Cable fixing and Dambuster parts

Hi again in my blog. I hope that all of you are fine and healthy.

Today I will explain and show how I placed the cabling in the bomb-bay and how I had to improve the Dambuster parts of the kit.

I will start with the cable-fixing. All of the cables come together in the rear bomb-bay

where the space is quite limited.

So it is essential to test-fit all cables to find the best solution:

First I fixed the big cables from the wings - except the speaker cables - to the main board. They were glued in place with Bondic. I left out the speaker cables because they have to be connected on top

of the main board.

Next came the cables from the front fuselage which were fixed in the front of the bomb-bay:

They were too glued to the bay by using Bondic. I had to take care that the items of the Dambuster parts which have to be build into the bomb-bay (Vickers Hydraulic Motor for Upkeep spinning and the frame for holding and releasing the calipper arms) could still be fitted without cables being in the way.

Then came the cables coming from the rear of the airplane which I connected to the main board.

Last cables connected were the cables from the speakers which were connected to each plug on the top of the platine.

Before gluing the front and rear cover of the

bomb-bay I tested the complete installed system for the first time and everything worked as supposed to.

The cables in the front bay were airbrushed in order to hide them. The ones running to the aft bay I glued into the side of the bay, where already some bundled cables ran.

Then I closed the bomb-bay by gluing the front- and back-cover to the fuselage:

As you can see the fit is absolutely ok.

The Upkeep is seen here test-fitted to the

the calipper arms. I will describe the problems connected with this later in the post.

This leads us to the next topic of this post: The enhancement of the Dambuster parts.

In the kit a sprue is included also with the external parts for the Dambuster version:

1) Upkeep Mine

2) Calipper arms

3) Vickers Hydraulic Motor

4) Frame for calipper arms fixing

5) Belt-drive for spinning of the mine

6) Covers for the bomb-bay

For reference I again used the Dambuster book I already mentioned before and in which you find beautiful drawings:

The Upkeep supplied by HK has some faults which have to be corrected. The biggest one is that the surface of the mine isn’t smooth but is corrugated. There are also some bolts present on the model-mine which are not existing at the real part.

And there are 12 holes on the surface. Each 3 every 90 degrees.

This lead to some extra hours spend for

filling and sanding, deleting bolts and drilling small holes:

The mine was then painted in the redish-brown priming color like the Upkeep the Germans captured intact the day after the dams raid.

I also handpainted the writing on the Upkeep to give it a special touch:

It still has to receive a coat of flat varnish.

Next were the calipper arms. First I had to drill a hole in the right arm for the wire from the cockpit to the fuse (marked in the picture above).

They also needed a lot of sanding on the inside where the fit was very bad.

Finally the bolts and nuts had to be added used to bring tension to the release cable in the frame:

They were scratchbuild from stretched sprue and the nut from stretched sprue with a hole drilled and then sanded to nut form as good as possible because they are very small.

The frame holding the release mechanism for the calipper arms needed no extra detailing but just painting:

Another item which needed correction was the belt-drive. Test fitting to the fuselage showed that the belt was 1 mm too long. I corrected this by cutting out 1 mm of each belt. Fit was perfect then:

The discs were painted with AK-Real Color RAF Night and the belt with Tamiya Rubber:

The last thing to be built was the Vickers Hydraulic Motor used to drive the Upkeep to create the backspin.

Here I had to lengthen the drive-shaft of the motor driving the disc. The motor was assembled and glued to the bomb-bay:

Here you see everything painted already.

Nothing more necessary since it is hidden deep inside the front bomb-bay.

This was all for today. In the next post I will show you how I build the engines and reworked the wings and prepared them and the engine nacelles for the integration of the electronics in the wing.

So I hope to welcome you again in my next post. Have a nice Sunday.