Gloster "Bleariator"

[sequoiaranger]

Progress! In the first pic is the preliminary primer coat to unify the surface and detect flaws. YUP! Gotta clean up a few acts here and there, but you get the idea. The wing/fuselage fillet came out nicely. Because of the extended fuselage, oversized tail planes (all three), and setting the cockpit back whilst widening the fuselage, the Gladiator proportions are, for the most part, preserved. However, my keen eye detects that the "oversized" Gladiator now has a "small" engine. When I put the finished Blordiator next to a scale Gladiator (actually my "Gloster Gadfly" monoplane Gladiator) I made previously, you will see the added dimensions.


The underside pic shows off the dinghy tub and the wing gun tubs (soon to hold 20mm Oerlikons!). Also the wing/fuselage fillet blended nicely with multiple (is there any other kind??) PSR. Compare with my "A Burst of Progress" post's multi-colored conglomeration in the same area.


Here is the top wing with its mounting post(s) for the twin Vickers "K" machine guns. I am making them movable from straight ahead to "Schrage Muzik" 60 degrees---for "night work" as a kind of "Wilde Sau" effort. I am a little concerned about the "squared-off" trailing edge in the cockpit area. That's the way the wings came in the (Walrus) kit, but I am suspicious, from moderate research looking at photos of other biplanes, that the trailing edge should really taper to a point like the rest of the wing. Hmmmm.


I also had to make half-moon cutouts in the front edge of the Blenheim cowling (the real Gladiators had them, too) so the cheek gun bullets can find their way out past the pistons and not hit the cowling.

Next are the touch-ups, re-prime to see how they look, then cockpit work (should go quickly), attach the fiddly bits (leaving the top wing off for painting) and start up the airbrush!!

Likely, however, there will be a hiatus, as I am off to Copenhagen and Baltic seaports for a two-week vacation come this coming Sunday.

[Brian da Basher]

If there's any flaws, I can't see them, SR! The blending of the wings into the fuselage looks flawless. The cannon pods look great and mounting guns on the upper wing is a nice surprise. Granted the upper wing cut-out is a bit unusual, but that could turn out to be yet another distinctive feature of your Bleariator.

Brian da Basher

[Sauragnmon]

The upper wing is very interesting - it looks almost like it has a Zepplin hook in the center, and at the same time it looks almost like it's got a wing fold section to it as well.

Blendification onto the fuselage is perfect though - very seamless.

[sequoiaranger]

>The upper wing is very interesting - it looks almost like it has a Zepplin hook in the center, and at the same time it looks almost like it's got a wing fold section to it as well.<

The "tube" is a little bulky-looking, but came from an RAF Rescue Craft that housed twin .303's that could elevate, and will enable such on the Blordiator. Left and right half-round pegs on each MG will fit through the middle from each side. The "wing fold" is merely an unfinished seam from cutting down the span of the Walrus wings---that will be eradicated before completion.

>Blendification onto the fuselage is perfect though - very seamless.<

Thanks. I loaded the interface with super-glue for strength, then diluted white putty with lots of lacquer thinner to make a soupy liquid that formed a well-formed, but slightly rough fillet. I just smoothed it all out.

[sequoiaranger]

Spats:

Curiously, the Heller Gladiator kit comes with spoked main landing wheels. In some hundred pictures I have seen of the Gladiator, I have NEVER seen the spokes. I don't even think I could offer an inquiring JMN proof they existed! There is always a "moon cap" covering the hub. The Heller kit did not even come with separate wheel covers as an option. Hmmm. Serendipitously, when perusing a Northrop Gamma kit for its ailerons, I discovered...MOON-CAPPED WHEELS! They were a little larger than the Gladiators', but that's OK since the overall dimensions of the Blordiator are larger, too. I have some Stuka trouser-spats that I will divest of the trousers (leaving the spat) and cut out the outside-facing portion to reveal the wheel (where an access panel would be anyway). It seems that many a spatted landing gear got UN-spatted once in combat. I think that practical maintenance considerations (being able to change the tire, and not have the housing clog with mud in rough field conditions) overruled the slight benefit of a mile-per-hour increase or so in speed due to improved aerodynamics.

