Got the sponsons installed. It’s a very challenging aspect of the build and lots of folks have written about it… including this author. It’s theoretically a snap fit, but to accomplish that you much manipulate many things at once. Before that I replaced one of the pitot tubes with an assembly of Albion Metals telescoping micro-tubing. It’s all held together with thin CA. I have this tubing in Aluminum and brass, and it’s very useful in making miniature pipe fittings for super-detailing jet engines.
The main gear is a challenge. The oleo strut should glue into the bracket on the main strut, but immediately I pinned it. It has to be flexed a bit getting it into place and having this joint movable is necessary (just like the 1:1). You also have to reduce the size of the half-moon pin. It has to engage in a similarly shaped hole in the fuse. It’s a blind fit and if you have to push it in (or worse… if it doesn’t go in) you will break something.
The gear is installed in two locations in the sponson. They are not particularly secure and even with gluing, tend to come apart when doing the final asssembly. There are some tiny parts that attach to the gear that you leave off at this time. They will not withstand the handling that follows. You can add them later if you’re so inclined.
The pushing and pulling I did during my attempt at installing the sponson, broke that lug. It, however, wasn’t critical and the gear is secure anyway.
You have to coordinate three things: getting the gear into their respective mating spaces in the fuze, getting the stub wing settled in, and pushing the sponson onto three large openings that correspond to the big pins in the sponson. The Stub Wing’s very tight fit into the sponson greatly limits fore and aft degrees of freedom. You have to get all the pins into all the holes, even though some are completely out of sight. And you must do this without applying undo pressure.
This whole deal took a lot of time. I was getting frustrated and was thinking of building it without landing gear, but the Apache doesn’t have retracting gear so that possibility was moot. I perserved! Eventually it snapped in place. I ran a stream of glue (Tamiya) around the entire perimter. The fit is amazing.
Peering into the innerds, you can see the sponson-side mounting lug. You cannot see the fuze side which makes this whole affair so confounding. It’s also why that pin must be reduced in cross-section so it drops into its hole. You can’t force it!
Now… with all that said, the second sponson dropped into position almost instantly and snapped solidly in place. Don’t ask me why this happened or what I was doing wrong with the first side. I have no idea! As Mark Knopfler says, “You can get lucky some time.”
So here were are as now. Notice I broke off the Long Bow mast… AGAIN! I had already glued it with metal reinforcement. It broke right at the end of the metal rod. This time I’m going to replace it all with metal if I can. I hate long plastic shafts like that. I always break them during assembly when I’m doing something else on the model and holding it wrong. I’m waiting to whack the tail rotor shaft. Don’t know when it’s going to happen, but I am sure it will. I should replace it with metall before it happens.
