Ford Trimotor (oz5546)

 

Do you have a photo you'd like to submit for this page? Then email admin@outerzone.co.uk

User comments

Back in 1996 I built a Ford Trimotor from this plan, in Scadta's Livery (later Avianca) [more pics 003-006]. Trimotors linked Colombian Andean cities at a time when roads were rough. This particular model was second in stand-off scale local contest by that time. I enjoyed a lot building and flying it.
EnriqueAlvarado - 28/11/2016
Reading Stu Richmond's comments reminds me of when, in the 'happy' days when we had a timeshare, I persuaded my wife that a trip to the U.S.A. would be nice and especially Wisconsin. Driving into Oskosh (where?) midweek, I dropped off wife and daughters at the shopping mall and made my way to the EAA Museum. Chatting to a guide, on the way to the 'Vintage Hangar', he commented that I should have come at the weekend when 'Vintage Flights' were available. Being a born pessimist I asked, expecting nothing special, what the Vintage Flight might have been and came very close to banging my head on the wall when he casually said that trips in a FORD TRIMOTOR were available!
AlanV - 11/09/2018
Alan V. sorry you missed the ride in the tri-motor. My son and I have been to Oshkosh three or four times, the last being in 2004 and we took a flight on the tri-motor at that time. Check out the EAA web site for the tri-motor tour listing. Looks like it will include the states of OH, IN, KY, IL, AR, TX, OK and NM from mid Sept to mid November. Well worth the $s for the trip and the fare.
LeeRandall - 11/09/2018
The Ford Tri-Motor has been for me a "one fina day" project. I have the model plans designed by Bob Peru and Cal Smith and published in American Aircraft Modeler in 1964 just before Cal Smith's untimely death. One issue that has kept me away from making this model is the corrugated skin. Has anybody out there devised a simple and attractive way of doing this? It is my personal opinion that a Ford Tri-Motor let alone some old German aircraft such as the Junkers F13, Junkers JU-52 and others are not finished with a nice corrugated skin representation, will not look very realistic.
Best wishes
EDUARDO BARRIGA (Colombia)
Eduardo Barriga - 21/03/2021
Eduardo, Greetings, I certainly agree with your belief that the corrugated skin is an essential characteristic of the Ford Tri-Motor, as well as the various Junkers designs. Other aircraft have used corrugated aluminum on their control surfaces, the Boeing F4B/P12 series come to mind.
I suggest you review the construction article for the Harry W. Brown Ford 5-AT Trimotor (oz9426). He covered his Ford with single surface corrugated cardboard. I don’t think this material was ever used to make boxes. I’ve only seen it used to provide padding for oddly shaped items. The stuff was sold in the US in office supply stores and other stores selling shipping supplies. You could also find it at appliance stores, in their trash bins.
You might also check out Mike Stuart’s free flight website. Some of his designs are featured on Outerzone. He has a tutorial on simulating corrugations using paint to depict the shadows that is fairly effective. It might work on larger models, as long as you didn’t let people stand too closely.
Maybe you could source the cardboard in the US, if you can’t find it locally. Good luck on the Tri-Motor. I hope this helps. Take care,
James Hickman - 22/03/2021
Also see the Infield Engineering model TBD-1 at https://www.modelaviation.com/kohlmann-devastator - that page shows pics of him using masking tape then 4 coats of primer, to get a good-looking corrugation effect.
SteveWMD - 22/03/2021
Many years ago I built a peanut scale version of a Tupolev ANT-2 using Walt Mooney plans from the February, 1977, issue of Model Builder. (These plans are available here as Tupolev Ant-2 (oz11345). Mooney's solution to the problem of replicating the look of a corrugated covering was to draw parallel lines with a ball point pen on the tissue prior to covering. Although this sounds like a "low tech" approach, the overall effect was, in fact, quite convincing as can be discerned in the accompanying article's photos of his model. I decided to take the challenge to another level. I started by routing parallel grooves appx. 1.5mm apart in a 12" x 20" piece of 1/2" pine board. This was then cut in half to make two sheets with identical grooved facings. I then pressed heavy duty aluminum foil between the sheets to make a real corrugated covering that was applied with sparing amounts of PVA (we just called it white glue back then). Any distortions to the foil caused by cutting were easily corrected by aligning the cut pieces with the grooves and repressing. It looked just like real corrugated aluminum because that's what it was! This model actually did fly, but its duration and performance were hardly stellar.
Jan Novick - 23/03/2021
Fascinating. Pit says there was also an article in Flying Scale Models, by Martin Simmons, not sure of the date, where he shows aluminium sheet being run through a kind of "mill" made of two threaded rods clamped tightly together. That doesn't work, so in the end he clamps the aluminium sheet down and hand-scribes it, over a rack of 1.2mm wires that form a bed.
SteveWMD - 23/03/2021
Add a comment