The white exhaust valve stem oil seals are a tight fit on the valve guides, even without the securing collar. They’re also a tight fit on the valve stems so it’s worth fitting the valves at this point before the springs.
The springs have caps at either end so, with a generous covering of oil, these sit over the valve stems.
The valves are attached to the springs via the collets. Like removal, this is a three handed job involving a heavy spring under compression so I didn’t take any photos. Essentially, with the spring compressed and some grease on the valve stems to hold the collets in place the spring can be slowly and carefully uncompressed until the spring cap rides up on the taper of the collets until the whole assembly is secure.
The biggest departure from the removal was the replacement of the “special” bolts used to to hold the lower end of the rocker pivot. As fitted by Citroën in their infinite wisdom the bolt has a strange head that has two flats. Whilst this came off with the assistance of an adjustable spanner I didn’t want to put it back so I used a 35mm M8 threaded hex headed bolt. This fits exactly as the original and uses a standard tool.
With the rockers fitted that’s the heads reassembled as far as possible.
Whilst there was nothing wrong with the previous testers they seem to have been about the last of those lines in stock. With no more stock coming in I’ve sourced alternatives.
These are from Scotia, they’re cheaper but the casts aren’t as good with quite a lot of flash. Looks like they’ll clean up fine so and the detail is plenty good enough. Time to order the rest of the squadrons – given I ordered these on Friday and they arrived on Monday shouldn’t have to wait long…
Whilst not quite a Gee Bee, I picked up this Lego Air Racer to go along with the theme.
Judging by the pylons on the box art it’s more like a Red Bull Air Race plane.
Overall, I’m not that impressed by the model (and not only because it’s not really a candidate for a Gee Bee conversion). The Pictures on the box are about the only angles that make it look good :-(
To quickly identify aircraft it’s useful to have some form of markings – or, as I’m calling it, heraldry. Whilst the real aircraft have such markings they don’t quite match up to what I need for the tabletop so I’ve adapted markings I’ve found in the literature whilst doing my research to try and have something that looks as realistic as possible whilst also being practical. [In reality aircraft would not conform to an idealised pattern like this, combat losses and serviceability would make it unfeasible.]
FW 190 Staffel
The
Staffel (squadron) consists of 12 aircraft, a full compliment. This is organised into three Schwarme (flights) which are comprised of two Rotten (pairs).
For the formation rules of Bag The Hun it’s important to be able to identify the leader of each of these sub-groups. I’ve chosen to use white cowl rings for anyone who can potentially lead a formation, black engine farings for
Schwarmführers and the Staffelführer has the black ‘eagle’ on the side of the nose covering the exhaust exits. [Jagdgeschwader 4 are mentioned as using black and white on the engines and cowls and the ‘eagle’ marking is fairly common on FW 190s but doesn’t seem to convey any meaning.]
For individual identification each aircraft will be numbered, I’ve chosen yellow numbers for contrast which would mark this out as 3
Staffel (or 6, 9 or12). [Whilst yellow was the colour for the third Staffeln this wasn’t strictly adhered to and I’ve not read anything about the aircraft being sequentially numbered in the way I’ve chosen. Given that it’s not unusual to see aircraft numbered above 12 it’s improbable that aircraft were sequentially numbered.]
B-17 Squadron
B-17 squadrons and aircraft were identified by code letters on the fuselage which I have covered separately but I wanted something that shows up more clearly on the table so I’ve invented a completely custom scheme.; [Some of these markings were used on B-17s but not to convey this particular information.]
The combat box formation used by the USAF changed throughout the war but I’m going with four flights of three aircraft in a mid (centre), high (port), low (starboard) and low-low (centre) arrangement which, as far as I’ve read, is appropriate for late 1944.
From what I’ve found in my research, in September 1944 the 100th Bomb Group’s aircraft would have been bare metal with a white letter ‘D’ in a black box on the wing and tail – no other markings seem to be used. I’ve taken that black and used it as the basis for the flight markings:
Mid Flight: no markings
High Flight: wing tips
Low Flight: chord-wise bars on each wing
Low-low Flight: diagonal bar on the starboard wing
Within each flight the aircraft are designated by markings on the engines:
Lead Aircraft: no markings
Second (port) Aircraft: yellow cowl on number three engine
Third (starboard) Aircraft: yellow cowl on number two engine
BF 109 Staffel
Whilst I’m not including BF 109s in the initial game I’ve got plans for an expansion (which will probably never happen) to include the fighter escort battle between the BF 109s and the P-51s. As I’ve got Luftwaffe markings in my mind I’ve outlined the heraldry for the BF 109 Staffel.
Following the same principle as the FW 190 Staffel I’ve marked the formation leaders with black spinners and the wingmen with white spinners.
[JG 4 used a black and white spiral spinner which – even with the large spinner on the BF 109G – isn’t going to work at 1:300 scale so I’ve compromised and alternated black and white spinners throughout the Staffel.]
The Schwarmführers have white rudders.
[A different colour rudder is something that’s seen on BF 109s – and I don’t know what it signified – but mostly before 1944 so, whilst not accurate it’s appropriate.]
Finally the Staffelführer has a fully yellow nose. [This was archetypical of the BF 109E during the Battle of Britain but doesn’t seem to appear much after 1942. However, I like it and – having cut my aero modelling teeth on Battle of Britain aircraft – I’m using it.]
Bag The Hun uses a 1″ hex grid which is about the size of the 2p piece here.
Looking at these the 1:300 FW 190 looks about the right size for a gaming piece, as does the 1:600 B-17. If this was a commercial boxed game I wouldn’t be surprised to see the asymmetrical scales but that doesn’t sit right with me on my own project.
Whilst the 1:600 probably is a more realistic overall scale to convey the distances involved between aircraft on the table the Focke-Wolfs are simply too small. In terms of where to compromise, I’d rather have the larger Fortresses than the smaller Focke-Wolfs.
Conclusion: I’m going with the 1:300 scale aircraft and, consequently, a 2″ hex might be worth investigating.
