Styrene

Styrene

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Scratch-built 1/72 Hosler Fury racer

From the archive (2010):

The Hosler Fury is a plane that stands out immediately because of its remarkable aesthetics. Its modern, stylized lines were the result of Russell Hosler's inspiration. It is not beautiful on account of the usual curvy lines associated with racers, but more in the way of a geometric, clean and angular Art Deco style. It had a Curtiss D-12 engine, a non-protruding canopy, an exiguous cantilever wing of very thin airfoil and retractable landing gear.
This pre-war design (reportedly aimed to participate in the 1938 Thompson air race) had a series of tests with a bit of flying really involved when the war prevented further development. Sadly enough, it slowly degraded until reaching an unrecoverable state.
The model: a fuselage was made of wood and then vacuformed parts were created from it with the Mattel Psychedelic Machine; this allowed the wheel wells and the recess for the retracting landing to be created easily. The double-surfaced flying surfaces were made of styrene sheet. The radiator was fashioned with wood, brass mesh (thanks Keith) and styrene. Aeroclub prop and wheels were added and decals were of course home-made.
The photos as customary describe the building process.
Skyways magazine (a very good publication, by the way) has an article on the Hosler design in the April 1997 issue. They sell back issues.
For what can be inferred from the not many photos available, there were a few changes during is life. The wing can be seen with and without stiffeners and with two distinct registration arrangements; an air scoop was at some point above the front fuselage, there are minor variations in the cockpit glazing (round corners and square corners of the canopy), radiator and so forth.
I was impressed by the graceful and racy lines and had to make a model to vindicate such outstanding design, hopefully helping to make it better known and preserving its gleaming beauty a bit more.






























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