Bellanca 28-70 MacRobertson racer - Dekno 1/72nd resin + 3D-printed

 

The Bellanca 28-70 “Irish Swoop” was a plane specifically tailored for the 1934 England to Australia MacRobertson race, taking advantage of previous design and research work at the firm that didn’t have the chance to materialize. Pilot Fitzmaurice had the backing of the Irish Hospitals Trust’s “Irish Sweepstakes”, hence the decoration of the plane. In 1936 –after crashing and being as a “28-90”- it will become, with modifications, Mollison’s “Dorothy” and cross the Atlantic from the US to England. The design will be known as the “Flash” and a number were sold, again with modifications according to the buyer’s specs, some to China and some ending up in Mexico after having been assigned, but not delivered, to the Spanish Republicans (completely unrelated –and rather the opposite- to US republicans, fyi). “Irish Swoop” unfortunately couldn’t participate in the race, partially because of technical issues, and it’s believed that partially because the British establishment wasn’t very happy about Fitzmaurice using an American design. He had claimed at some point that no local one was good enough (Fitzmaurice was threatened with disqualification even way before the race for trying to use a “not locally certified plane” according to sources). 

 

After being refused the qualification (and even the trial to be certified) Fitzmaurice embarked on a flight to demonstrate the superiority of his plane, but had to abandon due to mechanical reasons:

 

Clips of the plane:

https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/41598/

https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/1462/rec/1

https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/6863/rec/2 

As side note, Bellanca built several one-off planes. Many years ago I scratchbuilt the Bellanca 28-92 trimotor that flew in the Bendix:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2012/12/scratchbuilt-bellanca-trimotor-completed.html

This is another scratchbuilt of the long-distance, also one-off, the Bellanca Model K:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2015/04/scratch-built-172nd-scale-bellanca.html

This beautiful Bellanca 28/70 by Dekno Models in 1/72^nd scale fills a gap in any Golden Era racing collection and especially for those modelers that have already built MacRobertson racers and want to increase their stable of such machines. In my case I already have the known DH88s:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2015/09/ded-havilland-dh88-black-magic-racer.html

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2019/01/de-havilland-dh88-comet-kp-172-completed.html

The DH89 Dragon Rapide “Tainui”:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2018/06/de-havilland-dh89-tainui-macrobertson.html

The Granville Q.E.D.:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2023/05/gee-bee-r6h-qed-172nd-plastic-passion.html

and the Pander Postjager:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2011/09/pander-postjager.html

 The 28-70 is a complex design that Dekno rendered cleverly with a mix of resin and 3D-printed parts, plus (2, 1 of which is a spare) vacuformed transparencies. A sharp, nice set by Arctic Decals completes the package. Dekno has evolved a long way and this kit has good surface detail with stringers and ribs subtly and convincingly rendered. The engine and exhausts are good for the scale and the latter even have their ends hollowed. Minute surface detail is also well represented. Even better: Dekno correctly described the gold color of the cowl, inaccurately depicted as green in many drawings and publication. The fuselage inner sides and cockpit floor also have detail. As it is usual with this kind of kit, some cursory cleaning is necessary on the bigger resin parts (leading edges) and the tongue-and-socket locating devices need some minor filing to properly fit (wings and stabs) as well as some adjusting of the cockpit floor fit . Unlike other cottage industry resin kits, the surfaces are free from pinholes, bubbles, short pours and excrescences. The engine could be posed as cowl-less (as it appears in many photos) or its cylinder tops should be sanded down a bit to fit inside the cowl comfortably. All in all a nice kit of a very attractive plane.

All well packed and protected:

Nice, sharp decal sheet. The subjects need to be carefully cut individually (full carrier):

Accurate color calls:

Parts:

Detail on the fuselage sides:

Nice, subtle ribbing:

Watch out while removing the radio console, it has thin legs and some structure:

The cockpit floor required making a few notches to clear structural detail:

And deepen a bit the recesses on the other side to allow a good fit with the locating rails on the fuselage:

All parts are washed with a brush inside a coffee filter mesh, carefully. You may want to do this while the small parts are still attached to their blocks:

Drying and separating the smaller parts. Beware, do not lose any, some are tiny (joysticks, airscoop, Pitot, aileron actuators):

There are no suggestions on the instructions for the interior colors but I found this B&W graphic:

The Irish Swoop is seen sometimes in photos as mentioned without the cowl, no wheel covers and -presumable during early trials- even without leading edge lights, which may have been a required addition for the race. It did have very small nav lights on wingtips and fin.

This wire, visible in good photos, needs to be added to the landing gear:

 

To be continued...

