R34 request for plans and info

[henry_crun]

Hi Guys,

I intend to make a model of R34 from balsa wood and tissue paper, non-flying, about 3ft long, and am currently gathering pics and plans.

It doesn't have to be highly accurate but it would be nice to get things right.

Alas not much on the net in terms of actual scale drawings, does anyone have any suggestions of where to look, please?

Many thanks,
henry

[joy ride]

The Science Museum in London might have some info or leads.
mnk mnk.

[Allan Lupton]

You will have tried the Airship Heritage Trust I presume.
If not, you'll find them here:
The Airship Heritage Trust (http://www.airshipsonline.com/index.html)

[XH175]

Engineering drawings, both airframe and engines, of the Cardington/Barrow products are at The National Archives along with the accident reports, transatlantic flight, pictures etc.


http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C48108


A search on R.34 AND Airship brings up the following additional files
The National Archives | Search results:R.34 and airship (http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_cr1=AIR&_dss=range&_ro=any&_q=R.34+and+airship)


Regards
Ross

[joy ride]

Apologies for thread drift (as exeperienced in airships perhaps?):

I have just learned from my thread on Jet Blast that OP Henry Crun has made a mechanical Crow and I would be VERY interested and grateful to see video or photos of this!

[henry_crun]

Hi Guys,

Thanks ever so much for those leads. Yes, I already found The Airship Heritage Trust site and the big pics of gondolas will be very useful. Shall also be chasing the other recommendations.

Many thanks to all,
henry

Joyride - Jimmy the Crow, Corbus Crunii, is almost completed, just a little tidying up to do. He is on these pages:

http://www.pprune.org/jet-blast/544340-jimmy-crow.html

jimmy the crow (http://mike-wsm.org.uk/jimmy.html)

[joy ride]

Thanks Henry, have been pointed there by someone in Jet Blast, great stuff!

Can we expect some electro-mechanical wizardry in your R34?

[henry_crun]

Er, no, I want a rest from the hot soldering iron stuff - done plenty this summer!

[joy ride]

Fair enough, hope you will post photos when it is complete.

[Genghis the Engineer]

He was more R33 than R34 (although they were substantially similar) but you might find bits of use in the Lord Kings Norton archive.

Lord Kings Norton of Wotton Underwood (http://lordkingsnorton.cranfield.ac.uk/)

Cranfield University library has a lot of airship material (hardly surprising when you consider the ancestry and locality), and is worth visiting if you're not too far away. I've always found their librarians very helpful when I've asked for help.

Quite often on eBay or the like a book called "Airship: the story of R34" by Patrick Abbott, published in 1973, comes up and has a lot of photographs in it, as well as line drawings. That's worth tracking down (actually just search on "R34 airship" on eBay and you'll be surprised how much comes up.)

G

[henry_crun]

Hi Genghis, thanks ever so much, have ordered the Patrick Abbott book, henry.

[henry_crun]

Hi XH175, very useful, the drawings I need are at Kew, not digitised, have requested estimate for copying, thanks, henry

[henry_crun]

Hurrah!

The Patrick Abbott book arrived today and contains a wealth of illustrations and drawings. The dust jacket drawing alone answers most of my detail questions, and the pics inside can be scaled to answer the rest.

Many thanks, Genghis!
mike

[henry_crun]

Just a quick update on my proposed model of airship R34.

I collected dozens of photos, some drawings, and three books. The books were Transatlantic Airships by John Christopher, Airship by Patrick Abbott (kindly recommended by Genghis the Engineer) and Slide Rule by Nevil Shute for background. I followed up the Kew connection but alas their quote for photocopying was "in excess of five hundred pounds". This might have been reduced by going there in person, but it's a long journey and when there one has a long wait for each item requested, so possibly several days work.

The size of the model was driven by the hoop spacing. I needed to keep the hoops spaced by about an inch so that I could handle them with my clumsy fingers. Any smaller and gluing them individually would have become very difficult. This set the overall hull size to 1m long and 12cm diameter (actually a polygon).

