Fairey Swordfish Construction Notes
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Fairey Swordfish Construction Notes Designed by: Robert J Caso Overview Wingspan 37” Wing Chord: 6.5” Wing Area: 360 sq in Aspect ratio: 5.7 Airfoil: Clark Y Length: 28” Category: Stand-off scale Scale: 1/15 Flying weight: 24 oz Engine: HiMaxx outrunner brushless 2812-1080 Prop: APC 9x4.5 slow flyer propeller ESC: Castle Creations 18 amp ESC Battery: FMA 3s 11.1v 1000 mAh Wing loading: 9.6-oz/sq ft Channels: 5; Aileron, Elevator, Rudder, Throttle, Torpedo drop History: The Swordfish is probably one of the famous aircraft of WWII. Although nearly obsolete when WWII began, it generated an impressive combat record and was employed by the Royal Air Force and Navy in nearly every theater of WWII. While it served with distinction in everyday roles of coastal patrol and anti- submarine duties, it is most famous for its attack and destruction of Italian capital ships at Taranto in 1940 and for its disablement of Germany’s Bismark in 1941 with a well-placed torpedo. In each of these actions Swordfish squadrons suffered few losses. It was reported that the Bismark’s anti-aircraft batteries could not slow their rate of traverse enough to take down the Ark Royal’s slow moving Swordfish! The Swordfish was employed in many variants, including float and unarmed trainer versions and was armed with a multiplicity of weapons including a torpedo, bombs, rockets and depth charges, as well as offensive and defensive machine guns, thus making it a modeler’s dream. A few Swordfish survive today, mostly in England, and some of the survivors are flown today at popular air shows. The Model: The model was designed using 3-views contained in Warpaint Series # 12 by Hall Park Books Ltd (ISSN # 1361-0369). This publication details a more complete history of the Swordfish and contains many detail photos of Swordfish variants along with many colorful drawings showing the various paint schemes employed during the Swordfish’s operational history. Tamiya plastic model company offers a very nice 1/48 scale plastic model of the Swordfish, including a float version. The prototype was painted with latex paint mixed to the appropriate colors to represent an aircraft that flew from the Ark Royal during the Royal Navy’s encounter with the Bismark. The kit employs interlocking precision laser cut components to ensure speed and accuracy of construction as well as a rigid but light airframe. The framed, sheeted and uncovered airframe weighs less than 8 ounces. Medium CA is to be used throughout construction. All parts are engraved with their respective part numbers called out in the plans and in these instructions. The kit is somewhat intricate and contains many parts that are not easily recognizable, some of which requiring special orientation to adhere to the building design. Carefully study the plans and the construction notes prior to starting the build. Purists will note certain deviations from scale, which were incorporated to make the model simpler to build. These are as follows: simplified cabane strut arrangement, elimination of the center wing section curvature, simplified cockpit, elimination of bracing wires and “V” wing struts, elimination of ailerons and elimination of the secondary landing gear struts. Wing: The wing is to be built flat on a building board; use a piece of standard ½” wallboard on a flat table covered with wax paper as the construction surface to facilitate pinning the structure to the board. The wings are made up of five panels: an upper center section, two upper outer panels and two lower panels. The leading edges, trailing edges and spars are designed to interlock with the ribs. Note that the outer upper wing panels have a sweep and a slight amount of dihedral, so take care in locating the root ribs. The dihedral rib (4C) is located on each outer panel of the upper wing and is positioned by an angle cut in the main spar; all other ribs should be affixed at 90 degrees to the building surface. Approximately ½” to ¾” of dihedral in each upper wing panel is fine. The upper center section is constructed by first preparing a piece of medium 1/16” balsa sheet using the outlines noted in the plans that will serve as the bottom skin. Trailing edge parts #UCA and #UCB are laminated together and are applied to the top of the lower sheeting in the center section. The ribs are inserted in slots cut in the leading and trailing edges, as well as in the main spar. All five wing panels are similarly constructed, with the exception of the employment of 1/16” and 1/32” sheeting