Wings of Intent

(Photo from Wikipedia)

Oh! Racers! And not just that… Schneider racers! Very exciting always. A number of them are posted on this blog, and today we start the Gloster III from Karaya. This manufacturer should be congratulated for tackling a wonderful series of racers. I have built a few of their kits:

The Supermarine Sea Lion, a nice kit that needs nonetheless some help and corrections:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2020/07/supermarine-sea-lion-schneider-trophy.html

Their Savoia S.65 that has some visible inaccuracies that must be corrected, and its engineering could use some help:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2020/02/savoia-s65-schneider-cup-modified.html

And the Brown racer, a nice little kit, to which a couple minor details can be added:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2025/12/brown-b-2-racer-karaya-172nd-resin.html

They are resin kits, and as a media resin kits in general have come a long way. Personally, I think reaching their acme with the SBS releases. Karaya kits I would say are just behind, their subjects are great, and their casting is good.

My sample had a missing joystick (easily replaced) and a broken rudder pedal (again easy to replace) but otherwise all was good. They kindly provide a beaching trolley and a tail support structure, but the trolley doesn’t look like the one in photos (you can make it useful to space and rig the floats after some deeded adjustments, though). Control horns are provided as resin parts and those will be replaced by photo-etched items. The exhausts on the original come out of the cowl visibly from the top bank of cylinders, but the kit just has recessed moldings on their position, flattened tube may do here. Other modelers have observed that the floats are somewhat apart of what they should be, they need to be closer (thus modifying the beaching trolley and associated struts). The plans point out to a small piece of film for the windshield that was absent from my box but any thin clear plastic bit will do. The alternate bigger fin doesn’t have a rudder, thus necessitating stealing the one from the early small vertical tail. Modelers have also rightly pointed out that the two halves of the rudder (upper and lower) need to be connected around the fuselage ending cone.

Other than that, is up to the modeler, looking at photos readily available online, to add small details like the tiny radiator caps, a small L -shaped item after the cabane, a missing third airscoop on the fuselage frontal section, etc. The other small airscoops on the sides are not particularly well rendered -as photos show- because the holes are not on the fuselage skin, but part of the scoop body itself.The wing radiators are too big and need reducing in lenght and

Karaya missed the race numbers located under the wings as this photo shows:

WILLARD AUSTIN CARLE MEMORIAL COLLECTION
No. 11353. Gloster IIIA (N194) Royal Navy

Photographed ca. 1925, source unknown

https://1000aircraftphotos.com/Contributions/CarleWillard/11353.htm

Scanning the decal sheet and printing the numbers on decal paper will solve this issue. The fuselage numbers have a thin white line, but as wings are white -as the tail and struts- the printed black numbers under the wings will be fine:

The box:

The contents:

The parts:

After separation, cleanup and washing. No short pours and just two pinholes easily filled. Most parts are easy to separate from their casting blocks and easy to clean up, no problems occurred during those operations:

These photos and drawings show the engine as used for other racers, but the Gloster III had the top bank exhausts to the other side (the III had a VII and not VIIB):

Notice the airscoops, trolley, radiators, Pitot (see notes above):

Lower wings, fuselage and floats have locating devices. They work pretty well, only one float needed adjusting. Tail feathers and struts will need metal pins. The location of the struts is not marked on the wings and should be deduced from the 3-view in the instructions and photos.

Preparing some parts for priming and painting:

A coat of primer on some of the parts revealed a very good surface with little to touch up:

The plan to reduce the size of the radiators consists on shaving top and bottom for a flatter curve -thus reducing height- and cut an end section to be replaced by styrene sheet mimicking the other side's end plate -thus reducing length. The depth looks ok. The LE will need a small supplement to make up for the shorter length:

The race positions:

The engine (Napier -Lion VII):

Trials (too little too late). Went to America with very few flights and basically no real training, still, no chances again the much speedier American winner. An honorable second plane, though.

The predecessor, Gloster II. Notice the position of the radiators (covered in the photo):

These small cleat/eyelets were not present in this plane. Similar ones were present on the Gloster II. They need to be removed:

I decided to remove the pins, very lightly sand the contact areas flat to obtain a better edge at the bottom and less fuss wit the filler:

Pay attention at how the struts do not connect on the spine centerline of the floats, but a little inwards. Also notice the painted white metal sheet where the struts anchor on the floats. Very unfortunately Karaya did not indicate where the struts go either on fuselage or floats (the floats do have rectangular sections engraved in the general area). This added to the no location marks for the wing struts or even a line to indicate the position of the fins, I find it cheeky:

To be continued...

As it was said in the construction article, the lure of the classics is hard to resist. So, after modeling some unusual designs, what follows is this rendition of the Lockheed L-12 (and the parallel build of the Cessna T-50). The Special Hobby kit was adapted to represent the specific plane flown by Jack Fry, for which a set from Draw Decals was used. Special Hobby and others should be congratulated for releasing kits of such beautiful and relevant civil planes. It is also of note that many of these releases sell pretty well, the proof is that they become very hard to find, and if found, a pretty penny must be paid to acquire them on the second-hand market. Time to release more of them, Eastern European manufacturers?

Some modifications were practiced, opening the nose, cabin door and luggage hatch, providing a restroom and adding external details not contemplated in the kit.

The step-by step building article is here:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2026/04/lockheed-l-12-electra-junior-special.html