Handling a model of this size would be difficult, so I split it into three sections. The centre section was just over a foot long and based, like the original, on a triangular keel. It started to taper at both ends and was just long enough to support the gondolas. The nose section was fairly short but the tail section was long, had to taper, and needed a cruciform structure to support tail surfaces. The problem was how to attach nose and tail to centre section, each time supporting the weight and distributing the stresses into the respective structures. I wasn't able to come up with a workable solution.

I considered other methods of construction and different sizes, but all met with structural problems.

Finally I made scaled-up photocopies of a side view drawing and all became clear. This monster, at 3ft 3in long and less than 5in diameter was more like a baseball bat than a model airplane. Flimsy balsa-and-tissue fabrication just wasn't going to work.

So, reluctantly, I have abandoned it. Many thanks to all you guys who contributed suggestions.

Hopefully the future will suggest further Crun Robotics type models, more my thing really.

[joy ride]

That's a big shame as I was REALLY looking forward to seeing it completed. Still, it is better to prepare, and if that preparation shows that it is an unfeasible project, then best to move to something else and I look forward to seeing more of your work. as God shouted impatiently in Monty Python and The Holy Grail:

"Get ON with it" !

[GQ2]

Mike,
Nooooooooooooooo....don't cancel...far too much of that in British aviation....!!!

You just needed a fresh approach. OK, this would be my take - just bear with me......;-

1) Build the model around a mandrel. A bit of old broomstick or PVC piping, anything light-ish and rigid. You may need to profile the ends or use a smaller OD extension from a drilled hole in the end.
2) Draw out a few sections at your desired profile. Cut the formers out of card or even plastic, with a centre-hole to suit the mandrel. Iced-cream containers or fast-food tupperware-style will be ideal. Use a modelling knife or even just scissors if you have a steady hand. This may seem a bit flimsy, but trust me, as you assemble this it will become light and strong.
3) Source some sheet insulation-foam. Not the naff white polystyrene used for packaging, but the dense stuff used in modern buildings. You'll find offcuts gratis on any building site - this is usually either blue or green. It has a similar density to lightweight Balsa, but obviously, no grain. This cuts really beautifully with a sharp knife, and can be sawn or sanded in a trice. You will need to slice it to a suitable thickness to fit between your formers. Cut these discs to suit the profiled formers, but a fraction oversize. Use white PVA adhesive, but not anything volatile, as it will attack the foam. Sand it all to shape with a flat block to get the fake witness marks from the internal structure. Finally, use some finer paper free-hand to get the 'panting' between the formers.
4) When you are happy, cover it all with tissue. Do not use dope. Once it is sealed with a primer you can paint it.
5) When you come to attach your pods etc, you can cut the slots etc into the foam. Use Devcon (A good five-minut epoxy.) and pin if necessary.

All of the above is harder to write than do, as working with this foam is very quick and easy, and LIGHT-YEARS less work than actually trying to build a structure....! All the pods etc will take much longer than the actual body of the airship. Trust me, for a static model, this is the way to go, as the foam is absurdly easy to shape....! Once you have used this, you find a million other ways to use it. Just treat it like high-quality Balsa that comes FOC....

You might even build-in some LED's.....:)

Can't wait to see this photos....!

Good Luck :ok:

PS;- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSIw09oqsYo ..........lol....

[henry_crun]

http://mike-wsm.org.uk/airship01.jpg


Hi guys, thanks ever so much for your kind comments. Shall keep R34 gently alive on a back burner and consider all the options. One is to downsize, use a balsa spine, and make the skin as balsa-tissue panels assembled in jigs.

GQ2 - Many thanks for setting out a viable method of construction, never been there so would need to practice a little. Some necessary considerations are how to support/hang the whole assemblage once finished, how to add cruciform empennage, and how to mount gondolas. The gondola problem is the biggie, they are suspended on struts but their position is defined by wires which take the forward and reverse engine thrust. Without the wires the fore and aft gondolas would be free to swing forward and back, and the wing gondolas, with only two-point suspension, would describe semicircles. Hard points have to be provided and wires attached under tension. Thanks for the music vid, one of my all-time favourites for the excellent sax riffs, shall add it to my music page soonest. You know where I live!

