From the archives (2006): (this was then my 4th scratch :-)
The French Antoinette,
designed by Leon Levavasseur, was one of the planes intending to cross the
channel at the same time that Louis Bleriot was.
If you look carefully at the shape of the fuselage you will notice that it resembles a boat or canoe, which speaks volumes about the confidence that pilot and designer had on the plane and its capacity to stay aloft and away from the waves.
Nevertheless the Antoinette ended up being a very popular design of the incipient aviation era. The design had many variations in its life and apparently, according to photos of the time, you had to wear mustaches in order to fly it, most probably for aerodynamic reasons.
If you look carefully at the shape of the fuselage you will notice that it resembles a boat or canoe, which speaks volumes about the confidence that pilot and designer had on the plane and its capacity to stay aloft and away from the waves.
Nevertheless the Antoinette ended up being a very popular design of the incipient aviation era. The design had many variations in its life and apparently, according to photos of the time, you had to wear mustaches in order to fly it, most probably for aerodynamic reasons.
This is the fourth of my
scratchbuilt models. Plastic card, rod and tube were used, along with real
bamboo -from cocktail skewers- brass tube and metal wires. Rigging was done with nylon monofilament, rubbed with silver
rub-n-buff for the flying wires and black marker-painted for the control
cables.
The Antoinette eight-cylinder engine is made of 31 pieces, and I made three to pick the best one.
The fuselage was the challenging bit, with all those cross braces, radiators, formers, etc. It was made of 40+ parts, not counting radiators, landing gear and tail. I painted the front part in Gunze orange acrylic and then, with a badly beaten brush, I laid down streaky coats of oil paint, in maroon and deep red. The rest of the plane was done with airbrushed acrylic paint.
The Antoinette eight-cylinder engine is made of 31 pieces, and I made three to pick the best one.
The fuselage was the challenging bit, with all those cross braces, radiators, formers, etc. It was made of 40+ parts, not counting radiators, landing gear and tail. I painted the front part in Gunze orange acrylic and then, with a badly beaten brush, I laid down streaky coats of oil paint, in maroon and deep red. The rest of the plane was done with airbrushed acrylic paint.
As usual I intend the
photo-documentation as self-explanatory, and most of the details are there.
Since several versions of the plane were around, in spite of the comprehensive photo documentation available, some details were taken from different machines, thus my model depicts
a generic machine that could have belonged to Dastardly & Muttley before WWI.
I learned a lot from this one. I learned how to curse in four languages and three dialects. I learned that bamboo is a material that requires millenarian wisdom and patience to be handled. And I had tons of fun too.
Since several versions of the plane were around, in spite of the comprehensive photo documentation available, some details were taken from different machines, thus my model depicts
a generic machine that could have belonged to Dastardly & Muttley before WWI.
I learned a lot from this one. I learned how to curse in four languages and three dialects. I learned that bamboo is a material that requires millenarian wisdom and patience to be handled. And I had tons of fun too.
Bloody lovely.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, sorry for replying to very old posts, but this little Antoinette defines your whole site here, for me at least.
Bravo! Pat your 2014 self firmly upon your back along with suitable self-congratulations.
You are very kind, and what you did is what it's meant to be done: using the archives fully, as a catalog of sorts.
DeleteI have patted and congratulated myself retroactively.
Cheers!