating to aviation.

This is a model of a Lockheed Vega. It's an AMT 1/48 scale kit. The markings and paint scheme are fictional, although the registration code, N105, was from a real aircraft. It was piloted by Wiley Post in many aviation firsts. Among other things, Wiley Post discovered the jet stream, and set speed records for round-the-world flights.

The Vega was a plywood aircraft made by the Lockheed company beginning in 1927, the year of Charles Lindberg's translantic flight in a specially built Ryan aircraft, the NYP, and called the Spirit of St. Louis. Whereas Lindberg's NYP was a conventional metal frame and fabric construction, the Vega had a plywood monocoque fuselage and wing. The aircraft had a very smooth surface which helped to reduce friction. A metal engine cowl and wheel spats were later added to further reduce friction.