Fall Build Along Guillow's FW-190 kit 502

[Foam Addict]

Hey guys!

Even though I started building a while ago, I wanted to start posting to the fall build along.

A little history, when I was about 5 years old my grandfather built a guillow's Fokker Dr. 1. I still remember him having every piece pinned in place, with superglue everywhere. It flew fairly well, but eventually the rubber band snapped the fuselage in half, and he gave it the only acceptable fate for a WW1 plane... he burned it. :black_eyed:

Anyway, that plane sparked my interest in aviation and eventually led me to study Physics.

On to the plane, I decided on the 16" FW-190 because it seemed the most scale out of the series, and I already have a Hawker Hurricane. The kit is loosely modeled after an FW-190 A-3, but I kinda like the A-8's longer nose.

The new guillow's kits are much nicer than the old "die crushed" models. The laser cutting is extremely accurate and clean, with no surface burn marks. The wood is still dense, but not ridiculously so and the plastic parts are well molded.



There's no wire for the landing gear included, and the flying propellor is way too small. I picked up a guillow's beaver, and it comes with a 7" flying prop, so I'll use that one for flying. I did start a 3 blade display prop, I doubt I can get that one to work for flight though.

I also have a little kit bash project for my other favorite 190 variant based these plans that's being built in parallel. I might post on that one later on

 

[pghat15]

I started off with this one last month, with zero prior experience, haha. Unfortunately, it's now sitting half built, in a box. I switched to a foam kit and power pack and completed it. Now have a better idea of how things fall into place. Very interesting to see you pick this one up for electric conversion! Watch out, the balsa is well cut but it is still quite fragile. Good luck!

 

[Joker 53150]

Welcome to the Build Along, I've added you to the list of builders!

 

[Foam Addict]

I started off with this one last month, with zero prior experience, haha. Unfortunately, it's now sitting half built, in a box. I switched to a foam kit and power pack and completed it. Now have a better idea of how things fall into place. Very interesting to see you pick this one up for electric conversion! Watch out, the balsa is well cut but it is still quite fragile. Good luck!

I hope this helps you complete yours! I should clarify, this is being built as a rubber freeflight, I don’t have the funds or time to do justice to an RC conversion at the moment.

Your kit may have lighter balsa than mine, that would definitely help with the flying qualities, but might be be easier to break.


Thank you Joker!

 

[pghat15]

I bought it with the intent of converting it into electric RC as that's what got me so obsessed with the whole hobby in the first.place. But yeah, I realize you gotta plan ahead if that is the intent, and modify things a bit. I will complete it, just for rubber powered of just as a static piece. I do want to fly more electric powered ones though, and the foam build.concept helps things a lot. Nevertheless, putting together the balsa and watching it take shape is such a pleasure. I don't have the time or funds now to bud balsa scale but that's an ambition for the next ten years. A Beechcraft Baron electric powered scale! Yours is going to be beautiful!

 

[Foam Addict]

I tackled the tail surfaces first, these are one of only two places with serious mods so far. To save weight, I used 1/16th stringers and very light weight balsa for most of the structure, cross braced for strength. So far this has paid off, but I did hit a snag when I covered the H-stab, more on that later...

 

[YooperJon]

Here is just two of the many kits I have and I might as will start with the Focke Wulf, even though the Hellcat is near and dear to my life.
The FW-190 was actually the very first balsa wood plane that I built when I was 11 years old(54 years ago).

 

[YooperJon]

Foam Addict, are those staples you are using to hold the rudder parts down to the board?

 

[YooperJon]

I totally intend to make mine an electric conversion, so I won't be so obsessed with keeping the weight down. I'll probably cover mine in Lite coat or Ultra coat or whatever that Monocote variant is called. If you are making yours for rubber power (Foam Addict) get rid of that tissue that comes with the kit and get yourself some Japanese tissue from Easybuilt. The stuff is strong, very light and shrinks very well. In fact its strong enough to put on wet. The American tissue will fall apart in your hands if you attempt to put it on wet. I used to attack the Japanese tissue or Silkspan with butyrate dope when it was wet(with H2O)...I've never tried nitrate dope, but want to give it a whirl. Also, you could use a UHU glue stick on the frame first and use rubbing alcohol to wet my Japanese tissue with and that should work good...the alcohol would mix with the glue stick.

 

[TexMechsRobot]

Excellent! Guillows models tend to be a little heavy for free flight but I've always enjoyed building them. Good luck!

 

[Foam Addict]

Thanks TMR, they’re definitely heavy, but I think I’ll be able to get a nice looking model with a longish glide In all seriousness I've cut weight out of the aft structure and wings wherever I could, but the paint will probably add it back.

Jon,

Thanks for all the suggestions! Yes, those are staples lol, location and budget made those the best option. I've used Japanese Tissue, and I agree it's excellent, that being said I decided to try building with the kit tissue. I came up with a method that creates a strong, water resistant surface and takes paint very well using 2 to 3 coats of WBPU thinned with water as dope over the tissue. I'll cover it in depth later, but so far it has worked excellently.