[joy ride]

Very glad to know there is still hope!

[cockney steve]

Henry...the insulation -foam is polyurethane.it is homogenous and of even texture throughout....Similar stuff is used in foam-sandwich construction for boats,light aircraft..... It'sa doddle to chopand carve.....gondolas can be attached to piano-wire stays that can be simply poked intothe foam,withdrawn, smeared with glue and refitted.
If Mrs Crun is inclined to flower-arranging (other than the D P Gumby variety!) she willhave had experience of "oasis" a foam block which the stems are poked into.....but somewhat dearer than the insulation offcuts.
Some of this insulation is about 6" thick, so you could just use an appropriate-size of tin like a cookie -cutter,maybe,then glue the stack together.....OTOH,the stuff is foil-skinned on at least one side, so selecting the right thickness for your discs would give the "hoops"....longitudinal grooves could accommodate wire or wood "stringers" and a quick rub-over with coarse sandpaper would erode the soft foam"panels" pretty good, I imagine.

In other words, like wot GQ2 said!

[GQ2]

PS;-

The struts could be made from cocktail-sticks. Supermarkets also sell wooden skewers for kebabs which are very thin. Metal, - then use old knitting-needles, or brass or copper wire, which is easy to cut.

The tail just need two sawn slots in the arse end of the body and mandrel. Two sheets of Plasticard or similar for the fins, with opposing-slots to they lock together before fitting and are strong.

The rigging/wires etc. The trick here is to use thin elastic, so they wont look saggy and wobbly. You can secure the ends with ordinary pins, so no slack and no glue needed. If you need even finer.....then you can easily make yards by getting old bits of polystyrene plastic, as in Airfix kits, - and melting it and stretching it out. It cools and hardens in seconds. Snip to length with a knife and use a tiny blob of superglue applied with a cocktail stick to fix.

Surface texture;- After you have tissue-covered the foam, if you want to go a bit further, you could past-on some detail. Just cotton would be fine. After painting it'd be more blended-in. An alternative would be narrow strips of paper, similarly applied.

The reason I'd got some of these ideas to hand was that a while ago I'd thought of making a model of the R101. My parents both had memories of seeing this monster, and a friend of mine was pals with Bill Stryan, who was killed photographing the Memorial Service at the crash site at Bauvaise. My mother told me that generally, many kids were very frightened by the R101 as it made such a scary - to them - noise and it still sent a chill down her spine thinking about it in her final years.
The Government-built R101 was a sad tale - with an inevitable conclusion, as she was over weight, over budget and underpowered.
The privately-built R100, her sister ship was almost without problems, but was broken-up for scrap at Cardington, about a year after the R101 disaster, despite a sucessful trip to Canada and back. The R100 was also built to the same spec' as the R101, but was a different design, by the famous Barnes Wallace. Neville Shute-Norway's 'Slide Rule' is an excellent account of this saga.

R101;-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdPrUBkMgdE

Some shots of the R101;-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k60YoKKiayE

R101 and R34 too;-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0aoPm49axg

[Footless Halls]

I've followed this thread with great interest as from a very young age I've always been fascinated by the old rigid airships. I think the double-crossing of the Atlantic in 1919 by the R34 was a fabulous achievement and one which now is largely forgotten.

However, and this is shameless 'thread-creep' so someone shoot me down if you wish, I would rather take exception with the assertion that the R100 was "almost without problems". I recently re-read George Meagher's 'My Airship Flights' in which he described the experience of flying the R100 in some detail. And as a pilot I found it terrifying in ways which didn't enter my head in my (pre-aviation) youth. The near disaster over the St. Lawrence when the ship was almost stuffed into the water by a line squall, and suffered significant damage, was a good example. I'm not saying she was AS bad as the R101, just that the difference was marginal by modern standards and that luck was most of the equation. I suspect that if the R100 had set off for India instead of the R101, her chances of getting though were not a lot higher.

