Hasegawa 1/16 scale 1903 Wright Flyer

By Anthony G. Sanchez

I first saw the Hasegawa 1:16 Wright Flyer Kit sometime in the mid to late '70's, probably around the 75th anniversary of the first flight. At that time, just out of collage and freshly married I had plenty of bills to deal with without spending the $99.00 the kit was going for at that time. I've kept an eye out for one for many years and really didn't want to pay the asking price for what had become a collector's kit.

When I heard that the kit would be reissued for the Centennial of Flight in 2003 I started saving my cash. It showed up in my local hobby shop on Jan. 23, 2003 and I bought it soon afterwards for a bit more than $99. :-( My wife wanted to know if I was just going to stick this one in the closet with all the others. After opening up the box and looking at all the parts.......... I almost did!

It is an intimidating kit: a section filled with long wood strips of various dimensions; two boxes full of lots of parts - one had plastic bags filled with pieces made of brass, cast metal and wire and the other contained thirteen injection molded sprues full of wing ribs, a human figure, propellers, and other pieces; and a large sheet of scale plans. I had never tackled anything quite this detailed but decided that I really wanted to build this model as I have always been fascinated with the Wrights' airplanes.

I have been building models for about 45 of my 52 years; my dad got me started fairly young. I've built cars, boats, airplanes, figures, and buildings. I've used plastic, resin, card, wood/balsa, cast metal, and brass. I would use every technique I've ever learned, and developed a couple more while building this kit.

I decided to shoot for having the model finished by Dec. 17th 2003 for the Centennial of Flight. I got started in late January and have tried to work on it for a short time each day since then. I've kept a log book of every day's work along with the amount of time I'd spent on it each day, I also took over 800 construction pictures. I did take periods of time off just to get away from building once in a while. It would drive me crazy at times, especially when I discovered a difficult fit problem or had just finished a particularly nerve wracking step.

I took time off to travel to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. in October of this year to look at and photograph the original Flyer 1. It was placed in a floor level display as part of the Centennial Celebration and will be displayed that way for about 2 years. I also went to the USAF Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio and the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. This has been a real learning experience for me. I learned and saw many interesting things in my travels.

The single most important thing I want to stress is that I worked very slowly on this kit. I wanted to enjoy the building process and take my time. I could have probably finished it much sooner than I did, but I'm retired and don't have to hurry for anyone.

For the most part, I used the instruction booklet that came with the model as a general guide, but used my previous building experience in deciding what order to build the model. The overall building sequence is fairly logical and in only minor cases did I alter the building order. I will try to mention these as I go along.

For my own sanity I had to approach this model with the "kit-within-a-kit" concept. What I mean is that I treated every major component as if it were a separate kit, like when building and finishing the forward horizontal stabilizers. I built them and completed that unit as much as I could without actually attaching it to the fuselage. I did the same with all the pieces that make up the vertical rudder assembly. I treated the engine and its components as a separate kit. This approach was really helpful in building the wings; otherwise the rigging would have sent me to the nut house. This way I was able to finish something as completely as possible and feel like I had finished a model. This works for me, as I need to see progress on anything I'm building. Otherwise I probably would have looked at the instruction manual and this pile of parts in the box and quit 20% of the way through. It's just my way of getting things finished. It may not work for you.

I made sure that I had a good understanding of where and how every piece went, dry-fitting EVERYTHING on this model. As always, it turned out to be a good idea.

I will now describe the building of the kit and the problems I encountered. Please remember that these are my own personal experiences and not everyone will have the same opinions or difficulties that I did.

I started with the building sequence used in the manual. The manual's construction suggestions, on the first couple of pages, are a good guide on how to tackle certain techniques used in building the Flyer. The building order in the manual is done in STEP(s); I built the model using these steps as a general guide but didn't follow them exactly.

Before starting on the steps I had to cut a copper tube into 70 three mm long pieces. It was monotonous but presented no real problems. These are to be used as rigging sleeves starting in STEP 9. I chose to sand the ends of each to a rounded shape. I'm not sure if this was really necessary but it helped prepare me for the long haul that was coming.

All of the laser-cut plywood sheets were coated with a fine wax. I removed it with Bestine Solvent and Thinning solution, and then sanded the pieces with 300 grit sandpaper. Most well stocked Art Supply Stores carry Bestine or can order it. I'm sure that other products work just as well. I selected a reddish-yellow wood stain and stained all the wood pieces after removing the wax.