 

[Foam Addict]

I made some minor mods to the wing. First of all, I replaced the heavy trailing edge with light 1/16th sheet, and shimmed in 1/16th in of washout. Then I built the wing to plans, save for the tips. for those I added 1/4 in soft balsa sheet sanded to shape. it probably added back the weight of the trailing edge, but it looks so much better. A 1/2 in of dihedral under each wing tip finished off the structure. I think there may need to be more dihedral for good flight stability, but I'll figure that out when it's finished.:black_eyed:

To save weight, drag, complexity... I'm not adding the landing gear, so I left out those parts completely as well.



Next up, the fuselage!

 

[pghat15]

Wow, you have modded the heck out of it! The balsa ‘seems’ light as it is in the plans, to an inexperienced guy anyway. The only things I have to compare it to are grocery bags, haha. I guess when it comes to being airborne every milligram makes a difference!

 

[Foam Addict]

Soooo.... being my forgetful self, I got so wrapped up in building the fuselage that I forgot to take any pictures of most of the process. It went together so fast that I barely had any break points, the fact that I was piecing it together between classes didn't help either.

The fuselage parts fit together precisely, with no slop or mislofted formers. It matches the scale drawings quite well, with one exception, the cowl exhausts. I didn't appreciate how much of a feature these are on the FW-190 until I compared the finished fuselage with a picture, and realized I need to do something about it. Since I'm modeling an A-8, I also need to modify the upper forward fuselage, but this isn't a fault of the model, just personal preference.









Since I forgot to take pictures of the A-8 fuselage, here's a sneak peak at the mod I'm working on

 

[Foam Addict]

Wow, you have modded the heck out of it! The balsa ‘seems’ light as it is in the plans, to an inexperienced guy anyway. The only things I have to compare it to are grocery bags, haha. I guess when it comes to being airborne every milligram makes a difference!

I guess I have modded a lot, I haven't even gotten to the big mods yet.:black_eyed: It takes a while to learn what grades of balsa are lighter weight, but generally lighter color means lower density, but also strength. It's a two edged sword, and I'm still learning where to use each. This model isn't meant to be a competition lightweight free flight, it's meant to be a decent scale model that happens to fly. I'll probably add the weight back in paint and minimal detail, but as you said any weight savings will help.

 

[YooperJon]

Foam Addict, WBPU...I had to look this up by googling it. What a novel idea. I should have thought of it myself. It's always handy to find a new readily available material that takes the place of and old toxic standard. How well does it work? Is it comparable to Krylon "Crystal Clear"? I've haven't tried that either.
Do you have access to these books for scratch building?(war planes of the second world war-FIGHTERS by William Green). They are not detail as much as they should be but they do have a lot of information. They would give you enough details for"stand off" scratch building.
55

 

[YooperJon]

I have no idea why that just sent double images.

 

[Foam Addict]

Foam Addict, WBPU...I had to look this up by googling it. What a novel idea. I should have thought of it myself. It's always handy to find a new readily available material that takes the place of and old toxic standard. How well does it work? Is it comparable to Krylon "Crystal Clear"? I've haven't tried that either.
Do you have access to these books for scratch building?(war planes of the second world war-FIGHTERS by William Green). They are not detail as much as they should be but they do have a lot of information. They would give you enough details for"stand off" scratch building.

It works well I think, though not as well as dope. It strengthens the tissue considerably, but you must shrink the tissue before you apply the WBPU, I tried to just apply thinned WBPU and the tissue sagged badly. It's an excellent base for acrylic paint, and repels water pretty well.
It will still sag with high humidity, but it tightens again once it dries. I haven't tried crystal clear, though I've heard it's similar.

I don't actually, but I have some excellent collections in storage at home. I can make do with the internet for reference at school

 

[Foam Addict]

College attacked with a vengeance over this last week, but I'm thankfully finished until after Thanksgiving.
I thought I'd post some pictures of how I formed the 3-bladed prop blades, they don't actually work for flight, but they look decent for display at least.

To make them I drew a template with a 120 degree segment of a circle at the base, then cut 6 blanks from soft 1/16" balsa. Once finished, they were soaked in hot water for 10 minutes to soften them, then the blanks were wrapped around the edge of my glue containers to take the curve. Once they dried, I paired the closest matched blanks, added glue to the facing surfaces, and clamped them to the glue bottles together.




Next I moved to the wing fillets... kinda. I also covered the plane, but I didn't take any pictures because my hands were covered in glue the whole time. The fillets were first cut from the provided templates using thin cardboard, and gently formed into a curve by dampening them with hot water. While they dried, the balsa supports were added to the wing and fuselage. Finally the fillets were glued to the back wooden supports first, gradually moving forward as they dried.





While the fillets dried, I realized that the exhaust recesses behind the cowl were more prominent than I thought, so some surgery was in order:



The keel was sliced at an angle, and the stringers were cracked inward and reglued.



To finish off the exhausts, I added some soft 1/16th inset planking to give them a more clearly defined shape



I also sheeted over the top portion of the nose to simulate the bulge from the nose guns. This isn't perfect, but I learned a lot that I applied to the FW-190d's nose construction

 

[YooperJon]

I'm keeping track of your progress, but have set my FW190 kit aside in favor of converting and upsizing Comet F-86 Sabre-jet plans from 8.75 inch wingspan to 15 inches (or larger)...something big enough to put a small e-duct fan into. I also have Keil Kraft plans for the F-86 which is already 15 inches...parts will have to be modified for these plans because it set up for Jet-X engine installation. Are you a student or do you teach courses? (I have multiple degrees...PM me).