They were wonderful machines but it's probably a good thing their time has passed. People think that hydrogen inflammability was the issue, but when you look at what happened to the R38, Akron, Makon, Shenandoah, possibly the Dixmude and almost the R100, I think poor structural integrity, lack of power and very low ceilings made all large rigids completely impossible by anything approaching modern standards.

[GQ2]

For sure, by modern standards, any airship is basically a nonsense. Then again, so is crossing the North Atlantic in a Great War Vickers Vimy......! Airships, as we know now, were an evolutionary dead-end, but at the end of the 1920's, it's easy to see how the 'Ships of the air' concept appealed. Especially as conventional heavier than air flying machines were hardly less dangerous - not much faster (81.5mph max for R100, the HP42 only cruised at 100mph.) - and certainly less appealing to passengers more used to luxury liners. We know now that it was all a mirage of self-delusion, but at the time, they lacked the 100% accuracy of hindsight.

I don't claim and great knowledge of airships or their history, they were just an interesting blip. I was aware of the St.Lawrence incident, and that bad weather had led to some of the covering being ripped-off the tail-fins, but I understand that that was patched-up before they had even reached their destination.

Ultimately, most of the big airships seem to have bitten the dust, but they were clearly impressive beasts in the flesh.

[henry_crun]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/K_class_blimp.jpg/300px-K_class_blimp.jpg


Would it be admissible to mention the Goodyear K class dirigible blimps? They were made in quantity, wiki says 134, and did good service in WWII in asw and sar roles, using airship low and slow performance in conjunction with long loiter duration. And some did cross the Atlantic to help guard the Mediterranean.

Thanks for all the kind advice on plastics, guys. Alas I started out trying to think up another balsa-and-tissue model. Not sure that I like plastic work, I'm no good at sculpting and I dread using smelly glues in my kitchen. Fear of the unknown?

[Genghis the Engineer]

For sure, by modern standards, any airship is basically a nonsense. Then again, so is crossing the North Atlantic in a Great War Vickers Vimy......! Airships, as we know now, were an evolutionary dead-end, but at the end of the 1920's, it's easy to see how the 'Ships of the air' concept appealed. Especially as conventional heavier than air flying machines were hardly less dangerous - not much faster (81.5mph max for R100, the HP42 only cruised at 100mph.) - and certainly less appealing to passengers more used to luxury liners. We know now that it was all a mirage of self-delusion, but at the time, they lacked the 100% accuracy of hindsight.

I don't claim and great knowledge of airships or their history, they were just an interesting blip. I was aware of the St.Lawrence incident, and that bad weather had led to some of the covering being ripped-off the tail-fins, but I understand that that was patched-up before they had even reached their destination.

Ultimately, most of the big airships seem to have bitten the dust, but they were clearly impressive beasts in the flesh.

In 1919, Alcock and Brown made the first aeroplane crossing of the Atlantic - 2POB, with the prevailing wind.

The same year, the R34 crossed the Atlantic, against the prevailing wind, with 37pob.

By 1929, the year that both the R100 and R101 made their first flights, 239 people had successfully crossed the Atlantic in airships. There had in the same period been 27 attempts to cross the Atlantic by aeroplane, 16 of which had failed, at the cost of 21 lives.

So, in 1930, whilst the Imperial aviation plans included development of aeroplanes as well, all the evidence looked pretty convincingly that the future of long distance air travel belonged to airships. And over a few years coming, the multiple Atlantic crossings by the Hindenberg (and two crossings by the R100) would appear to have confirmed that.


In my opinion, even now airships have a future. But, it's going to be in science observations, telecoms relay tasks, and other specialist roles that use the long endurance of an airship, without being compromised by the problems with lack of payload capability.

But I predict that every project aiming to do anything resembling mass passenger transport, or cargo transport, will fail, just as they always have since 1940.