where noted on the plans. Pay special attention to these notes. All spars require the lamination of a strip of 1/16” x 1/8” spruce on their forward faces and flush with their lower surfaces. Each rib is appropriately relieved to accommodate the spruce strip. A strip of soft 3/16” square to provide airfoil supplements the leading edges. Use a sharp razor plane held at an angle to provide initial shape to the leading edges and finish by block sanding with 100 grit paper. The undersides of the leading edges should also be relieved. Trailing edges should also be feathered in to match the contour of the ribs. The upper and lower outer wing panels employ laser cut wing tips which are attached to the leading and trailing edges when construction starts; spars and ribs are then added to the wing. Soft 1/16” balsa should be applied to the tips on the upper wing panel and sanded to provide a gentle curvature to the wing tip. Thin CA may be applied to the tops of the spars to provide additional strength to the framework. Hard 1/8” square should be used for the secondary wing spars. For a clean building job, make sure that all ribs are properly seated and come in contact with the building surface when they are installed in the wings. The inboard section of lower wing panels require the lamination of a #L1 and (2) #L2 pieces which are later sanded in to accommodate the 1/32” sheeting on their upper surfaces. Ribs #4C and the first #5 on the upper wing panels should be sanded slightly to accommodate 1/32” sheeting. The upper wing panels should be joined to the center section with epoxy noting the dihedral specifications above. A small strip of ¾ ounce fiberglass should be applied with thin CA to the underside of the joint and carefully feathered in and filled. Each of the outer wing panels employ small 1/8” laser cut “boxes” that provide a slot to receive the wing struts. These should be backed with 1/32” balsa scrap to set the depth of each strut. The appropriate ribs (4A and 4C) in the center panel are relieved to receive struts, as are ribs #2 in the lower wing panel; each of these slots should be backed with 1/16” balsa scrap to provide a 1/8” wide cavity for the struts. Note also parts RU, FU and RL, FL serve as mounting points for the struts and also employ the small 1/8” laser cut “boxes” that are constructed as above. Special wing ribs are cut to accommodate these parts – see the plans. The lower wing panels simply plug in to the corresponding holes and slots in the fuselage doublers using 1/8” dowels and should affixed with slow set epoxy. A very slight amount of dihedral may be incorporated in the lower wing panels to avoid the illusion of a droop in these panels. Ailerons: Although the original model was successfully flown using only rudder, the lack of sufficient dihedral affected its handling. The wing was later upgraded to incorporate the (4) scale ailerons and corresponding changes were made to the laser cut parts. The installation of the ailerons is shown on an addendum to the plans and certain modifications must be made to the wings as a result. The primary modification is to the TE of the aileron bay which must incorporate a full depth sub-spar to pick up the upper covering on the wings. This is achieved by building the wing as per the primary plan and then adding scrap filler pieces to the aileron bay. A micro servo buried in each lower wing panel is connected to each lower aileron along with an actuating strut running from the lower to the upper ailerons so that all (4) ailerons work together. Alternatively, a single servo could be installed under the fuselage hatch, but this installation may affect access to the battery. Fuselage: The fuselage is built upside down on a “crutch” with the bulkheads placed in their respective slots. A careful study of the plans will note that some bulkheads are comprised of two 1/16” pieces that must be laminated together to form a cross grain 1/8” part. Take careful note of how these pieces are oriented when affixing them to the fuselage frame. Some 1/16” bulkheads require the application of a scrap piece of 1/32” balsa to improve their strength – see the plans. Once the stringers and sheeting are added, the fuselage becomes a quite rigid structure but care should exercised while handling the structure before these items are added. Incidentally, the builder should fabricate his own strip stock from medium grade balsa for the 1/8” stringers and from hard balsa for the 1/16” x 3/16” stringers. This will allow the builder to precisely cut these parts to match the tolerances in the laser cut parts.