Reputation from Uncle Les - Large Scale Planes

Uncle Les reacted to ericg in RAAF Bristol Bulldog June 13, 2019

After last weekends Model expo in Melbourne, I thought I would start fresh on something to clear the palate and get a project on the go for one of the categories of the comp for next year.

I have been chasing one of these kits for a fair while and when the opportunity came up to purchase one new at the show from Aeroworks at a very good price I took it. The kit does tick a few of my usual boxes; RAAF aircraft, Esoteric subject and resin kit. This will sit nicely in my RAAF collection, right next to my Demon from the same company which served along side it in the mid 30's.

Firstly, a bit of history about the aircraft. It was famous for being the type in which Douglas Bader lost his legs in a crash during aerobatics during his early RAF service. In RAAF service, it existed in very small numbers and I have reproduced a brief history from the ADF serials site here:

From 1921 the RAAF possessed three obsolete Sopwith Pups and two equally obsolete SE5a aircraft for use in the single seat fighter role. In 1928 a decision was made to replace those aircraft with a modern front line single seat fighter and the aircraft selected was the Bristol Bulldog Mk.II fitted with the 450 hp Jupiter VII radial engine. Six Mk.II Bulldogs were ordered on 17 June 1929 at a cost of 3,750 pounds each and two additional machines were ordered later that year with all eight aircraft being delivered to Melbourne on 14Mar30. From their introduction into RAAF service until 1935 the Bulldogs were considered almost sacrosanct and a pilot had to be of Instructor rating before being allowed to fly one. However, toward the end of the aircraft’s life the novelty had worn off and other pilots were permitted to fly the aircraft.

Apart from fighter training the Bulldog’s spent a large amount of time training for and performing demonstrations around Australia and in cooperation with the Army and Navy during their annual exercises. Another activity was introduced when the Victorian Meteorological Department asked for daily flights to record weather data. These flights were carried in all weather extremes and from 1930 to 1939 the flights were conducted on approximately 333 days of each year with only one serious accident, a truly amazing feat.

For a high performance aircraft most pilots reported that it was a delight to fly, very precise and forgiving and extremely easy to land. During its service career there were only two fatal crashes and they were both from pilot error: one where the pilot dived into the water doing gunnery practice and the other when the pilot misjudged his height when doing low level aerobatics. The only oddity the aircraft exhibited was during spin recovery but once pilots mastered this eccentricity the aircraft proved a delight in the air.

Part of the training regime in the period 1930-5 included several annual long distance navigation exercises from Point Cook to Adelaide 1930, -31 and, Adelaide and Perth 1932, -33, -35. These exercises were quite a feat for the day as the aircraft had to be refueled every two hours and had no navigation equipment. Pilots were trained to perform minor maintenance and it is a reflection of the Bulldog’s reliability that only three failures caused forced landings in an era when forced landings were almost a daily occurrence for many aircraft.

By the start of WWII only three aircraft remained in RAAF service. Two had been destroyed in crashes and three had been reduced to components, the last three were all converted to Instructional Training Aids in 1940 and finally scrapped sometime during the war years. Sadly no Bulldog airframes remain extant in Australia, a fate all too common for aircraft of that era.

Onto the kit:

The nicely presented Silverwings box. It allows two options to do the aircraft in RAF service, so I will have to come up with my own serials to depict it as a RAAF aircraft. The schemes are very similiar, although the RAAF examples were fairly boring, devoid of the bright squadron markings.

Upon opening the box, the modeller is confronted with bags of loose resin parts, decal sheets and the large instruction manual which is a bit too big to fit in the box for my liking.

It all looks a bit confusing to begin with. None of the parts are numbered and some interpretation of the instructions are required to work out which part is which although all of the parts are grouped in bags in sequence, so engine parts in one, cockpit parts in another etc.

Lets start on the build. Please excuse the different coloured work spaces.... a sure sign that I am looking after the kids and squeezing a bit of build time in on the kitchen bench while the wife is out!

The large casting block on the inside rear of the fuselage with the other side removed. I did this with cutters and scraped it flat with a blade. I guess this might have been why the fuselage wasn't taped together like Silverwings normally do.

These kits are quite intricate, especially when they are of metal framed cockpits.

I tack everything together on one side first without cleaning any of the seam lines off. I use thick superglue to do this.

I then glue the other side on, one join at a time and then am left with a fairly strong structure. I drill each corner and insert thin brass rod to allow for me to bend it as required to correct some warping.

Once happy, I give the frame a coat of primer. This allows me to identify the many seams present in the frame. The good thing about this method is that I now have a strong frame that I can sand and scrape to remove the seems without much fear of it breaking.

Uncle Les reacted to Squito2340 in Lanc has landed December 15, 2018

It’s worthwhile absorbing this, ‘It’s a 1/32nd scale Lancaster’. We are fortunate to be living in such times.. when I began modelling nearly 50 years, we were building AIRFIX KITS that would barely go together without significant encouragement. I remember mixing my own batches of glue mixed with sprue for filling. How good is this , a 1/32 Lancaster!

Uncle Les got a reaction from hamfists nz in 1/32 Aermacchi 339? June 20, 2018