Heston Phoenix - 1/72nd Arctic Decals /Dekno multimedia kit

 

The somewhat unusual yet beautiful lines of the Heston Phoenix make it a very desirable subject that has been absent from the hobby market until now, thanks to a joint venture between Arctic Decals and Dekno Models. This beautiful kit and its particulars have been described in the step-by-step building article that also contains some historical references:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2025/05/heston-phoenix-arctic-deccalsdekno.html

I have been anxiously waiting for this kit during its developing stage and have not been disappointed, the detail is gorgeous and the molded resin and 3D-printed parts are a joy to work with, plus the additional and very welcome bonus of great decals (of course), masks and even “metal” frames for the windows. Internal detail is beautiful and engineering-wise the kit is sound. The instructions are printed in a comfortable large size and very detailed, with photos of the type and sound advice for the modeler, all perfectly packed.  

As these are sort of artisanal kits I suggest you check the fit of the parts before committing to glue them or paint them. In my sample some of the parts required a little sanding, and some locating holes needed to be made slightly bigger for a comfortable fit. Especial care needs to be taken in dealing with the strut/wings/transparency assembly.

The boxing I got covers two registrations, one of them in two variants. I went for the "Standard Telephone and Cables Limited" variant because of the gorgeous interior and exterior detail provided for it. The manufacturers offer several boxings that cover the produced Phoenixes. For a civil and/or Golden Age modeler, these kits are a blessing, providing access to interesting and historically meaningful types neglected by the mainstream. The effective synergy of these combined manufacturers, Arctic Decals and Dekno Models, have recently released some really nice kits of attractive types, all featured in this blog. We civil modelers thank and applaud these types of releases, as they fill voids in our collections unlikely to be covered by other manufacturers, in the form of beautiful kits that, if not for beginners, present no problems for moderately experienced modelers that have dabbled in resin and or 3D-prited kits before.   

 

Hallam Vac 1/72nd - Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer - in progress

Here is the continuation of the Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer build, in this post the Hallam Vac vintage kit.

For the Valom kit build and reference material on the type, please go to the head post here:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2025/07/scottish-aviation-twin-pioneer-valom.html

I will re-post here for the sake of practicality some of what I posted on the head post:

A much, much older kit in vacuum-formed plastic of good gauge, with fair white metal parts -considering the age-, with decals (mine were missing) but no interior other than a cabin floor and a cockpit bulkhead. The surface detail is much simplified or not present (for example the corrugated areas of the rudders, elevator and ailerons are not molded, and will have to be created, together with the whole cockpit and -if desired- cabin). For this kit I purchased an aftermarket set of resin seats (not the ones Valom offers in this case), and the rest will be either fabricated or scrounged from the spares bin. Two airfoiled lengths are provided, one (wider) for the landing gear legs and another for the wing struts. Decals will need to be created once I decide which livery to use. This vac kit offers the possibility of relatively easily opening the cabin door and (perhaps) separate and deploy the flaps. It all depends on the workload/time the build in general build may require, as I may not live forever as I once thought.

Bagged vintage kit (1987):

The white metal parts, fair given the age of the kit. Notice the cuffed props...

...as the original:

 

The surfaces have some detail, nice and even engraved, but are missing the corrugations on the rudders:

No interior whatsoever is provided, just a bulkhead and a the cabin floor. The airfoiled extruded plastic is for the LG legs and struts. My sample is missing several of those, here is a photo from the Net showing how many they should be (plus the decals missing in my bag):

The kit bag had a hole and maybe they fell, or a modeler needed them for another project. In any case, luckily I still have remnants of my Contrail stock:

The cockpit transparency fortunately aged very well (the yellowing belongs to the tape):

So, we star now to gather what is useful for the build. Resin seats were ordered online from a German source. The pilots' seats were scratchbuilt:

Found on the spares bin two white metal control wheels that are a good match:

The parts' edges are marked with the fine Sharpie, scored with a sharp Xacto, and popped-out of the backing sheet:

Ahead now is the task of truing the contact areas and thinning the trailing edges. This needs to be done carefully so the edges are straight and the material is not removed in excess, hence the Sharpie line. Easy does it, and often testing. 

The white metal parts are cleaned. The power eggs needed some sanding and filling to obtain a good surface (they were profusely pitted):

Well, whaddayaknow. I tracked down and bought the "Plastic Kit Constructor" magazine (#41, Spring 1995) that has an article on this very kit. Here are the pages scanned: 

It's always interesting to see how other modelers approach a kit, even if you chose a different path. 

This almost vintage British magazine is full of build articles, that is, unlike more modern publications that are just mouthpieces for the manufacturers, the collaborators actually built the kits, and had no problem telling what was good and what wasn't, without fear of displeasing the industry. Something you don't see often. It was also a walk on memory lane as I saw brands that are no more, and others I never heard about, and saw some ole duds that are still shamelessly sold today by the big boys in the industry, without a shadow of shame -and most importantly- without improving a pip. These very magazines had no problem telling the big name manufacturers when they actually screwed things up, and boy did they.

