Part 4

A DAY AT THE OFFICE

"I have a confession to make ...I don't particularly like the work involved in detailing a cockpit".
" Well, Mr Williams" said the psychiatrist, "that's not so bad, last week I had a guy on the same couch who thought he was a pair of curtains..." I looked at him steadily.
"I suppose you told him to pull himself together." I don't know, everyone these days seems to think he's a comedian.

The fact still remains though, that cockpit detailing is something that I, and I suspect a lot of other folk, put off until the very last moment. Many people don't bother at all, and are content to stuff a Cindy doll in the office and leave it at that. That's OK by me though, because I know one of the Great Secrets of aeromodelling and it is simply that the builder of a model is his own customer. This means he can please himself what he does with his project and adjust the agenda to suit his (or her) own proclivities. So, why should you bother with the whole fiddly business anyway, assuming that you wish only to please yourself and to heck with what other people think? Well, it's like this... scale modelling in some ways can be represented by construction of the humble onion, what I mean is, there are layers of satisfaction and achievement that peel away as you delve deeper into the subject. On the outside lies a simple scale model, scale in outline, at least according to the manufacturer, and of which the proud owner is happy enough to pole around the sky in a carefree fashion. Look, says the pilot, you can't see any detail in the air anyway, so what the heck, and he's quite right, of course. At the centre of the legume you will find represented a true scale model, complete to the last detail, or you would if there was such a thing as earthly perfection. Somewhere between all those eye-wrinkling layers lies you and me. Many people assume that a scale model is like an F3B or F3F machine, and that the sole reason for its existence lies in its performance in the air.

This is a perfectly valid point of view, except for one tiny factor: all model aircraft spend more time on the ground than in the air, and this is just as true for scale models. You may be having a crafty fag, or waiting for your frequency or looking for a convenient bush to vent the remnants of last night's beer, meanwhile your model is sitting on the ground and is open to public inspection. You must have noticed yourself, if you have ever attended any sort of scale event, that next to sheer size, the one thing that attracts interest in a particular model is the amount of detailing that is on view. At its most basic level, the philosophical equation runs thus: the more you put in the way of involvement and effort, the more you will reap in the way of satisfaction and the sheer pleasure that is the reward of constructional creativity.

BEFORE THE HOW...THE HOW MUCH?

The whole key to successful cockpit detailing lies in deciding how much of the original you are going to replicate. If you wish to put in every rivet and bolt, go ahead, but it's going to take months and months of patient effort, and all the time there will be ticking away at the back of your mind the scale modeller's Damocles Sword of Doubt, framed in the question.. “Wot if I crash it, then all that effort will be wasted?”

At the most, I will spend a week or so of evenings sorting out the cockpit, and I believe in going mostly for effect rather than substance. This means that from a reasonable distance the appearance of scale has been achieved without the awful amount of work needed to achieve the actual result. Another point to consider is the snug nature in many cockpit apertures of the fit of the pilot figure. If the fit is, shall we say, tight, then whole chunks of the interior are hidden, leaving us with less work to carry out. (Why can't you buy a fat pilot, then you'll need hardly any detail at all?) Talking of the pilot figure, the most common mistake you will see concerns the little chap's posture. Time and time again you will see pilots leaning right back and looking at the sky in the most unnatural way, this is usually because their poor little derrieres have nothing to sit on but a spikey fibreglass floor.

(Call in the RSPCA, I say!) Many folk believe that a true modeller makes his own pilot figures - I am not one of them. There are two manufacturers of scale pilots in the UK, A & H Models and Pete's Pilots. They come in a variety of scales and it would be a good idea to check them out for size before buying, as both of these companies have differing ideas about what size a figure should be for a given scale. Recently arrived on the scene are Axel's pilots from Germany which - although not exactly cheap – are superbly finished and detailed.

AND NOW...THE HOW

If you had to choose the one item in the cockpit that is visually the most important - after the pilot that is - it surely must be the instrument panel. Here again, this is not necessarily a big task, as you can buy the instruments ready made, leaving you the simple job of making up the dashboard to which to apply them. There are many manufacturers from whom you can get most scales, and you should find a reasonable selection in any decent model shop.

