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Swine!

That is one fine looking plane!
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Thanks for the kind words, fellas. Much appreciated. (y)

Hey, Jim. Shouldn't those props be feathered? Just askin.

Good question. I have never flown a PT-6 - well, an hour and a half with a Turbo Beaver on skis doesn't count - so I went to the source with the question. Here's his answer:

<<With the Pt6 there is an option for blade latches, which catch and hold the prop in the beta range. Occasionally you’ll miss them when shutting down in strong winds, then the blades will just feather anyways. Doesn’t make much of difference on wheels, we usually feather on shut down anyway, but on floats it allows you to get control of the forward motion of the aircraft about 8-10 seconds sooner. If its feathered, when you start up, where ever you are pointed when you leave the dock the airplane is heading there for about 15 seconds with limited control till the blades come out of feather. Its much easier to operate with latches. We had them on our caravan also.>>
 
Thanks Uros.

Well, this one is done and dusted, finished it this afternoon. Before then, I had to fabricate the double slotted flaps. After cutting off the wing tips - for reasons that will become apparent - cut off the flaps lines in two locations on the top...
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...And bottom of the wings.
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This will leave the gap you see here:
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Since you need something to fill the gap and attach the flaps to, I slid a 1/4" wide length of 1/8" basswood into the opening to use as a spar.
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After cutting off the flaps, you are left with three strips of plastic.
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The lower strip is actually the rear flap. It needs a rounded leading edge that will fit into the trailing edge of the front or nose flap, so glue a strip of 1/16" basswood to the front of it. After a bit o' firkytootling with various grades of sandpaper, Viola! one rear flap. I might add that the flap also included the aileron.
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I'll jump one step to show how the trailing edge of the wing is cambered to accept the leading edge of the front flap. It involves filling the square corner of the wing and that wooden spar I installed, with body filler, then firkytootling the heck out of it with coarse sandpaper to remove all the unwanted material. The sharp eyed will also see why I removed the wing tips. ;)
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More than one application of filler and sanding - with various grades of paper - is required, but eventually a correct combination is arrived at. With the sanding completed, the wing tip can now be reinstalled.
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To build the nose flap, follow the same procedure as for the rear flap. Glue a piece of 1/16" basswood to the bottom piece of plastic, then glue the top piece on, fill with body filler and sand your heart out, making the front of the flap rounded and the rear cambered like the trailing edge of the fixed portion of the wing.
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When everything is copacetic, the flaps should fit snugly into each other and both fit into the cambered wing. Then take an out of focus pic and post it on Modelers Alliance.
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After cutting the flaps and ailerons into four pieces, everything is pinned in place using wire pins glued into the wooden supports. I dropped the flaps to the takeoff position - 20 degrees if I remember correctly - and this also allows the ailerons to droop about 12 or 15 degrees. I then glued the flap hangers in place and painted everything. The next post will be the finished product.
 
And here she be. It makes a pleasing model. Everything aft of the firewall is bog standard Otter, and I've built a flock of them. The stuff on the roof are the antennas, the grab handle for climbing up on the roof, and the probe for the outside temperature gauge.
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Thanks to Chris for the proboscis, and to J-Bot for the decals. I haven't decided what to build next, although I have a DC-3 on the shelf of doom that could be restarted. If I go that way, I may build CF-BZN, a DC-3 freighter I have flown on skis.

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Beautiful work there James!
You’re a meticulous modeller that’s for sure
I see there’s a resin kit of the turbo beaver out now made by “lift here” as well, do you have one of those in your stash?
Chris
 
Well done, James. Lots of ways to generate scrap plastic instead of useable parts in that wing work.
 
Thanks for the kind comments fellas, much appreciated.

Chris, I think I've seen that T-Beaver kit somewhere, but I can't remember what scale it was. Anything less than 1:48 - unless it's a big model - is Braille scale for me.

Uros I've built a couple of those 1:48 DC-3's. It's a fun thing. The model is big enough to allow a lot of small detail to be included. I haven't built a model for myself in ten years, always commission models, maybe it's time.

A model of the sister ship of BZN, CF-ILZ.
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A model of CF-AAM from Austin Airways. Pic taken outside on the north ramp at our old hangar.
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Just thought of another one of those DC-3's. We bought this one from an automotive company that shall remain nameless. (Check the registration.) ;)
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