1/72 Aeroclub Pou Du Ceil

by Keith Hudson

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This is another kit that I didn't even know existed until I saw it pop up on e-bay and a scant 8 dollars later and this rare little pre-war homebuilt airplane arrived at my door a few weeks later.  It is an older kit -seemingly to me- and due to the complete absence of reference material in my library I quickly resorted to an image search on the internet. I was a little surprised by how many pictures there were of this little gem- but then was dismayed to find that seemingly no 2 of these planes were built by their owner/builders the same- and there were no plans to be found as well.  It was at this point that an absolutely wonderful online web-group called Wings of Peace came to the rescue.  I had joined this interesting chat group about 2 months before the start of this build -mostly as a "lurker" but once I had posted my request for help in reference material these generous people literally buried me in information- including pages from the original erection instructions!  If you have any interest in pre WW2 civil aircraft this group always has an interesting conversation or 2 going on.

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The kit itself is very short run in nature- and on mine there were a fair amount of blemishes and irregularities in the wings and fuselage- and the shape didn't seem to match the plans I had received so I decided to rebuild the nose and cockpit area to match the plans more closely.  The white metal motor is really very nice -as are all the white metal pieces. I sanded the wings to smooth out the uneven surfaces and to also sharpen the trailing edges to perhaps get a bit more of a scale effect to them. To restore the rib and leading edge detail I did a negative mask and layered on the brown paint to recreate the feel of a wooden wing structure and then gently sanded these sharp lines into a softer set of detail. The decal sheet was very yellowed and somewhat brittle- early on I decided that except for the very cool "leaping flea" decal the rest would have to be replaced. The yellow film did help me decide on the cream background color- the film blended well into the cream basecoat color. I found a very nice set of "Dull Red Codes" (also purchased on E-bay)  matched a red color to them for the trim color-Floquil reefer red was a pretty close match- and detailed it with a bit of piano wire to create the motor mount and a bit of stretched sprue to rig it and voila ! 

Thanks to Aeroclub for a neat little model and thanks to the "wings of peace " group for the invaluable assistance they gave along the way.

Keith

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Photos and text © by Keith Hudson