There is a certain satisfaction in making your own, however, and this too, needn't be overly complicated. Take those humble examples of UK coinage the penny and two-penny pieces. The latter are ideal for the larger sizes of model and can be processed thus... Drill holes in your ply or Aluminium dashboard so that the coins are a snug fit and can protrude just enough to give the impression of a proper instrument bezel. The simplest thing is to make up an identical backing piece to the dashboard which, when glued to it will allow you to simply retain the coins. Choosing the right thickness of dashboard material will then allow you to adjust the depth at which the coins will sit.

Clean the coins up with some thinners, or similar, and then spray them matt black. All that remains is to apply suitable instrument faces in the appropriate places. In the old days, this involved scratching out the instruments from bits of black card, but now life is much simpler. If you have access to a computer and a scanner, (if not, then surely someone in your club does) it's a simple matter to scan instrument faces from a printed sheet and to correctly size and print them on to a sticky label..

You will notice that I have made no mention of glazing the instrument faces. This is because I believe that the darn things show up more clearly this way and look a whole lot neater. Effect, remember, rather than substance. It's a very debatable point, accuracy versus neatness, and is worth a quick exploration. I have heard the criticism sometimes that our models are too 'clean' and would benefit from 'dirtying up', as they would be in real life. Apart from the fact that all aeroplanes leave the factory in mint condition, and we could easily claim to be modelling them in that period of their lives, there's no reason why you can't reproduce a distressed' glider. Some of the photographs from which I am working at the moment on my current project, the Schweizer 2-32, show some sailplanes that are very distressed indeed, in fact they're the aeronautical equivalent of a bunch of bag ladies .The problem is that they look ...well, they don't look very nice. There is something deep in the human soul that cries out for neatness, it's probably a cry of rage at the universe's apparent and innate chaos. So, if the full size machine that you're replicating has a panel full of disparate and wonky- looking instruments, you can choose to faithfully reproduce them, or go for something a bit neater. One thing is for cast- iron certain; if you choose the former, nobody is going to come along and nod wisely and say " mmmm, obviously this modeller has replicated the full-size panel here". No sir, he's going to turn to his mate and say, somewhat scathingly, "Phew, he made a right bog of that then...".

The next step to Scale Heaven is to consider mounting the canopy frame on hinges, assuming that this happens on the full size. Yes, it's a little fiddly, because you have to achieve a good fit between the canopy frame and the cockpit aperture when the canopy is closed. The secret here is to hinge the thing up first and then do something about the fit.

The simplest solution if the frame stands a bit proud (and they usually do) is to use filler on the fuselage to even things out. Mask out the frame with a strip of masking tape to protect it, apply the filler with a flat piece of wood or plastic and wait a few minutes for it to go off. When it starts to go solid, run a knife blade through the fuz/canopy gap and remove the tape. Sand the filler smooth, and repeat the process if necessary. It should be perfectly feasible to feather' the edges of the filler in to the fuselage with a sanding block so that there is no join - we do it on your motor cars all the time. Another good move is to fit locating pegs in the canopy frame which will mate up with holes in the edge of the cockpit aperture, thus ensuring that the canopy closes in exactly the same place every time. If you are keen enough to do this with a fibreglass fuselage, don't forget to sand the areas to which you are going to apply the body filler first. The best filler to use is Polyester car body filler, which is easy to sand and designed precisely for such a purpose.

In an ideal world you will be building your glider from a set of photographs that you have taken yourself, I say ideal, because in this instance you will undoubtedly have taken care to shoot all of the interesting little details in the cockpit, right? If not, don't worry too much, because there are some things that are common to most gliders in this area. Placards are favourite, little notices full of that sort of vital information that will prevent a pilot from drilling a hole in the ground due to lack of knowledge. Max. permissible weight of solo pilot to keep within the CG limits on a two-seater, max. permissible velocity before the wings fall off in a dive, max. permissible amount of Mars Bar wrappers that can be left under the seat before the elevator cables seize up, this is the very fabric of aviation.

