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Swine!

Stoneboat

Member
Those that were expecting a thread about bacon may now leave the room. :D

The piston Otter was known fondly as the Stoneboat. I have no idea why, but suspect it was because they cruised at about the same speed. The Otter was an 8000 lb. airplane that used a geared version of the bulletproof Pratt & Whitney R1340. The gearing was 2:3 thus at the cruise setting of 1800 RPM the prop turned at 1200 RPM. Bored pilots would count the blades as they went by. The engine developed 600 hp plus a measurable amount of thrust from the exhaust augmentor tubes. The augmentor tubes were directly below the cockpit, so the extra thrust came at a price. Talk to any old Otter pilot and the first words out of their mouth after saying hello is "WHADDYA SAY???" To say the cockpit was noisy is a vast understatement. Ok, where was I?? Oh yes, some years ago after P&W invented the PT-6 light turbine engine, someone had the bright idea of dropping the old ironworks off the nose into the lake and hanging a Pratt & Whitney PT-6 up front. It worked a charm, and Texas Turbine and Vazar added their offerings as well. The old 1340 farted and snorted whereas the turbine whines, so that may have been why the turbo version of the Otter is sometimes called the Swine.

The same gentleman who commissioned the Son of Beech has also asked for a Turbo Otter. In addition to owning a couple of them plus a Beaver and a couple of Cessnas - known collectively as Slate Falls Airways - Rich is also a professional photographer who has published two volumes of aviation photographs. All of his shots are great, but some are nothing short of spectacular. Google 'Bush Flying Captured' for a preview of Rich's work.

The kit is the venerable Hobbycraft 1:48 offering. This kit is getting pretty long in the tooth and has been reissued a couple of times, but there are warping issues with it. Rich sent me two kits, one of which I used for the floats on Son of Beech, so I shall build this one on wheel skis. A friend who works for a small airline in Northern Saskatchewan has created a homemade resin kit consisting of a new nose, propeller, exhaust stubs, and engine intakes, so I'll have something to work with rather than building all that stuff from scratch. I shall add a complete interior and cockpit, cut away and reposition the control surfaces, and cut away and reposition the double slotted flaps to the takeoff position - 20 degrees, as I recall from 40 years on - and correct a few inaccuracies in the model profile.

Here's a couple of pics of the example I shall attempt to replicate, C-FNWX.
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So, let the cutting begin to commence.
The top of the rudder is too pointed and should be rounded off a bit. I removed about 1/16" of material by sanding it off and correcting the profile.
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I then cut the rudder off the right hand fuselage half, straightened the leading edge and added a strip of wood to better allow the rudder to fit between the fuselage halves. Then I sanded a bit off the trailing edge and added a strip of .010 x .020 styrene to make a nice crisp trailing edge, and faired the new trailing edge into the rudder by carefully sanding a bit of material off either side of the rudder. When that was done I cut away the rudder trim tab and scratchbuilt a new one - along with an actuator - cobbled together with bits of wire and plastic.
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The cabin has six windows a side, equally spaced except for those in the doors. The kit cabin windows are arranged in groups of two, for some unknown reason. Since the windows on the real airplane aren't, more cutting is called for.
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The cabin floor has a humongous step from the entrance up to the cabin. There is a step-up between the cabin and the cockpit, but it's less than a foot in height and occurs at the cockpit entrance, so I shaved off all the locating tabs inside the fuselage halves in preparation for the new interior.
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I have also filled the chasms that pass for panel lines of the model. I used an acrylic auto body filler, then sanded and polished it with a fingernail buffer stick. Works a treat. I left one panel line intact - halfway along the vertical fin - for reasons that will be explained later.
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On to the windows. After hacking away the window posts I cut new ones, six scale inches wide, and glued them into the cut out opening. To space them evenly, I used this jiglet. The jiglet - it's too small to be called a jig - is cleverly constructed from a bit of cedar shim and plastic and is about the same scale size as the real window.
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The cabin windows have rounded corners, so after the posts were glued in place I cut some 45-degree angles from a bit of scrap styrene and glued them in place in the corners of the window openings, ready to be rounded off. The result resembles the dreaded opera windows a la 1980 Chrysler Cordoba! I half expected Ricardo Montalban to jump out of my closet and yell "Rich Corinthian leather!"
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One window has been firkytoodled into shape using various sizes of round and semi round files.
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Thanks for the kind comments fellas. I have the window openings redone to my satisfaction but little else, so no update this week. I've begun work on the cockpit, fortunately there's little difference between the piston and turbo examples, so I'm on familiar territory here.
 
I am always astounded by your shiny Airplane builds! (y) :ro: :popcorn
Would the Turbo Stoneboat be more reliable in cold weather?
Possibly consume less fuel per hour?
Would the turbo-prop offer a small change in C/G? How does that affect handling, I wunda?
:hmmm
 
Thanks for the kind comments fellas, much appreciated.