Struts:

The Heller Gladiator also comes with some pretty wimpy-looking wing struts. Both the struts on top of the fuselage (which I left on during construction to "measure the space" between the wings) and the interplane struts of the kit look too flimsy compared to the photos I have of real Gladiators.  Also, the Gladiator had considerable "wiring" which I am hoping to avoid, though I may add ONE set of cross-wires for aesthetic purposes. I have some after-market strut stock (aerodynamic cross-section) of various thicknesses that I think I will use in place of the kit struts. I may even use the Swordfish-style "vee" strut connecting the fuselage to the bottom wing. Also a connector strut (instead of the Gladiator's two wires) for the ailerons (the Swordfish had these). Beefier wings call for beefier struts.

[EDIT]  DOH!! Here I have been searching for good struts, especially "N" struts, through my stash of biplane aircraft and coming up empty. **JUST NOW** it hit me---my Grumman Gander/Duck whif used only the fuselage portion of the Duck. I had just GRABBED the fuselage pieces and had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN about the rest, and stored everything in the Hellcat box, so it didn't set off any "alarms" about its biplane potential inside. I now have my stronger interplane "N" struts!! And, the Duck "bracing" scheme had a single "X" pair of supporting wires, just like I had proposed on the Blordiator. Looking at the biplane wings, too, they would have been perfect for the original "Bleariator" concept. My "Blordiator" has evolved beyond that, now, but I may still use some parts from this Blordiator-sized biplane!! AND THEN....the Duck's wheels are...."mooncapped" and Gladiator-sized!! WOW!!

**I discovered part, at least, of the reason for the curious curtailment of the top wing center section. The Supermarine Walrus, from which the wing was stolen for this whif, had a central engine and propeller nestled right there. I am speculating that the "shoulder" cutouts are for the propeller arc, and I am assuming (since I don't have close-up detailed pictures) that the pointy cut-outs are for the diagonal engine mounting posts coming up from the fuselage, and the blocky trailing edge was about where the engine was. Whatever aerodynamic advantage the extra bit of tapering wing would have given would be offset by this HUGE block of metal snuggled up against it. Since the Blordiator is really a hodge-podge of multiple aircraft, I guess I can throw in "Walrus" in the mix for the backstory (but I ***AIN'T*** about to go through the "name game" again with this!!).

Progress on the Blordiator will probably stop here, not due to an Italian bombing raid on the machine shops, but to an imminent distant vacation for which I need to devote my time to prepare.

Cheers!

[jcf]

Odd that Heller wold have moulded spoked wheels as the Gladiator used the Dowty internally-sprung wheel landing gear system.

http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1937/1937%20-%202898.html

Jon

[sequoiaranger]

**GREAT** research, Jon!! How strange, then, that the Heller firm would "err" so badly! I mean, WHERE did they get the notion that the Gladiator had spoked wheels? The only thing I can think of is that Heller based the kit on an existing museum-piece Swedish/Norwegian/Finnish or whatever Gladiator that had some sort of replacement wheels. Thank you. You have possibly "saved" me from a "glaring inaccuracy" in my whif.

PS--did you notice in the Dowty wheel ad that the plane purported to be a Gladiator looks more like a Gauntlet? That is, no enclosed canopy or humpback! But upon closer look, the Gauntlet had twin interplane struts and double struts on the landing gear, so it is probably just an EARLY Gladiator without the enclosed cockpit!

Anyway, below is the PROOF of the GOOF (Heller Gladiator is the light brown sprue), and a look at what I have planned for the Blordiator spat---I photoshopped a de-trousered Stuka spat and Gamma wheel near the top. Brian da Basher sent me the Aeroclub white-metal spats, but they are a little small for what I want, so I won't be using them (thanks just the same, Brian!)

[jcf]

Hi Craig,
the Gladiator prototype, SS.37, was Gauntlet based and had an open cockpit.

http://www.wunderwaffe.narod.ru/Magazine/AirWar/72/Draw/02.jpg

http://www.wunderwaffe.narod.ru/Magazine/AirWar/72/Draw/index.htm

You may find this page of interest:
http://www.wunderwaffe.narod.ru/Magazine/AirWar/index.htm

On the pages for any of the books:
Click on Иллюстрации for Pictures
Click on Чертежи for Drawings

p.s. I find it useful to let the page of books load and right click, open in new tab or new window for an individual title
I want to look at, it seems to work the best with that site.

This page is the main magazine index:
http://www.wunderwaffe.narod.ru/Magazine/index.htm

Lots of ship stuff, have fun. 

[sequoiaranger]

Aha! Yes, an early Gladiator it was.

PS-- I will be visiting the real Russki narod in about a week! Just a brief two-day visit to St. Petersburg.