Some of the interior parts of the Valom kit are separated from the sprues to use as loose guide for the vac, as it provides almost nothing in terms of interior detail:

The trailing edges of the cowls were too thick, so they were thinned down:

 

Going slowly, but also attending to parallel builds too, so not so bad:

Heston Phoenix 

Twin Pioneer

Couzinet Arc en Ciel

 I.A. 38

Loening commercial

Savoia S.55 

Boeing 80

Fokker F.32

Using the parts on the Valom kit as a pattern, styrene ones are produced for this kit. They won't fit the Hallam kit with precision, so they are made larger to be adjusted later:

The aftermarket seats are separated from their casting blocks (these are not the ones that Valom sells, but other brand, and are fair but just a bit coarse). This is the usual seat arrangement on the Pioneer. One interior photo of G-APRS (Atlantic) shows that seat at the front with the curved back:

The white metal spares bin control wheels are mounted on curved styrene rod columns:

 A bit of base color for a few parts:

NOTE:

In a strange twist of the plot, the aftermarket resin seats I bought for this vac -with solid sides- are the ones that the Valom kit needs for its interior. The Valom's AM seats that are supposed to go with the kit for the VH-AIS kit (tube support structure) are actually the ones I will use here for this build.

The white metal parts are inserted into the legs airfoiled sections:

A bit more of basic painting:

 These are Valom's aftermarket resin seats, but as discussed they do not match photos of VH-AIS, so others were used. These will go into this Hallam Vac build, which did use this kind of seat:

Some legs and armrests came already broken and missing the broken parts. I even found a small piece of the silicone mold. The web between the legs, which is supposed to be thin and easy to remove, is thick and hard to clean without braking even more legs. No big deal, they can be repaired, but this adds time to the build, unnecessarily:

 The casting support is thick and not easy to remove, plus you have to sand the back of the seat after removal, and it's difficult to hold the part for these operations without breaking more legs: 

Now to face the Modeling Olympic Discipline of Sanding. The trailing edges of all flying surfaces are about 0.75mm thick and need thinning, like in any vac:

Ready...steady..go! 

Here in the process of repairing the many broken legs adding styrene rod ones, and puttying the marred seat backs due to the damage induced by the not smartly placed resin support (I repeat: although this is the Hallam Vac kit, these Valom resin aftermarket seats are the ones corresponding to this variant, but not appropriate for Valom's VH-AIS being built in parallel):

G-APRS (the plane I am tempted to represent*) had a different, curved back seat ahead on the right row:

*Valom offers this variant in one of its boxings, but I will be making my own decals for this Hallam Vac kit, as they are relatively simple.

After hard and patient scraping and sanding work, all the trailing edges are paper-thin. Some of the backing sheet still attached to the leading and marginal edges is removed too:

The engraved panel/hinge lines, although fair for the kit's age, will need sharpening.

The repaired seats are being readied for airbrushing:

Some of the halves are glued together. I am holding on the wings (which have the same the same breakdown as the Valom kit, in five sections) as I want to explore the possibility of deploying the flaps:

Further study of photos an plans revealed that the strut material provided for the LG legs was a bit small in width, so a styrene sheet sleeve was glued around the leg to remediate that:

One of the skills needed to successfully build vacs is where to stop sanding. Fortunately there is a very easy remedy for that: if you went too far, you just glue styrene to the part as an extension and try again. But of course is better not to do overdo it in the first place, hence the black Sharpie line you draw around the parts before starting cutting. In some cases, however, it pays to leave a little excess as you match the parts. In this case, what rules the final fuselage width (and how much you sand from the joint) is the cockpit transparency. The cockpit area is cut off (but not yet the wing cutout area, that's it's still needed as support):

The canopy is carefully cut from it's backing sheet and trimmed little by little. Unlike more modern offerings, this is a one shot affair. Notice that I judiciously stopped sanding before I reached the black Sharpie line, having committed the mistake of going all the way to it before:

The canopy width is that of the fuselage halves as they are now, again with that little bit of extra material left intact, which was wise to leave there. In any case the transparency is not a perfect feat all around, and the bottom seat of the side windows of the canopy will need some packing up from the fuselage to get a good match, in spite that I left some extra material on both. A little design flaw, not difficult to correct. Hone those skills!:

"Live dangerously" is hardly the motto of the scale modeler, but in this case I went for it. Flaps are cut out (only from the lower wing surface) . They will have to be sanded to airfoil on the inner side and details added, but I thought I would give it try:

I found a photo of the Pioneer with the flaps partially deployed, but with the LE slats still not out, so this means I don't have to necessarily cut the slats, which would have complicated things big time. 

The nacelles are perhaps the parts that are not particularly well molded. The demarcation line from the backing sheet was wobbly and messy. Once assembled and given a dry-run, their fit to the wing showed indifferent, to say the least:

In inspecting the flaps and ailerons, it was clear that their position on the upper and lower parts of the wing didn't match (i.e., the span was different above and below, they started and ended slightly mismatched). This will need correction via shortening/supplementing/rescribing, as well as providing additional structure to be able to "deploy" the flaps.

All control surfaces (including ailerons, not depicted below) had a very faint ribbing/corrugation. This is absent from the kit's parts. The solution I may be using is applying "lines" of Archer printed resin. An alternate solution I have used before is using thin masking tape spaced as needed and then heavily prime the area (masking the fixed parts of the surfaces). Once the tape is removed the primer stays in relief and can be lightly sanded if needed:

Instead of cutting the windows open and filling them with individual panes cut one by one, a whole section will be removed, clear strips installed, and the windows masked using the set sold for the Valom kit. In the photo the acrylic strips are still covered by a protective layer. The top and end edges will be blended with the surrounding fuselage skin, the lower edge coincides with a panel line:

The clear plastic is about the thickness of the kit's material:

The seats were given their main color:

To be continued...