Converting a Hispano SE.5a to a Viper?

[ianbw12]

Hi,

I know very little about WWI aircraft but I would like to convert the Wingnut Wings SE.5 from a Hisso to a Viper... the new Roden Viper engine kit seems an easy way to do this, but like I say I know nothing! Can anyone shed a bit more light on the ease of making such a conversion, please?

Thanks in advance,

Ian

[GPaulC]

Not as easy as it would at first appear, is the easy answer and frankly before I go further I personally feel your best bet would be to wait, they will probably bring out a Viper engined version in due course.

The Hispano-Suiza was too complex for wartime industry to churn out in vast numbers while maintaining good quality control. A lot, but not all, of the problems were in the reduction gearing between the drive shaft and the propellor shaft (the gearing was housed in the inverted-pear shaped thingummy you can see through the radiator). To cut a long story short Wolseley built the Hispano under licence as the Adder and solved some of the problems by developing a de-geared version they called the Viper. Putting the Viper under the skin of the beast produced two obvious differences from the Hispano-Suiza engined versions; the line of the propellor shaft dropped noticably, and the radiator was different and 'boxier'. If you are set on doing this you will need to get a good set of line drawings combining both variants to see what I mean. Mike Davis produced a good set in 1996 published in the SE5 File by Sturtivant and Page. Whether they have appeared elsewhere I could not tell you