1/72 Scratch-built Kingsford Smith (Pellarini) PL-7

From the archive (2009):

Agricultural planes constitute a chapter on their own.

These beaten-up work horses are exposed to stressful tasks and hostile environments with the only purpose of helping us. The Bauhaus school of design popularized in the 20’s the “form follows function” motto, and this is especially applicable in the case of the Ag plane.

Surely with a taste for the unorthodox, Mr. Luigi Pellarini designed the PL-7 cropduster around the product tank located in the center of the fuselage. To this element the engine support members were bolted as well as the remaining after part of the fuselage. An array of struts transmitted the loads from the diverse parts of the airplane to the same central element, the tank. The lower wing had straight leading edges while the upper wing leading edges were a bit angled back. The result of such elaborate load distribution was a very attractive machine that was ready to fly in 1955, a bit out of my usual subjects’ time envelope but nevertheless strange enough to merit some extension of boundaries.

Mr. Pellarini continued to surprise and amuse the aeronautic world with other creations, like the Waitomo / Bennett PL-11 and the Transavia PL-12 Airtruk, which no doubt I want to model too.

I had the PL-7 project in the back burner for a time; nevertheless its appearance had me looking at the references I could gather mainly on the Net and some material sent by the late Jon Noble. His help was instrumental in materializing many projects. Wherever you are now Jon, thanks.

The model started as a plug that was used to vacuform the fuselage sides and the canopy transparency. Some internal structure and details were fabricated before closing the pod. A cowl was made to lodge the Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah aftermarket resin engine while wheels were selected from the bin of the white metal bits. A styrene lamination was made to replicate the Fairey-Reed propeller, which has a particular twist to it (pun intended) being almost a warped chunk of flat metal.

As the parts were being produced a put-together strategy had to be devised, a must when the dreaded strut forest is present as in this case, and even more so given the pod-and-booms configuration. So once the flying surfaces were made some sub-assemblies were created as per photos to make the final put-together more manageable. As with almost all front tricycle landing gear arrangements there is a potential for tail-sitting, so a disk of metal was added to the firewall just in case.

Isn’t it an interesting twist of faith that a machine conceived to fight bugs ends up resembling a bug itself?

Mr. Pellarini, what a beautiful and strange thing you created.