G

[Haraka]

In 1919, Alcock and Brown made the first aeroplane crossing of the Atlantic
Better insert "non-stop"in front of "crossing", lest we offend our North American cousins with their NC-4 "airplanes" puddle-jumping across by stages the year before ...... :)

[Mechta]

Henry, It would be worth considering pultruded carbon fibre rods instead of balsa for the longerons. They are available down to 0.25mm dia. and are much more robust than balsa. I built a geodetic wing test piece with the stuff and was amazed just how incredibly stiff it was. You can put it together in no time with cyanoacrylate (superglue) adhesive. Look under 'Hi tech materials' here:

Mike Woodhouse - Free Flight Supplies (http://www.freeflightsupplies.co.uk/)
My brother built a semi-scale model of the R33 back in the early 70s. The hull was folded from thin card with the engine pods from balsa. The props were celluloid discs. As I recall it was about 20" long and 3 1/2" diameter. It was supported from the mooring mast at the front and a single 18swg piano wire rod about 3/4 way along, pushed into the sundela baseboard.

Update: A look in Mechta Senior's attic the other day revealed the model does still exist. 40 years and a couple of house moves have taken their toll, so it looks a bit R101-ish post-crash but pre-fire. Please bear in mind my brother was about 11 or 12 when he made this.

That thing in front of the nose is the front roundel made out of electrician's tape, which lost its 'sticktion' a long time back, and, yes, the top of the mooring mast did start life on a Fairy Liquid washing up bottle! Mechta Senior reckons it was based on the R34, I said R33 because googling pictures made me think R33 was parallel in the middle whist the R34 was more rugby ball shaped.

http://i817.photobucket.com/albums/zz96/s4racergp/R34ModelRHSCropped271014_zps2150145e.jpg

I would also recommend George Meagher's book mentioned earlier. The bravery of the early airship crews was incredible.

[henry_crun]

Mechta - Interesting. R33 and R34 were very similar. Will look at carbon fibre rods, link duly bookmarked. :ok:

[joy ride]

Carbon Fibre rods sound like a good idea. 4D Model Shop near me (just over Tower Bride) has a variety of different profiles, tubes and shapes in a variety of materials. Sometimes just having a browse at what is readily available can get the brain cells working, see if anything here looks promising:

Strip & Shape (http://modelshop.co.uk/Shop/Strip-Shape/?page=2)

[Genghis the Engineer]

Mechta - Interesting. R33 and R34 were very similar. Will look at carbon fibre rods, link duly bookmarked. :ok:

They were sister ships, built by different firms, but basically the same design - based upon a captured (well, shot down in Essex) Zeppelin, the LZ33.

Jointly they were referred to as the R33 class.

G

[henry_crun]

joy ride Thanks for 4D Model Shop link, looks very useful for specialist materials, am drooling over several items. Also the multi-model Meccano set, that is a must-have and definitely on my list of future purchases. Interesting location, I used to work down-river at Enderby Wharf and enjoyed walking both banks.

[joy ride]

My old workshop was in Bombay Wharf, Marychurch Street, Rotherhithe, with an alleyway between it and the river which is constantly used for films and TV programmes, you probably walked along there, might even have had a drink at my old local, The Mayflower, sited where the famous pilgrim ship set sail from. Nice area, but now massively developed and turned into a wealthy ghetto.

I cycle over to 4D and though not cheap it is a fantastic resource. They have some superb model palm trees and I will use one in my diorama.

I am just trying to think of any airship models I might have seen. I think there are some in the cabinets in the flight gallery at the Science Museum, but certainly they are far rarer than model !

[Mechta]

I am just trying to think of any airship models I might have seen. I think there are some in the cabinets in the flight gallery at the Science Museum, but certainly they are far rarer than model !

Joyride, Revell do a 1:720 scale Hindenburg and did a 1:169 Goodyear GZ20 'Blimp' with illuminated messages on the side.

A quick google reveals that the Science Museum have the following models. Some are on loan or may not be on display:



The Giffard Airship 1852
The Airship 'Dupuy de Lome' 1872
The Tissandier 'La France' Airship 1883
Santos Dumont No.IV 1901
The Lebaudy Airship 1904
Royal Navy C23 Coastal Airship 1917
R34
Thunder & Colt Hot Air Airship
Various Airship Industries/Skyships Airships

More info here: Search - - Science Museum (http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/GSearch.aspx?terms=airship+model&page=1)

Another good resource of 'what is where' is here (a bit dated): Airship Museums (http://www.myairship.com/reference/museums.html)

and: The Airship Heritage Trust (http://www.airshipsonline.com/)

I'm sure the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust must have some airship models, but I can't find pictures of them. It wasn't that long ago (1980s) that anyone visiting the RAE library had to walk through an airship shed to get there, and apprentices cast themselves surface plates in the foundry, which lived in the top half of another airship shed (now on display, sans cladding).

