It's all Kelvin's fault. A few years ago he handed me a very nicely built, uncovered wing from a Brodak "Fancy Pants" project that he had lost interest in. He asked, "You want this thing here"? I said "Heck yeah" and brought it home with me after another shop B.S. session. It sat under my workbench haunting me off and on until I had an idea (
) and dug it out. I wondered, what kind of semi-scale Warbird I could build out of it? Finally I thought OK, a straight leading edge and wing mounted landing gear, what single engine WWII designs had these features? Even more importantly, what designs don't you ever see at the model flying field? After considering a bunch of different designs I kept coming back to, and decided on, the Curtiss Helldiver. All I would have to do with the wing is knock off the "Fancy Pants" wingtips, make new ones, and then I had a great start on the model already. Doing this would automatically give me a bit more wing area too. Being lazy though, the 45" wingspan was settled on because that's all the pre-existing leadouts would allow.
The rest of the Helldiver is a completely scratchbuilt "figure it out as you go" project that I've now finally gotten to the finishing stages on. There are no plans except for some rough drawings I did before starting the build just to figure out moments, proportions and where and what shape the fuselage bulkheads would be. Also to figure out all the outlines of the stab, elevator, fin, rudder etc.
Having no real idea what the heck I was doing, I just started in cutting and gluing and ended up with what you see here. Whenever I hit a roadblock, I mainly fell back to the way fellow club member Keith Sandberg put's it, "It's easy, just sand off all the parts that don't look like a Helldiver"...
Maybe it's not my place, but I feel I should mention that sadly, we lost Kelvin Heath this past November. I wish he could have seen his wing finished into this model. I've thought of him often during the build, and he has definitely been an inspiration throughout. I'll remember him every time I connect the lines and fire up the Helldiver. Miss ya buddy!
Topic: Anatomy of the Helldiver (Read 2900 times)
