Beardmore Inflexible I recalled seeing a short clip from a very
old newsreel of a gigantic airplane with twin open cockpits. While I don’t know what air- craft that was, it could have been the Beard- more Inflexible filmed at the ninth RAF Dis- play at Hendon. Photos I’ve seen of the Inflexible are not distinct, but they do sug- gest two windshields. I elected to go with the two cockpits. Put a floor in the cockpit area using ¹⁄₃₂-inch sheet balsa. Carve and sand soft blocks of balsa to form the shape of the cockpit openings. Cut a 3¹⁄₁₆-inch length of ¹⁄₁₆ × ¹⁄₄-inch
spruce for the fuselage’s wing strut connect- ing points. Round the ends and drill a small hole in each end to hold the wire. Glue the spruce across the inside of the fuselage, butted against the ³⁄₃₂-inch sheet balsa braces. Put ¹⁄₃₂-inch sheet balsa around the spruce and the balsa braces to make cover- ing the fuselage with tissue easier.
Assemble the stabilizer mount, which has
¹⁄₁₆-inch plywood at its front for rigidity. Glue the plywood to the ¹⁄₁₆-inch sheet balsa, then glue a ¹⁄₁₆-inch dowel to each side. Use a hard piece of ¹⁄₁₆-inch square balsa across the rear. Make a hole, at least ¹⁄₂-inch in di- ameter, for the stabilizer’s holddown wire to clear easily. Glue the stab mount to the fuse- lage after the model is covered. Make the ¹⁄₈-inch sheet balsa nose piece
with a ³⁄₄-inch square opening. Cut carefully and use the cut out piece as one of the lam- inations at the back of the nose block. Mark the top rear of the piece so you can put it back the way it came out. Glue the nose piece to the front of the fuselage. Do not sand it to final shape now. Build the nose block with three lamina-
tions of ¹⁄₈-inch sheet balsa, slightly over- sized. Laminate three pieces of ¹⁄₈-inch sheet balsa to fit the nose opening snugly. With
the retaining block in the nose opening, smear glue on its surface, then press on the nose block. Hold the two parts in alignment and quickly push them out of the fuselage. Keep a firm grip on the two parts until the glue dries. Drill a hole through the nose block for the propeller shaft, then a larger hole of short depth to fit the thrust bearing of your choice. When that is completed, place the nose block in the fuselage and sand the nose section to its final shape. Tail wheel and main landing gear:
Bend .025 wire for the tail wheel’s leg and put a loop in the bottom end to fit tightly around a ³⁄₄-inch disk of ¹⁄₃₂-inch sheet balsa. Glue the disk into the wire and paint it flat black. Put a short 90-degree bend in the up- per end of the wire. Seat the bend into the ¹⁄₁₆-inch balsa in the fuselage and glue the wire in place. The main landing gear is typical of rubber powered models. It is .047 wire set in a bal- sa “sandwich” glued into the fuselage frame- work. The forward supporting leg of the landing gear has one quirk. While the cen- ter section of the .032 wire is simply lashed and glued to a crosspiece, the ends near the wheels are wrapped around the .047 wire, ending with ³⁄₁₆-inch of the .032 wire point- ing straight up. That vertical end of the wire turns upward on the fuselage side of its loop, keeping it away from the wheel. The twist is shown on the plan. The short wire ends are designed to fit neatly into the ¹⁄₁₆-inch diam- eter aluminum tubing in the bottom of the wide landing gear struts. See the front view. As you assemble the landing gear, re- member to add black shrink tubing to the wires before you make the last bends. Install the main landing gear wire first and let the glue dry thoroughly before attempting to add the .032 support wire. Each wheel is based on a 2¹⁄₄-inch disk of
Wing struts and landing gear struts are held securely (above). Wire and keepers, typically seen on R/C models, hold the wing struts. Dowels at the top of the landing gear struts plug into the bottom of each wing. A bag of plastic cowboy figures from the local drug store supplied the basis for the Inflexible’s pilot and navigator (below). The navigator’s map was cut from a page of a road atlas.
¹⁄₆₄-inch plywood. The thin plywood held up, even in a crash. Make the tires with rings of ¹⁄₈-inch sheet balsa glued to each side of the plywood, then glue disks of ¹⁄₈-inch balsa to each side at the center of the wheel. Mark and drill the center of the wheel for a short length of aluminum tubing to serve as the hub. Epoxy the tubing in place. Photos led me to believe there were bolts
on the face of the wheels, so I punched out ¹⁄₈-inch dots from a sheet of cardboard with a paper punch and glued them around each wheel. They look good, but I learned from photos I acquired later that these were ac- tually twelve lightening holes in the duralu- minum plates that covered each wheel. If you choose to make your wheels with the holes, make them slightly elongated with a smaller diameter toward the hub. Paint the tires flat black, the wheels aluminum and the hubs olive drab. Engine nacelles: Make the nacelle sides
and the three formers from ¹⁄₃₂-inch sheet balsa. Bending the rear portion of the balsa sides can be difficult. I solved that problem by making vertical scores on the rear inside face of each sheet balsa side. While I used a model shipbuilding tool that looks like a pair of long-nosed pliers, you can do it with an awl and a ruler. Use as many score marks as you need to work the balsa into a nice curve. If you think the scoring has weakened the balsa to a dangerous degree, paint the
44 MARCH 2012
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