But, I hear you cry, I don't know what these figures are. So what? Effect, remember, effect. On one of my models I reduced my club insurance certificate, mounted it in a simple frame and placed it in the cockpit. If anyone has noticed it yet, they've kept pretty quiet about it! The fact is, you can look at an assortment of cockpit details from a variety of full size machines, copy those that are easiest to make, put them in your model's cockpit for effect and count yourself very unlucky indeed to encounter anyone knowledgeable enough to offer any valid criticism. I am resolved, as soon as I have finished this article, to make up a placard to put into the Schweizer cockpit. It will bear the legend: "If you can read this, then you're too damn close." Let's list the basic essential ingredients for a believable cockpit:

Full size Minimoa showing sheated sides with Placard

• Dashboard/Instrument Panel (already covered).
• Pilot's seat. Ignoring my own advice I spent an evening making up and painting a virtual armchair for the front pilot in my Schweizer. Well satisfied, I put it in place, sat the pilot figure upon it and watched it disappear, completely dwarfed by the pilot. A simple ply structure will often suffice, the seat's main job being to position the pilot in a natural and believable position.
• Cockpit Lining. It's essential to line the inside of the fuselage in the cockpit area in order to hide either the bare fibreglass of a modern ship, or the usually non-scale structure of a built- up machine. There are several ways to do this, the simplest being the method employed in my Condor. In this instance, two pieces of card were cut to shape, sprayed a light green, and stuck with double-sided tape to the fuselage sides. That was a few years ago now, and it's still holding up well.

My built-up fuselages usually have all the formers removed, with the interior being fibre-glassed for strength. It's a pretty simple matter to make up some battens, curved on one side to follow the fuselage and flat on the other, glue them to the fuz and fit 1/32" ply panels in place. I would normally reckon this to be one or two evening's work at the most.

If your model represents a steel tube framework structure such as can be found on gliders in the Schleicher range (K8, for instance), it may be worth considering lining the inside of the cockpit with ply and adding half-round hardwood dowel to represent the steel tubing. This worked reasonably well on my Bergefalke I - and had the added advantage of making stronger an area prone to damage in a prang. Finally, if you have a glass ship and simply can't be fagged with any of this, there is a range of cockpit pans available from manufacturers such as EMS.

Typical Sutton type harness as used in pre war British gliders. This can easily be made up using a corded ribbon and servo fixing eyelets. The harness was passed over the pilots limbs and was secured by a pin which passed through the eyelets from the back and then locked in place at the front with an 'R' clip over the pin.

• Safety Harness. These too, can be purchased over the counter, with very
• realistic items such as belt buckles etc. Alternatively, if you can obtain some discarded garments of the type that support that part of a lady's anatomy that is high up and at the front, then you will have saved yourself a trip to the
• model shop, and a bob or two into the bargain. Soaking the straps (you really must discard the rest of the garment) in a weak solution of thinned black paint will, once they have dried, remove any trace of the word lingerie from these items.
• Placards. Simply paste on to an A4 shaped piece of ply. Adding a strip of clear celluloid top and bottom completes the illusion.
• Joystick. Again, these can be purchased ready made, or made up from brass tube or hardwood dowel. Try to get the pilot's hands grasping the stick if possible

.

There, it doesn't sound like a lot does it, and it really isn't, when you get down to it. Please don't infer from what you have read so far that I'm against a more rigorous approach to cockpit detailing, my aim is to tempt those of you, that haven't bothered with this process yet, to give it a go and discover that, like so much of scale modelling, this is yet another enjoyable and addictive process.

So, come with me for a walk around a new machine and see if you agree.

Starting at the rear we walk slowly in a clockwise direction. A partially obscured sun casts it's light on the flying surfaces, and in the reflected light we can see those slight undulations and irregularities that hint at the structure underneath. This is not the bland, flat surface of a foam filled wing, but speaks volumes to the experienced eye of the work that has gone into achieving a convincing simulation of reality. From the side we can see the panel lines and rivets casting their slight shadows, understated, yet adding their small contribution to the overall effect.

The canopy is hinged open, resting against its restraining wire, and the pilot looks ahead and slightly to one side as if he can't bear to look at the perfection of the instrument panel.

Cockpit detail in Rosenthal's Nimbus

From the front, the sailplane takes on a menacing look, as if it cannot wait to convert latent energy into effortless soaring flight. From the other side the light reflects in such a way as to cause all of these factors to seemingly combine in such a way that the illusion of reality suddenly snaps into place. Mere words cannot adequately describe the surge of satisfaction and well being that this sight promotes in the human heart, in fact...in fact....

“Mr Williams?” said the good doctor in tone of mild surprise, “where are you going in such a hurry?”
“Sorry Doc” I reply, “places to go, hills to climb, transmitters to charge, you know how it is...”
He closed his note book with a flourish of satisfaction.
“Well, he soon pulled himself together………”

.....and Placards inside a a modern Discus

Continue to Part.......... 1 ........ 2 ......... 3 ..........4 ......... 5