[sequoiaranger]

As I am about to go out the door on my way to Copenhagen and other Baltic seaports, I thought struck me. I may put "squadron" codes on the side of the Blordiator that reflect the character of the conglomeration and my American heritage. I may put "EP 0 U" on the sides for "E Pluribus Unum" ("Out of many, one"--our national motto), or maybe an inscription below the cockpit instead. Maybe the backstory will have to dispense with the Scottish engineer, and revert to an American engineer/mechanic instead, married to a Maltese wife (named Marsha Xlokk--if you have been to Malta you will "get it"), who offers his services to the beleaguered air garrison. Still very much a WIP!!

[sequoiaranger]

My "WIP" indeed progresses. I am thinking of having George "Screwball" Beurling, the famous Canuck ace, ship out to Malta in 1940 instead of '42 (flying Spitfires), and fly my Blordiator to glory. I found a graphic I may use as a personal emblem, but I have to credit "Screwball Graphics, inc" for it. It may tie in with my American aeronautical engineer surprising Beurling with the emblem in American style, with a "baseball". The original graphic I wanted had "Screwball" written across the ball, but when I printed it out in small enough size to be a 1/72 aircraft emblem, it was just a jumble. I think the simplified graphic below will do the trick. If my logic is forced into a corner (do that and you'll be sorry!), I might say that the emblem was an adaptation of the Scandinavian-esque "Ø" symbol sometimes used on FAA aircraft (my concoction is based on a Sea Gladiator after all).


And...I have made my spats. I found some Stuka spats that were halves, drew an outline of my preferred wheel on blue tape and cut out, then put the tape on one half of the spat. Next I took a pen and went around the blue tape, then moto-tooled the cutout outline. I had to cut off the old "axle" and put a hole in the "closed" half for the Gladiator strut axle to poke through. Then I noticed that the "moon" caps of Gladiators had six little indentations (rivets? screws? bolts?) so I found a hexagonal stencil, set it over the wheel and penned in a dot in six places 60 degrees apart, and gouged them out with a tiny Moto-tool gouge. I have actually NOT yet physically reduced the "trousers" of the spats, merely "photoshopped" the result I will soon have, just to show you what the open-sided spat will look like.

[sequoiaranger]

I don't usually put much in cockpits, just the basics. The Gladiator/Blordiator, however, had machine guns at the pilot's ankles, so I put them in. My camera couldn't pick up the interior detail except what you can see in the pic. What you were SUPPOSED to see was a machine gun whose barrel is partially in a tube (the supposed inside of the outside trough the gun is in), and some ammo coming up from an ammo box next to the machine gun. The pic shows the ammo, at least, with red tips and "brass" brass. Also not seen is a "new" technique for me--cockpit detail drawn on a clear decal, then put into place on the sides. the instrument panel and gunsight were purloined from someone else's completed model I bought for a dollar because I liked the cockpit.

The white struts are my paean to the Swordfish part of Blordiator, but I found out that on the real Swordfish the two support rods don't actually come together, but are adjacent to each other on a much bigger oval fuselage plate. Hmmm. The Airfix Swordfish is inaccurate in that regard, I guess, but that was the only Swordfish I had. At any rate, the extra wing-to-fuselage support is a characteristic of the Swordfish, and so it is on my Blordiator. I may dispense with the interplane wires and just use "N" supports. Dunno yet--that is still a little way in the future.

What's next? Smooth out the Swordfish strut-to-wing interface, smooth out a few PSR gaffes, affix the canopy frontispiece and then "seal up" the cockpit to prepare for painting. Then, since I will be attaching the top wing post-painting, I have to carefully rig up and dry-fit all the struts so that the attachment of the top wing is just drop-in easy. I'll rig the tailplanes with support wires and seal up the ugly large holes (from the Walrus tail)

THEN...the painting will start!!!

[Sauragnmon]

Coming along quite beautifully, keep up the good work.  Liking the way the strut looks too.

[sequoiaranger]

For awhile I wanted the Blordiator to look like a hot-rod Gladiator. Those white (won't be after I paint them) fuselage-to-wing struts, and my semi-spatted undercarriage make my Blordiator look a little "clunky". But given the "E Pluribus Unum" backstory of a hodge-podge of aircraft parts, clunky is OK. The plane still is more powerful, more heavily armed, and more versatile than a Gladiator.

Oops! I just made a PSR ***k-up and have to un-do the damage before proceeding. I suppose it's OK to allow a BIPLANE project to go slowly! 

[Sauragnmon]

SR, I would imagine Fast and Biplane don't often go together too well in the same sentence, really.  Fast is a relative term for a biplane.