MAAA Wingspan

08 WING SPAN FEBRUARY The Convair B-36 Peacemaker was a strategic bomber operated by the United States Air Force between 1949-1959. It was the largest mass- produced piston-engine aircraft ever built. The motivation to build such a colossal aircraft was after Ivan and two other members of Pakenham and District Aircraft Radio Control Society (P&DARCS) saw three of the remaining four aircraft while on an aircraft museum trip in the US back in 2011. “We were impressed by the sheer size of the B-36 and after returning home, we decided that the construction of a large model would be a good promotional project for Andrew [Smallridge] and Kevin Chiselett’s laser cutting company, SC Models,” said Ivan. A 1/12 scale was decided upon, due to being the largest model size that could be accommodated by Ivan’s model trailer when dismantled into manageable sections. It was estimated that the model would have a 6 metre wingspan, a length of 4.1 metres and an anticipated mass of around 50kgs. The Team The team was then assigned their various roles in the project. Ivan’s son Kevin Chiselett was appointed to do the design work, assisted by Andrew. They produced cutting files for Andrew who would operate the laser cutter, while Ivan would be the model builder. “Kevin designed the long parts to be smaller sections joined with a series of small, very accurate dovetail joints. The pieces were joined with the dovetails and then CA’ed. This worked exceptionally well due to the accuracy of the laser cutting,” said Ivan. The design of the centre fuselage/wing section presented numerous challenges to the team, largely due to the swept and tapered wing and their attempt to fit retract bogies into it whilst maintaining strength of wing by the way of spars. Construction “We actually built three trial sections to ensure that the bogies fitted and structural integrity was maintained,” said Ivan. “The wheels, in their retracted position, actually protrude through the upper wing surface, as per the real aircraft. To ensure that the retracts would fit and we could get the structural integrity through the wing, we ended up building three centre sections; each being modified slightly to give us what we were looking for: strength and retract integrity. feature story: BUILDING A B-36 BOMBER IN A DEFINITIVE EXAMPLE OF TEAMMODEL BUILDING, IVAN CHISELETT TALKS ABOUT HOW HE AND HIS SON KEVIN AND FRIEND ANDREW SMALLRIDGE ACCOMPLISHED THE BUILD OF A B-36 PEACEMAKER