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Hobby Boss F6F-3 Hellcat

I moved my feet and lost my seat! Meet my "assistant", Phoebe.
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She painted an airplane wing...
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And is working on a Game of Thrones, Ned Stark figure now...
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Wow, what a little doll she is! Hello Phoebe! Greg, that is awesome you're getting her into models and painting. That wing is beautiful and I expect she'll do a tremendous job on that figure! Keep posting more of her work and let her know how much we all appreciate what she's doing.
 
I Know nothing about aviation engines, so I don't know what thsee lines are called or what the are for. But to make them I used .o15mm lead wire. I drilled the holes with my smallest #80 bit. I have always, every time, broken this size bit when using a pin vise, so I used my dremel tool. I does go a little fast even at the lowest setting so the pkastic would melt to the bit and I had to clean it after every hole. There are 54 holes! It took a minute, but no broken bit. Yay!
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I suoerglued the wires into the holes around the center first and let that dry completely, then routed them to their proper piston (?) thingy-ma-bob and suoerglued that in place. After that dried securely I tried to straighten the pipes as well as I could.
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From this point I actually had the exhaust pipes on using armature wire that I had, even though I knew it was too big at 2.4mm which is over 4" in diameter IRL. Well, they were WAY too big. I took them off and ordered 1mm and 1.5mm lead wire. The goofy pioes molded on the model piece are 1mm, which makes a 2" pipe, but in the reference they look closer to 3" which is 1.5mm at scale. I am not finding spec information on the pipes so I will go with 3" unless one of you knows the actual dimensions of the pipes. Since I drilled the holes at 2.5mm I will fill with JB weld to insert the lead wires, as well as to create the joints where two pipes meet. There are 18 pipes but only 10 pipe ends so some join others before exit. I know none of this will be seen, I just enjoy doing it. 😎
 
Greg, what you have installed are the ignition wires that run from the ring at the front of the engine. The wires start at the round part on the front of the engine, that is the distributor, and run in a metal housing around the reduction gear housing at the base of the cylinders.. There are two spark plugs per cylinder, so there are 36 wires total. The wires are about 5/8 inch diameter, and are actually the shielding over the actual conductors. The shielding prevents radio frequency interference. The shielding and wiring are connected to the spark plugs with nuts that are 3/4 inch in diameter, the spark plugs have a 7/8 hex. As you can see there are two distributors, one on each side of the magneto which generates the spark. The purpose of the distributors is to direct the spark to the proper cylinder at the time that cylinder should fire. There are two distributors to both provide redundancy and also to improve the combustion process.

The version of the R-2800 in the F6F is like the one pictured, it is a high tension ignition system. There are later versions of the R-2800 which used a low tension ignition system with two ignition coils on top of each cylinder, the distributor and magneto arrangement is different on those and the ignition wires are routed a little differently. These systems are pressurized to prevent arcing at high altitudes where the air density is low, and the voltage in the spark plug leads leading to the coils is low, becoming high after passing through the coils.

PrattWhitneyR2800-39DoubleWasp.jpg
 
Greg, what you have installed are the ignition wires that run from the ring at the front of the engine. The wires start at the round part on the front of the engine, that is the distributor, and run in a metal housing around the reduction gear housing at the base of the cylinders.. There are two spark plugs per cylinder, so there are 36 wires total. The wires are about 5/8 inch diameter, and are actually the shielding over the actual conductors. The shielding prevents radio frequency interference. The shielding and wiring are connected to the spark plugs with nuts that are 3/4 inch in diameter, the spark plugs have a 7/8 hex. As you can see there are two distributors, one on each side of the magneto which generates the spark. The purpose of the distributors is to direct the spark to the proper cylinder at the time that cylinder should fire. There are two distributors to both provide redundancy and also to improve the combustion process.

The version of the R-2800 in the F6F is like the one pictured, it is a high tension ignition system. There are later versions of the R-2800 which used a low tension ignition system with two ignition coils on top of each cylinder, the distributor and magneto arrangement is different on those and the ignition wires are routed a little differently. These systems are pressurized to prevent arcing at high altitudes where the air density is low, and the voltage in the spark plug leads leading to the coils is low, becoming high after passing through the coils.

PrattWhitneyR2800-39DoubleWasp.jpg
Wow John, thank you!! Using what I know about car engines and how they work I suspected they would be plug wires, but they seemed to be in a metal pipe which threw me off. It looks like fuel or oil lines to the uneducated like me 🙃
 
These engines had carburetors, the intake manifolds came in the back of the of the cylinder head. They were not fuel injected but they did have water injection.
 
Once you do a few of these Greg it becomes second nature to ID the items. It also becomes easier to do net searches to see what things actually look like. For me half the fun is the research and learning the history. The rest is folks going "How did you DO that?!"

That engine is really looking good! :good:
 
I thought I would work on the landing gear while I am waiting for the wire to come in.
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I am sure it is hard to see but I added the brake line (I think, it is a black line anyway)
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The lead wire came in and I have the motor exhaust finished. JB weld took up the space in the holes where I drilled them too large.
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After that dried I routed the pipes to their proper (as far as I could tell) location. Some piped spliced into others and I used the JB weld to make those welded joints.
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I used Vallejo rust texture Environment finish to paint the pipes, then used pastel dust to further weather. I actually did try to drill out the ends of the pipes, but that did not work out as well as I'd hoped.
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Is any of that work going to show? Maybe. I am thinking of opening a panel on the cowl to show it. Maybe get some mechanic figures and tools to make a diorama. If I don't do that, then the answer is no, it won't show. I just really wanted to see if I could do it.
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There is a microscopic piece that was supposed to go on top (actually the bottom) of the front part, but it literally went flying out of my tweezers and I cannot find it.
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So, here is the motor painted and weathered. I added tiny "bolts" around the center opening. Also...probably won't be seen, but still cool.
 

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