Clear Prop 1/72nd 3D-printed + photo-etched parts De Havilland Gipsy Six R engines

 

I bought a pair of these Clear Prop 3D-printed + photo-etched parts De Havilland Gipsy Six R engines after watching a video of its virtual assembly that the company put online. This aftermarket accessory is meant to complement Clear Prop’s release of an injected version of the famous De Havilland D.H.88 Comet, and thus tailored to it, but it could be adapted to other 1/72^nd DH88 on the market.

When my engines arrived I saw that the 3D-printing was of good quality and nice detail, and not marred by the layering often seen on those products. At the same time, I was puzzled because the parts didn’t really match the video. The parts and assembly were significantly differently, the number of parts on the video greater, the assembly process dissimilar to the product I bought. It looked like the video perhaps depicted a bigger 1/48 rendition. Looking at the P.E. fret that accompanies the parts I saw that there were parts you did not use, but were present in the video (part 1) and a spare for part 5 (ignition wires). It looks like the video depicts perhaps a first production approach that was later discarded and replaced by a much simplified product, or as said a bigger scale one? The tiny instructions are printed sharply, but the position of the parts is frustratingly vague, and the drawings minuscule. The “wires” are inaccurately depicted as to glue them as they come (straight), but in fact you are supposed to “bend” the leads that go to the spark plugs, an almost impossible task due to their size and flimsy nature. The attaching tabs of this P.E. wires are difficult to file away, as they are heftier than the parts they hold. I discarded the “wires” as they proved too much to deal with -and didn’t really look right compared to photos- and just used part 2 and the other, smaller 3D-part that depicts some ducting and accessories. The printing is of good quality, but care and patience is needed as usual with these products to remove the printing pips that profusely surround the parts. 

Unfortunately Clear Prop does not provide the engine mounts with this engine, but they are present in their DH88 kit sprues, which is a little cheeky, as you may want to use the engines in another kit (like the ones cited below), and you are deprived of the necessary mounts which you then must fabricate yourselves. Again, a little cheeky methinks.

As I often like to detail kits, this is a welcomed accessory for planes that used it, and besides the Clear Prop kit (which again is matched to these engines) two candidates that immediately sprung to mind were Dora’s Vega Gull and Heller’s Dragon Rapide:

These engines no doubt will look smart on them. Although the engine as mentioned is tailored to the Clear Prop Comet, perhaps it could be used with all the D.H.88 on the market (which now are plenty) like the ones released by SBS (great kit, but solid nacelles, so some chopping will be necessary):

 or the KP release (nacelles provided as two halves which may help if you want a partially covered engine):

 or even Frog or Airfix vintage editions (also providing two-part nacelles) -if you are willing to deal with these two really outdated kits:

Contents:

Dedicated modelers can surely add to this engine which I assembled in a straightforward way just to see how it went together:

I see photos of the Gipsy Six having various colors -which may benefit the visuals of this little engine- but I opted for the simplest of them all, black:

Now to look for a candidate to use it.

Fokker E.V civil - converted Arma Hobby 1/72nd

 

 

One of my modeling joys is civilianizing planes. On this blog you may see dozens of what is called “swords to plowshares” conversions. Something the world seems to desperately need before we are all blown to smithereens and bequeath the earth to the cockroaches. Coincidentally, the name of this kit manufacturer, Arma, has in Spanish a double -and somewhat opposite- meaning: “weapon” (that is a tool of destruction) and “build” (the action of assembling, creating something). There are always choices. 

As an example of such conversions here is a Sopwith Pup modeled some time ago:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2016/11/sopwith-pup-1921-aerial-derby-arctic.html

Going forward: this particular plane got a lease of life after its service, ending in Italian civilian use. You can see online a few models that represent it in various interpretations of the schemes seen in contemporary B&W photos. The plane was painted in three different schemes at various times, similar but ultimately different. I have chosen the one that has the white tail with the “I” country marks, a wing that seems to be doped linen with a large underlined reg, and what looks like a white rectangle bordered in black with the underlined regs inside in black on the fuselage sides, as it appears on page 15 in the publication “Fokker D.VIII” by P. M. Grosz. The plane is usually rendered in drawings as red, which could well be accurate. The plane of course has no machine guns, so those will be deleted. Again, different modelers have rendered the schemes according to their own interpretations. Some of them it could be said that don't have strong rationale behind them -looking at the original photos-, and some may be more accurate. As usual with B&W photos, there is some latitude for educated guessing. There is a 1/72nd Roden kit of this plane, but I had in my stash as mentioned above the Arma kit, in its “junior” set boxing. That somewhat dismissive qualification only refers to the lack of a photo-etched set that the “expert” set has together with a different set of decals. As I have many of the P.E. parts I need from other sets, there was no need buy the more expensive kit, as neither decal set would be of any use to me. There is also a Mikro-Mir 1/32 kit that offers as an option I-ELIA, but I could not vouch for their interpretation of the scheme (one of the other three schemes I mentioned above). Photos show that the plane had both the "scimitar" type and an Axial prop at different times. The particular scheme of I-ELIA I am modeling had the Axial prop:

The kit has a clean molding with good detail for the scale, with only a small amount of thin flash present in some parts. The engineering departs slightly from the usual approach to this type of plane, something that will be discussed on the go during the building. The interior is fairly depicted again for the scale, having a floor, pedals, instruments, seat, fuselage enclosing, stick, and structure. As the plane was most likely refurbished in passing to civil hands, the color guide for the interior in the instructions may not represent the plane as flown. 

The molding is of very good quality but still some thin flash is present on some parts, and it requires care to be removed. The parts should be excised from the sprues with caution. The gates are in general well located and mostly unobtrusive.

 A bit of flash here and there:

Interior detail on the fuselage sides:

A nice engine for the scale, with cylinder head detail and even pips for spark plugs, but -as in all kits of this type- it's reduced in diameter to fit inside the comparatively thick-walled cowl:

 Small Stuff produced a magnificent Le Rhone 9J/Oberursel Ur.II in 1/72 that required really careful assembly, but now is out of stock on their site. Using the Small Stuff engine would necessitate eliminating the cowl (perhaps presenting the model "in maintenance") or vac-forming a thin new one hoping it can enclose the new engine. This is a page by Eugeny Knupfer where you can see his engine:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/smallstuffmodels/albums/72157635837100013/with/9914763443

Well done tail surfaces, subtle and scale-thin:

You get two types of wheels: with cover and then the tires only to use P.E. parts. Also two types of prop:

The parts off the sprue and mostly cleaned-up:

 

The bonga-bonga parts are discarded or modified:

The capot detail is erased and the voids filled-in. Later putty and sanding will restore the surface, taking utter care not to obliterate those very flimsy and fragile struts:

 Other manufacturers have developed before a better way to solve this assembly, providing separate struts connected at the bottom that go up from under the fuselage section and lock in divots in it:

Fixed:

Parts are airbrushed with their base colors departing from the instructions as explained:

The tires are held so:

Decals were used to produce the wood effect:

Prop and floor were painted with oils:

Seat given belts and hardware, P.E. spokes added to tires:

The control horns are depicted as pips:

They are removed and replaced with P.E. ones:

Decals are home-made on white (fuselage) and clear paper (wing and tail):

Now the axles molded on the sub-wing are too thick for the P.E. spokes, so they are removed, their location drilled, and brass tube inserted:

Interior in progress:

I just found this model of I-ELIA by friend and fellow modeler Tracy Hancock, He of the Paralyzing Stare:

https://afleetingpeace.org/wingsofpeace/index.php/model-showcase/176-f-81/201-fokker-ev-d-viii-185

Another valid interpretation of the B&W photos and a nice model.

The fuselage is assembled. The bulkhead after the seat needed trimming on the sides and bottom to allow for a comfortable fit. The rest went well. The tail feathers were assembled as they are white and can be painted separately :

Arma decided on an unorthodox approach to the landing gear. There is a rig that sets the correct angles for the legs and holds them in position while the glue sets, and then it's removed cutting the auxiliary supports that unite the struts. I have seen this done (by Airfix iirc) in other kits with the wing struts. We will see how it works, as Arma molded the LG struts to scale, and the attaching points are very tiny, and do not have a positive lock (although their locations are clearly molded on the fuselage):

The home-made decals work well:

The first stage of the LG rig. I had to very slightly enlarge the molded notches to get a more positive grip:

Now the sub wing is added checking its angle. So far so good, and the legs coincide with their fuselage locations in a dry run:

The LG is glued (the rig will be cut off when the glue sets). The hole for the aileron cable is drilled, as well as in the the wing to later add it:

The removal of the rig wasn't really difficult, but has to be done with a sharp blade (I just used the ole razor blade) and very carefully. Once removed, there were still tiny leftovers of the attaching pips that needed to be deleted. All in all, it worked for me, so well done Arma for the trick.

Even the airfoils for wing and sub-wing are rendered realistically. Attention to detail.

The model receives a coat of gloss white (the color of the tail unit) as a base for the red:

 To be continued...