The injection molded plastic ribs and both propellers are cast in a dark maroon. The pilot figure is cast in a dark blue.

I used CA "Super Glue" and Elmer's Wood Glue throughout construction. The glue for attaching the tissue paper covering was supplied with the kit and I used it for that part of the construction. Liquid plastic cement was also suggested but I never used it.

(STEP 1) Fuselage Assembly: The fuselage is very basic and went together without any problems.

(STEP 2) Elevator Assembly: No surprises here. Follow the construction steps as indicated. I chose to paint the plastic ribs with an acrylic paint that I mixed to match the stain that I had applied earlier. I hand brushed the ribs after I had glued them to the wooden pieces (B1 & B5), and realized that I thought they would look better if they matched the color of the wood. Pay attention to the drilling of the elevator struts as they have to be oriented correctly during construction.

The elevators are supposed to be covered at this time, with the very delicate rice (?) paper. I did not apply the covering at this point as I wanted to build all parts requiring that before I started applying it.

(STEP 3) Elevator Installation: I built and detailed the three "Y" yokes that separated the two horizontal elevators and added some detail with acrylic paint, then put the elevator pieces aside to be completed later.

(STEP 4) Rudder Assembly: Cut and drilled the supplied strip wood and followed instructions, using straight edges and drafting triangles to make sure the rudder was square as I glued it together. I covered the two rudder panels with the covering material supplied with the kit. At this point I skipped ahead to STEP 12 to build the upper and lower rudder boom pieces.

(STEP 5) Upper Wing Assembly: The original Flyer was built with an anhedral (reverse dihedral). It is explained in the instructions but in order to ease assembly this was NOT done.

Included with the kit for temporarily holding and positioning the W3 spar are seven each B4 plastic jigs. These B4 spar jigs hold the W3 spar at a slight angle during the buildup of the wing and are removed once the wing has been completed. DO NOT discard after this step, as they are again used for the building of the lower wing assembly.

I encountered my first problem with the production parts at this point. The factory notching of the W3 Main Wing Spar appears to have been incorrect on my model. These notches are for positioning the wing struts. From what I can tell, these pieces should have been duplicate pieces. I made a visit to my local hobby shop where I bought the kit and explained the problem. They let me open up three other Hasegawa Flyer kits sitting on the shelves and I discovered that they all had this problem!

I selected the spar that had the correct notching for the struts and made matching notches on the other W3 spar. Without this correction some of the spars would have set at odd angles, making the wings very difficult to rig correctly. This is a problem that would have not been easily corrected after the covering was put in place.

I sanded each rib to remove the minor molding ridge along the top and bottom of each piece. This may have not been really necessary as the ridge was very subtle. However I didn't want to have to attempt sanding after the ribs were in place. This was a time consuming step as there were about 40 ribs and rib segments per wing!!

Next I cut and attached the copper wire that acts as the trailing edge for the wing. A word of warning - once attached this wire must be burnished with a rounded dowel to create a scalloped look to the trailing edge; be very gentle with this step as it doesn't take much pressure to create the scalloped effect and it is very easy to overdo it. Too much scalloping will cause the leading edge of the wing to bow backwards towards the trailing edge. I had to reverse the process in order to remove the excessive bow that I had introduced into the top wing.

I brush painted the ribs to match the color of the wood parts of the upper wing. I also built but did not install the trailing edge piece that the rudder boom attaches to since the wing was not covered at this time.

At this point I put the wing aside to be covered later.

(STEP 6) Lower Wing Assembly: With the corrected W3 wing spar I prepared and glued all the lower wing ribs into place. The many small pieces that act as strut supports were then positioned and glued. Pay close attention to the full scale drawing of the wing for correct positioning. The trailing edge copper wire was glued into place and scalloped as in STEP 5.

Again I brush painted the ribs to match the color of the wood parts of the lower wing. (I only decided to paint the plastic rib pieces after I saw how bad they looked against the wooden pieces. This was poor planning on my part. If you plan to paint the ribs I would suggest painting them BEFORE you glue them to their respective elevator and wing pieces.)

At this point the basic construction of the rudder, elevators and wings was completed. I mixed the two tubes of white glue included with the kit as indicated and following the instructions proceeded to cut the paper supplied for the covering of these surfaces. I covered the rudder first as it was the simplest piece to try out the covering technique recommended. It worked just as advertised.

