Run on WnW Kits? and purchase of F.2a...

[Jboldt007]

So about a year or two ago i bought a D-H9 Wing Nut Wings kit from a local retailer thinking ... i should just get one. They have [had] a stack which had been languishing for a while . Recently i decided to open it and fell  in love with it and the whole WnW thing ... plus the era. i'm a newb but still... i dived in. I parked my other builds and decided to get more WnW kits but low and behold my retailer said someone came in an bought almost all the kits. THe buyer said that prices in online bids have been climbing and so decided to buy out what he could get. I see recently Hannants bought a stock of WnW kits which promply sold out. The thing is... i was hankering on an F.2a kit... not lightly considered,,, if my wife and daughters found out i would be in big trouble... but my birthday was approaching so i said what the heck. throw caution to the wind. Luckily the retailer found a late f.2a kit in the storeroom and gave me a great deal on it. So now... yikes... it's a beast. but so cool. i have to break up the sprues and then slowly bring them out and work in bits so that the girls become acclimatized.. it seems to work. 

 

Anyway to make my life more complicated i decided i wanted to do this one:

 

 

 

Why? because (1)  i don't see this build on-line and (2) it has the "early" "sedan and rumble seat" cockpit which i like and (3) the dazzle scheme looks like something i won't totally botch in terms of masking. So the problem? Well, sources aren't even sure it's even an F.2A (even though oddly enough the pilot flying the plane in this picture is known) It could be an F.3 or even F.5. Plus a definitive article by Adrian Vicary (you see I've become a Felixstowe flying boat expert in the last 48 hours) i think mistakenly suggests this might be N4087 (his renderings show a different plane  as 4087- the "criss-cross" scheme noted in the WnW instructions as 4083- or 4087 may have been a similar scheme in a flight including 4083. But it's not this one). This "error" - if it is one - has been replicated in a number of sites saying it is 4087. 

 

Anyhow after some research i'm convinced this is an F.2a (not an F.3) and that, if one looks at the serial numbers, which aren't really legible, it seems that there's a '4' and a '5'. it could be a 4500 series. this might make sense as it could be one of 20 F.2a's delivered to Felixstowe in July, 2018. These ones, manufactured by Aircraft Manufacturing/ May, Harden, and May were delivered with the partially enclosed cockpit which were later converted to the "sedan and rumble seat" version like N4545 in the WnW instructions, which is a well known and photographed f.2a, and identical other than paint job to the subject above. If it was N4087, i think these in this series (up to 4099) have been recorded as being delivered with the "late" open cockpit as provided in the kit. So not the same. 

 

As to colours- Vicary notes  this aircraft as being "white on green". Here's  a rendering based on his sketch from a site:

 

 

 

 

Again i don't think this is 4087. In any event - the green colour is also a matter of conjecture. it seems from contemporary accounts that wings on these planes were doped in what was likely PC10 (on the top) but also painted in a 'green maritime' grade paint described as close to the interwar NIVO paint... which... kind of looks like PC10. I have no reason to deviate from this on the basis that the rendering above may be meant to be the plane in the top photo - although the underside may have just been black. One thing - the photo at the top makes it look like the coaming right up to the front is CDL (clear doped) - and aft of the wings - but it's hard to say based on the photo. The scheme could be more like that depicted above.

 

Any comments from Felixstowe experts welcome. I don't plan top start this for a while but don't want to muck it all up from the get go if there's a clear mistake in all this...

 

[MikeMaben]

Start a WIP , there's no time limit so you'll likely get more info and interest over time. 

[Jboldt007]

good point - it kind of morphed into that....