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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images below to see larger images
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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