Rhino, the Turbo would be a godsend in winter as compared to the piston machine. I would imagine temps down to -40 wouldn't faze them too much. The round engines were something else entirely in cold weather. First, to start 'em you had to apply preheat in one form or another, either via a blow pot under the engine tent or via a Herman-Nelson gas-fired heater. Then after starting the beast - as the engine oil had been diluted at the previous shutdown - you had to wait until you had +50 oil temperature to burn off the dilution. Oil dilution helped to avoid having the oil congeal to the consistency of rubber, and consisted of adding gas from the aircraft fuel supply at a measured rate according to the forecasted temperature at the time of starting the next morning. This was done via a metered valve in the engine oil system. Typical dilution times would be 3 minutes of dilution for -30. (I seem to remember the rule of thumb was one minute of dilution for every 10 degrees below zero.) To burn off the dilution you needed 5 minutes of run time with an oil temperature above +50 for every minute of dilution you had added the night before. The Otter was easy to load tail heavy, even though there was lots of ironmongery in the nose. The battery was located aft of the main doors in the baggage compartment, and it weighed 50 pounds, so that didn't help matters any. The turbo has the batteries mounted on the engine mount in front of the cockpit which helps the weight and balance tremendously, I imagine. I don't know about fuel consumption. The piston machine carried 179 Imperial gallons of fuel, and burned 30 gallons an hour. The fuel capacity remains the same for the turbo and I believe it burns a couple hundred pounds per hour, so the endurance is about the same, but the Swine is 15 - 20 knots faster, thus more efficient.

On to the good stuff.
I moved the entire window set a few scale inches aft to accommodate the canted bulkhead between the cockpit and cabin. The kit bulkhead is vertical, which is incorrect, it should be canted about 10 degrees aft, following that panel line at the construction break aft of the cockpit doors.
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Another cosmetic change is the shape of the cockpit doors themselves. The top is too pointy, so I added a bit of scrap styrene at the top - seen on the left - and then sanded off material until it looked right.
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Of course changing the contour of the door opening must also change the shape of the door. I cut off the top of the window frame and added another bit of scrap...
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...Sanded that to shape...
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...Viola! as Red Green would have it.
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I have the window openings corrected to my satisfaction...
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...So it's on to the cabin doors. The LH door also functions as a cargo door, having two panels, and there's nothing to do except saw it in two - with the front panel slightly wider than the aft panel. The RH door needs correcting. The door sill would be six inches above the cabin floor otherwise. It must be cut out of the RH fuselage half, then the opening must be built back up to correct one's errors, which of course requires the door to be refashioned.
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Here's a peek at that cockpit bulkhead. I used the kit bulkhead as a template and redesigned the door opening a bit to more closely resemble the actual thing. It's raked about ten degrees off vertical. I used a bit of scrap aluminum to make a new cockpit floor, and the bulkhead itself is from sheet styrene. That little odd shaped grey box on the floor to the right of the door is an electrical junction box, made from a bit of scrap basswood. I used some scrap decal material to represent the dozen of so circuit breakers on the inboard end.
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With a bit of firkytootling it dry fits nicely in place.
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That's it for this post, back later with the cockpit seats.
 
I like to build my own cockpit seats out of scrap metal. I like using metal, once it's bent to shape it stays bent and if you pound it into a compound curve it stays pounded. For metal to metal use, ordinary Gorilla CA glue is sufficient where there is little or no stress on the join, but if there is stress I simply drill a hole in the parts using a #78 bit and use a bit of 26ga wire as a pin for extra strength. Works a treat.

To make the seat pan and back I measure out a length of .010 scrap aluminum to the equivalent of 18" square for the seat pan, and the same width and 24 inches for the seat back. I cut a notch at the 18" mark using a three corner file, for reasons that will become apparent.
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Once that's done, I use a pair of duck bill pliers to bend each side of the seat pan upward...
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...Then using a pair of cuticle cutters I nip off a tiny square of material from each front corner and bend the material left at the front upward to complete the 'pan' portion of the seat pan.
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The seat back should be tapered slightly from bottom to top, then using the trusty duck bills I bend each side upward a little, like so.
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Remember that notch? Bend the seatback forward for oh... about 10 degrees at the notch. Why 10 degrees?
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That's why 10 degrees. :D
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I made some seat support railings from more scrap aluminum, drilled a few lightening holes in 'em...
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...Glued 'em to the bottom of the seats and used short lengths of 20 ga wire to make the seat supports. I then used four little three cornered bits of the same aluminum to make the contoured supports between the seat back and bottom. After gluing them in place they can be rounded to shape by some very careful firkytootling with a round file.
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That's where things stand, should have the seats, cushions and harnesses finished by tomorrow, then on to the panel and other front end goodies.
 
Great step by step! Honestly I could probably do one on a good day, but doing another identical...forgetabout it. :rotf

:notworthy
 
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