Westland Wessex airliner, 1/72 Rugrats resin

 

 

We have here a situation that often repeats in this hobby: a superbly attractive plane that hardly any mainstream manufacturer would touch, produced by a smaller outfit with less resources and the unavoidable higher price tag that always accompanies the need to spread higher costs on a smaller number of produced items.

For us modelers, that translates into the above-mentioned higher tag price, with a technology that no matter how much love, time and energy invested, may fall sometimes a tad short of modeling comfort.

I have to credit to this manufacturer first and foremost the will and valor to produce a wonderful civil type that is not universally known, and the inclusion of items such as highly detailed decals, photo-etched parts, white metal parts, documentation, detailed plans, and such.

The bulk of the kit is constituted by resin parts, the casting is fair enough, and better than other offers like the old Dujin issues, but not on par with more refined kits in the market of equal price.

The engineering is a bit unusual, but this plane is not easy to translate in kit form, so I guess they shall be given a pass on that. But the aggregate of several resin and white metal parts that makes for the outrigger engines, associated struts and landing gear does not fit well and produced many a headache.

This is far from being an easy kit to build, as you can see in the work-in-progress post:

 https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2019/02/westland-wessex-airliner-rugrats-resin.html

The decision lies on the modeler: spend the higher sum and have a laborious build to enjoy the reward of a lesser known type of great appeal...or not.

I guess that as usual it boils down to how much you want a Westland Wessex, and how a reasonably experienced modeler you are.

A great deal of thought and resources has been poured into this kit, still you need to work with skill, patience and care (and no little love), sometimes solving manufacturing issues, to get a nice replica. But then you will have your beautiful Wessex.

LVG C.VI "Kabine" passenger conversion 1/72

(The step-by-step building post is here:
https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2017/07/civil-conversion-for-kp-lvg-cvi-172nd.html

Some times the modeling stars align and you get a very nice kit that you can convert into one of your dream projects without struggling, and, furthermore, completely enjoying the build.

I added as you know a Matías Hagen resin engine and commissioned decals, masks and "metal" window frames  from Arctic Decals.

The output of attractive, significant, colorful and uplifting civil kits from many manufacturers has fortunately increased lately, however I am always searching for potential conversions of military kits into much more civilized, smart and appealing civil counterparts. That's how I discovered the KP LVG C.VI kit, acquired for a very reasonable price (two more since then, by the way, I liked it so much).

The quality of this little kit is superb in any regard and again, how pleasurable to build, a welcome change of scenery from my usual Frankenkit endeavors. Still, there is the matter of the kit's Achilles' heel: the cabanne struts have no locating devices or marks where they meet the fuselage, making gluing and aligning (in the 3 axis) at the same time the upper wing a little challenging.

The machine presented here had at some point "L.V.G." under each lower wing and later the outline edges of the wings painted.

I am looking forward to build more cabin conversions, but I RUN OUT OF CLEAR MATERIAL TO VACFORM CANOPIES!!

I have plenty of colored sheets for the Mattel vacuform machine, but no clear plastic sheets. I already tried those two or three types offered on the Net, with unpleasant results, and nothing compares to the original ones that came long ago with the Mattel machine, and I just run out of my supply from Mike Damen, who used to produce good substitutes (he does not fabricate them anymore).

Sigh...