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.