The top and bottom elevator pieces were covered next. The covering caused these two pieces to warp slightly and I re-wet them and placed some weights along the edges and allowed them to re-dry. This removed most of the warping. The rest of the warping would be taken out once the connecting struts were attached in a later step.

Next came the top wing. As suggested in the instructions, I covered the underside of the upper wing first. Once dry, I trimmed the excess covering and used white glue to attach the excess paper to the leading edge. I then cut the trailing edge of the covering into hundreds of tiny "feathers". These feathers were then folded over the copper wire and glued into place using thinned white glue. This method allows the skinning paper to follow the shape of the scalloped trailing edge wire very nicely. This was followed by covering the top of the upper wing, finishing as described above.

I also installed the two control wire pulleys that attach to the underside of the top wing. At this point I also did all the rigging that connected these two pulleys to each other. This was supposed to be done in STEP 9 but I believe it was easier to do at this time.

ONCE COVERED THE MODEL BECOMES VERY DELICATE. The covering is very easy to dimple or, worse, punch holes in. I did this four times during the rest of the construction. To make repairs I removed the entire panel that the break was in and replaced it with a new piece of carefully cut paper. I decided to leave one panel on the top wing uncovered as this allows inspection of the rib and wing construction.

Using the scale plans, I built the hip and foot cradles, painted the brass parts, and cut and attached the rigging to the lower wing as indicated on the plans.

Back to STEP 3 Elevator Installation: I finished covering the horizontal elevators at this point and completed assembly according to the instructions. I skipped ahead to STEP 11 and rigged the completed Elevator Assembly as per the instructions. This eliminates the hassles of trying to rig this part after it was attached to the fuselage in STEP 10.

(STEP 7) Upper/Lower wing Assembly: Following the instructions I next cut the scrap pieces of wood that held the horizontal elevator and display stand and built the Wing Assembly jig. This is clearly illustrated in the manual. I prepared the wing struts by sanding and staining them. I also prepared the wing rigging hooks (bending them as indicated in the instructions) primed and painted them black. I then glued them into place on the top and bottom of each strut, making sure that they were glued exactly perpendicular to each strut. Double check to verify that these rigging hooks are facing the right direction as it is easy to reverse them when gluing them onto the struts.

Next, using the wing assembly jigs to position and hold the top and bottom wings, I started gluing the struts and the cast metal propeller mounts from the center of the wing outward, moving the jig out from the center towards the wing tips as each pair of struts was glued into place. I DID NOT glue the three front center struts into place until later as I wanted to have some working room to position and glue the engine, chain drives, radiator, gas tank, and hoses into place in the next step.

It is very important (specifically in this step) to pay close attention to the building order indicated in the construction manual, as you could back yourself into a corner and have to cut the jig apart to remove it from the wing. The covered wings are probably too delicate to handle this kind of treatment, so avoid it.

(STEP 8) Engine Assembly: I painted all engine parts before gluing them together. Assembly was fairly easy, only a couple of pieces did not fit quite right and I only did a little sanding. I DID NOT glue the Flywheel, Chain A, Chain B, Chain Mount A or B onto the engine assembly at this time. Hoses were cut to the indicated lengths and I inserted a small diameter copper wire into each, to help in shaping and holding each hose in place once glued. I also attached the painted radiator and gas tank onto this collection of engine parts.

These parts were then dry fit and positioned along with the Drive Chain pieces (Chain A & B). It was at this point that I discovered that, on my model at least), that Chain B was short by almost .25"!!! I was not a happy camper. I checked to see if maybe I had made a mistake in positioning something in an earlier step. From what I could tell, it was a problem with the length of the metal casting and not something that I had mispositioned earlier. I was as close to chucking the whole model as I ever came during those ten-plus months!!

I stepped away and did not touch the model for several days. I finally decided on extending the piece by cutting and pinning it, using an aluminum sleeve to make up the difference in added length. It worked just fine and was positioned and glued into place along with Chain A and Chain Mounts A & B.

The "cockpit" of the Flyer is very sparse, with not much in the way of controls or an instrument panel. However the cockpit that came with the kit is even sparser than the real thing. I scratch built the instrument release lever, throttle control lever, cam plate, engine revolution counter bracket, and the associated cables that connect these pieces. I also scratch built the fuel valve that sits on the fuel line connecting the gas tank to the engine. Finally, using some scrap brass, I built the clip that holds the launch restraining line that released the Flyer from the launch rail just before takeoff.