[henry_crun]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/europealacarte/4986007083/

This pic of a large model of R34 was taken in August 2010 at the Scottish National Museum of Flight, East Fortune. It is probably the Science Museum model on loan.

[henry_crun]

Okaay - I've been building other models, and still kicking around ideas for the R34, some the full metre long and others about 0.4 metres long. I really want to do the full metre size, and with my skill set (what there is of it) still want to do it in balsa and tissue.

I think I have a viable design which starts out as a cruciform 'silhouette' in balsa with the gradual addition of ribs and longerons. The cruciform is hollow to minimise weight and only the major ribs will be solid, ie full diameter, with the remainder hollow in the sense that they follow the periphery and do not extend to the centre.

A problem with tissue is that you cannot glue to it, so it has to be fully supported by balsa in areas where fins or gondola supports have to penetrate the skin. The fins will fit in slots between two sheets of balsa, the tissue can be glued to both and then slit so the fins can drop in. The balsa keel will support the tissue where the gondolas mount.

Positioning all the ribs will be done by first cementing stops in place, this can be done before assembly starts. A lot of the ribs will be of common size and shape, so a metal cutting template will be helpful.

The construction sequence will be lower half first, built inverted, then upper half added with lower half supported on the flat balsa keel.

[joy ride]

You have clearly set yourself a tricky structural challenge!. I think 1 metre will be much more striking visually. I look forward to seeing some work in progress photos, good luck!

[henry_crun]

Thanks j r, will be making haste slowly and taking plenty of pics on the way.

Probably will be posting on a fresh thread on JB, I'm a tart for publicity.

Don't hold your breath. Four years until the centenary.....

[joy ride]

I will look out for your new thread!
The War Department and I sometimes go to Grain for a quiet stroll and somewhere there, near the rusting WW1 U Boat there is apparently a farm building made from the roof of a WW1 airship hangar.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Talking of displaying scaled down airships, this is rather pretty.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=857627337589638&l=1890693824688350458

G

[joy ride]

Very nice, I would like to have one of those wafting around my workshop.

[Cubs2jets]

Seems that others in the world are interested in modeling great airships of an earlier period...

My build - Scratchbuilt 1/144 Zeppelin Q Class - ARC Discussion Forums (http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=277194)

C2j

[joy ride]

Very impressive!

[henry_crun]

Cubs2jets - thanks ever so much for posting that link, it shows just how daunting a task it is

[joy ride]

It certainly does!

How are you getting on with your R34? It would be great to see some photos, but perhaps you are still planning.

Yesterday my mechanical diorama took a "giant leap" towards completion, which hopefully will be by early next month.

[henry_crun]

Er, still planning....

Looking forward to seeing complete diorama in motion. :ok:

[joy ride]

Thought as much!

Cheers, the first stage of filming is being done on Wednesday, to show details being added, then more to be done on completion. If I can get my music pc to behave I will use one of my own tunes as the soundtrack, but at first will feature the nice noise of all the mechanism at work! Once completed I will post it on Jet Blast.

Apologies for thread drift, will go and stand in corner!

[Genghis the Engineer]

Very closely related, I've just found this gem online...

Maitland's log of the R34 (https://archive.org/stream/logofhmar34journ00maituoft#page/n7/mode/2up)

G

[Herod]

Maitland's log is also available in K*ndle, from the river site. I've just started it; a fascinating read.

[henry_crun]

Thanks guys, took my tablet for a quick trip up the big river and the log came back to my K*ndle in seconds. Only a fiver. :ok:

[henry_crun]

Then as now:

From Maitland's log:

"Pitôt tube gets blocked with fog and rain, and needs hauling in and blowing out occasionally, to get true readings."