Lancaster Cockpit

[Crescent]

Hello everyone. I'm a huge ww2 gamer and love flying the bombers. I've always been interested in building a Lancaster front end (bomb aimers position and cockpit). This way you can do the flying to target then step down to do the bomb run.

What I need advice on is what materials should I use for building the structure itself? I'm totally new to this and appreciate any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

[Trevor Hale]

Hi Crescent,

Welcome to Mycockpit.org.

Just remember.. MDF, OSB, Plywood, and Paint are all your friends...

This is the best starting place to buils your floors, and get the shape you desire.

Best regards,

Trev

[warvet]

Hey Crescent,
Welcome, Wow a lancaster thats a project and a hlf for sure. Not sure where you'd even find panels of any kind for that baby. Well interesting news is me and Paul G are not far from ya. Wish you luck and as trev says wod, paint, screws, wire and some $$ is a good place to start. What exactly are you going to use a software base IL2? CFS2?
Good Luck with it.

Regards
Tim
A340
Richmond

[phil744]

Times like this I wish my Grandmother was still alive, she built the Lancaster nose and cockpit sections during the war at the old Bae works on Strand road here in preston Lancashire, She could of told you exactly how to put one together in one night, thats exactly what she had to do, she got presented with the first frame nose section of whats now know as BT308 and she and her girls had to assemble it in one night without a single drawing so it could be shipped the following day to ringway (Manchester airport) for final assembly prior to the Lancasters maiden flight.

This must be in my blood then...

You best bet is to keep a vey close eye on ebay.co.uk, not the .com one, i scour it every day for aircraft parts and i have seen loads of Lancaster parts go up for auction and usually dont sell, ive even seen the entire glass canopy go for less than 100USD.

Keep in mind there was no such fancy things like CNC machines, 90% of the flightdeck is made from sheet material and rivets. get yourself to a museum and take lost of photos and measurments, invest in having parts cut by a pro for anything that can be seen, for everything else you cant see MDF or Plywood will do fine, once its handbrushed with old RAF camo paint you wont be able to tell the difference.

[Crescent]

Thanks guys for the info. The game I would use it for is Battleground Europe where you can fly just about anything or do ground work. At the moment the game doesn't have Lancs in it, but it will one day. I fly the Havoc in that game right now....so I figured I can build for the future.

My father flew as a bomb aimer on Lancs, but he's long passed away. That's of course where my interest comes from. I figure if I use Ivan's (think that's his name) technique of using strips of 4mm plywood and mdf and when you look closely at a Lanc nose section the metal is in strips anyway. I think the height will be the problem with adding the bomb aimers position, but we'll see.

[Trevor Hale]

My grandfather was a wireless radio operator on the Lanc.. But he passed away a year ago. He went on and on about it.

Told me lots of stories thats for sure.

[cougar3326]

Hi,
Iff you are thinking of going to RAF Waddington airshow have a drive into
Scampton village there you will find a Pub called the DAMBUSTER.
Inside you will see the cockpit panel etc in one of the bar rooms it may be of some help, but iff not its still well worth a visit, me and the wife were there last year
ps the food isn`t bad either.
Ian