(STEP 9) Wing Rigging: Just follow the steps in the order indicated in the manual. As well as being very tedious and time consuming the rigging is easily snagged and caught on anything and everything that gets close to it. I had to constantly keep my eyes open for rigging that I had already finished installing. It's everywhere!!

Recall that I had already rigged the pulleys that attached to the top wing, so this part of the rigging is already completed.

For the most part the instructions were accurate with regard to the placement of the rigging wires. There is one place that I made a change. The instructions suggested making the rigging that attached from the top wing rear strut, wrapping around the propeller mount and then to the lower wing, rear strut, one piece for each prop mount. This is incorrect as my reference photos showed this to be two pieces of rigging for each prop mount. I attached a separate piece of rigging wire from the indicated top wing rear strut and ended it with a loop and rigging sleeve to the post that the prop slides onto. And then another piece of rigging from that same post to the indicated lower wing, rear strut. This was done for both propeller mounts for a total of four pieces of rigging instead of the original two.

(STEP 10) Wing/Fuselage Assembly: I had all the pieces for this step preassembled and it pretty much went off without any problems. Everything fell into place. It was at this point that I realized that I had never glued wood piece B2 into place on the fuselage. It actually worked out well because now I could position it exactly where it should be glued.

(STEP 11) Elevator/Fuselage Rigging: With the elevator rigging already done (see STEP 6), I turned the Fuselage/Wing unit, completed in STEP 10, over so that the underside of the Flyer was facing upward. It was just a matter of carefully cutting the rigging to the indicated lengths, then pulling, taping (temporarily), and gluing & sleeving the rigging as shown in the instruction manual. I had to turn the model over back onto its skids then upside down a couple of times to complete the rigging. Move slowly and keep an eye out for the rigging you've already installed. It's everywhere. ;-0

(STEP 12) Rudder Mounting: I took all the rudder pieces built in STEP 4, and the already built upper wing-trailing edge, top rudder boom attachment, completed at the end of STEP 5. I test fitted everything to make sure of the fit, and then glued everything into place making sure that the rudder fit SQUARE to the rest of the Flyer. After it dried for a couple of hours I finished cutting and attaching the rigging lines.

(STEP 13) Propeller Fitting: Easiest step of all. Fit was just fine, the props swing very close to the rudder control wires that run from the lower wing to the rudder. I attached the propeller stopper nuts to hold the props in place and that completed the flyer.

I spent some time researching and discussing with several people whether the Wright Brothers had left the propellers on their 1903 Flyer in natural wood finish or painted them aluminum as they did their later aircraft. The general consensus was that no one knew for sure.

After seeing what is claimed to be a piece of the original 1903 propeller on display at the National Air & Space Museum, and seeing that it did have silver paint/dope on it, I decided to paint my Flyer's props. There appears to be some question that it is not an authentic 1903 propeller. I can't prove one way or the other if this is true or not. And because this is a model of the reconstructed Wright Flyer and the reconstructed Flyer has silver props, my model reconstruction also has silver props.

I must admit, the look and idea of natural wood finished props appeals to me. I decided to go with what I've seen in the reconstructed"original". Any definitive evidence showing otherwise will of course change my mind, but not this model.

(STEP 14) Figure & Display Stand Assembly: I stained the parts for the display stand and assembled it with no problems. At this time I have not decided if I will add the Orville Wright figure supplied with the kit. It looks like it's molded nicely and would probably look good sitting in the "cockpit", but I have not completed it.

(STEP 15) Scratch building the launch dolly and a portion of the launching rail: This step is not in the kit's instruction manual so don't go crazy looking for it!! I have a set of plans for the 1903 Flyer that I bought from the Smithsonian Institution about 10 years ago. Included with the plans of the Flyer are the scale drawings of the launching dolly and the 5 piece-60 foot launch rail. I built the dolly and 2 rail sections from Pine strip and sheet wood stock purchased at my local hobby store.

There was still one piece that I hadn't attached to the finished model. That was the launch restraining eyelet and the line that held the Flyer onto the rail (a 2.5 inch piece of dyed thread on the model) that Orville and Wilbur had to pull on that cold December morning 100 years ago.

On the morning of Dec. 17, 2003 I took a pair of tweezers and threaded the restraining line into the eyelet. At about 10:25 AM EST my 1903 Wright Flyer was finished

Total building time: 217 hours over 10+ months.

(More pictures open in new window here.)