Styrene

Styrene

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

1/72 nd Westland Wallace G-ACBR Everest completed


Here is one of the two Westland planes that flew over Mount Everest* for the Houston Everest Expedition, G-ACBR, -the other being G-ACAZ (The G-ACAZ model is here:
http://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2017/02/172nd-houston-westland-g-acaz-everest.html
*Mount Everest, by the way, it's a name coined by the colonizing British (not uncommonly depicted by the locals as brutish) empire, that imposed "civilization" by disrespecting local names, traditions and -whenever convenient, necessary, or just fun- people. As all countries with imperial pretensions do. May be not the Mongols, though, according to records, who only pillaged and killed but did not make the peoples they conquered adopt their culture.
The mountain is locally known by two names: Sagarmāthā (forehead or head in the sky) and Chomolungma (mother of the world).

The Step-by-step building article is here:

Once more I would like to thank Sönke Schulz from Marzipanland for the kind gifting of this kit.
G-ACBR started life as a Westland Wapiti V, fitted with an A.S. Panther engine as a company demonstrator, and in such role -and registered G-AAWA- visited Argentina on a promotional tour as well as Uruguay, later crossing the Andes over the Uspallata pass to Chile.
Later in its life was modified as a PV-6 Wallace. Finally, in 1933, flew over the Himalayas.
From Argentina to the Andes to Nepal. What a fulfilling life.

To the original kit much was added and some things modified in terms of accuracy and detail.
One comment: G-ACBR did not have the cockades and rudder flash provided with the kit's decals at the time of the Himalaya flight, as can be clearly seen in the documentary made for that occasion. All the articles in magazines that depict it so -flying over the mountain with the cockades and rudder flash- show a total lack of interest in research on part of the writers.

G-ACAZ , the other plane, can't be made from the same kit without modifications, since it was a so-called Houston-Westland based on the PV-3 and modified, like the other plane, with an aft "cabin". They are very different planes. For notes on the needed modifications for G-ACAZ you may visit this post of the step-by-step article on said plane:
 (After I took most of the images I realized that I had forgotten the aileron connecting linkages, the Pitot, and two cables that run from one strut to the nose. All those were added and are visible in the last three images)


















































3 comments:

  1. Well done, Claudio. Seems the British were quite proud of that expedition, and were upset when Robert L. Scott cruised by in a P-43 early in WW II, the P-43 having a better supercharger system than anything in China up to that time.

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  2. Excelent job, congratulations. Armando Gil.

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