Boeing 80A-1 - Broplan 1/72nd vacuformed kit

 

Congratulations to Broplan for presenting to the modelers a whole line of attractive and significant civil planes, among them the Savoia SM95, Macchi C.94, Dewoitine 333 and 338, a civil conversion for Supermode/Italeri's Cant Z.506, Farman F.70, Fokker FVIIa 1M, Savoia SM85, SM87 and a range of other more modern airliners.

This Boeing 80A-1 build is made possible thanks to the kindness and generosity of friend and accomplished fellow modeler Tracy Hancock. I have lusted for this kit for a long time, so I was elated and mightily pleased when it arrived. The chances of the years have made the vacuformed transparency disappear, but after communicating with the Broplan company owner, Janusz, he very kindly sent a replacement. My gratitude to both, kit donor and company owner.

I had arrived before to a very pleasant result building Broplan's Hansa W.33 and converting it to civil service:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2018/08/hansa-w33-civil-tiedemann-flying.html

And as I perused through the contents of Broplan's Boeing 80 I was very happy with the vacuformed parts, which had a lot of surface detail and were well molded. The basic structure for the interior is also molded in the vac sheets, which will save a lot of work and time.

Some vac manufacturers sell the whole package, like Khee-Kha Art Products, others do not provide detail or ancillary parts, whilst some used to provide white metal accessories. Broplan provides their kits with injected plastic parts for all you need to complete the model. In this case engines, props, exhausts, some parts for the cockpit, tail-wheel, landing gear legs, many struts of different sizes, two additional vertical tails for the types that require them, and minor miscellaneous items, everything but cabin seats. Completing the hefty package are three decal sheets covering one version: NC224M. The decals seem well printed, and the advice is given to spray them with two coats of acrylic varnish. The modeler will have to provide white backgrounds where needed, and the decals are of the all-encompassing carrier type, so individual subjects have to be separated and the carrier trimmed individually. The injected parts are molded in a basic technology, so they may lack the refinement you usually see in injected kits, and there is some flash to deal with. Working a bit, and depending on your expectations, all the injected parts can be put to use, or you may like to substitute some. I will be substituting the engines with aftermarket items, to  save on cleaning and refining time, as P&W Hornets are very affordable and easily available from Engines & Things in Canada, or you have the alternative of building a superb resin "kit" of it from the Israeli firm Small Stuff (one of which I recently built and used on a Boeing 40).

A review of this kit by Tracy can be consulted here:

http://www.internetmodeler.com/2006/august/first-looks/Broplan_Boeing80.php

The kit gift came with yet another gift, a very nice booklet titled "Flying the Boeing Model 80", by Peter Bowers, a good reference for the type, with juicy information and photographs. 

A review of the booklet by the late Jim Schubert can be found here:

http://www.internetmodeler.com/2006/june/new-releases/book_boeing80.php

As my liking for this type dates from long ago, I compiled through the years a relatively well-stocked folder of my own, as there is quite a bit on  the type online.

Several variants, many modifications, plenty of owners and changes through time account for a lot of choices, should you opt to depart from the kit's NC224M registration offering. But some work, from minor to major, will be necessary to obtain other schemes and machines.

The Broplan kit offers the same regs as the plane located at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. This was a restoration job based on remains of an original airframe. A walk-around can be consulted here:

https://www.cybermodeler.com/aircraft/80/80a_walk.shtml

I really love vacs. They offer some advantages, satisfactions and challenges that you may not find in "normal" kits, and I have built... well... quite a lot of them. Many dozens. You may look at them, if you feel curious, browsing here through the posts, perhaps finding something that may be useful if you are inclined to the media.

 Contents:

Surface detail, quite elaborate:

Spars are provided as part of the vac sheet:

The injected parts:

 

A view of the multi-part decal sheet:

 

The injected plastic parts as mentioned have quite a bit of flash:

 

 Transparency and spare (always welcome and often need!) kindly sent by Janusz:

 

 

Careful separation and a thorough cleaup are mandatory. You can see at the bottom right of the image that I am opting to replace some of the kit´s parts, but cleaned them all just to demonstrate that if you are satisfied you can use them. You may spot some cockpit sub-assemblies already glued together. The oblong small parts I assume are the pilot's rudder pedals, but I couldn't find a mention of them in the instruction diagrams. Because the sprues are duplicated, you get some spares, as some parts do not need duplication: 

The engines I will be using (with the white metal front shields from Aeroclub) are from Engine & Things in Canada to keep it simple, but there are other aftermarket options, like the Small Stuff ones, that require careful assembly, though:

The usual prelude to excising the parts: using a permanent marker on the parts' contour to help with cutting, and more importantly, with sanding later on:

The parts, as mention before, have nice surface detail, especially for a vac:

With a couple of careful and steady passes of a new sharp hobby knife, and then some rocking of the backing sheet back and forth, the parts pop out and can later be refined. You see in the upper left corner some scraps from the backing sheet that is always wise to keep at hand for repairs/reinforcement. If at this stage you made a mistake braking a part or cutting inside the line, don't panic, as vacs are in most cases easily repaired, and a dash of liquid cement and/or some backing plastic sheet scrap may fix the problem:

Change the hobby knife blade when needed, a sharp blade guarantees a good scoring of the plastic and therefore a better popup of the parts. Using the right tools for the job is always a good practice:

In two hours, with a short lunch pause in between, all the parts are out. Refining is next:

Vac parts that constitute the interior (there are injected parts for the cockpit as seen at the beginning):

Big as the Boeing 80 is, and it was indeed a big plane, the Fokker F.32 is bigger yet. Two Boeing 80 would fit comfortably inside the Fokker F.32:

Sanding of the parts begins.  Note: barely sand the engine gondola and fuselage halves, just enough to make a true, flat mating edge for gluing, if you sand them too much, the section of the gondolas will not be circular, and the fuselage halves once closed would not properly embrace the interior. There is always room to sand more, but it is more burdensome to add plastic (nonetheless of course it can be done when needed). This is the task that some modelers tend to overdo, hence the black edge to give you a clue. The general idea is to have the parts that are glued against each other (for example horizontal tail halves), sanded true and flat, to have a good and straight contact surface. At the same time, the trailing edges of the flying surfaces should be thinned to a realistic edge, and you could use a rasp in that area from inside the part to achieve that. As you work, a "hair" with the black permanent ink is usually a good tell-tale sign that you are at the real edge of the part and should stop sanding:

These technical comments I am making as I go (with tips that by the way all vacuform modelers know, I am not inventing the wheel at any rate), do not mean that this is a good kit to start your foray into the Vac Universe, it is not, as this is not a beginners' kit. The comments are meant to provide some information for those interested in the media and without much previous experience, so they know more or less what's going on and why.

As explained, a rasp is used to thin the railing edges of all flying surfaces, see the difference between the wing in background (already thinned) and the one in the foreground (still with the thicker trailing edge), you may see that the little "ridge" has disappeared:

Some areas may need a touch-up with sanding sticks and sanding sponges:

I will be replacing the kit's spar with a length of aluminium square section tube. The sample below, only for the purposes of illustration, is a short section I had lying around. The one used will have the necessary length and dihedral angles. I have used this resource in many models, among them a scratch of the Rohrbach Roland (featured somewhere in this blog):

 You can see here that the manufacturer devised a system to fit and lock in place the upper and lower wings, made of matching male and female volumes molded in the parts. A very capable fellow modeler, Bill Glinski, has reported having a bit of trouble with it, and that's no surprise given that vacs' parts are usually not as sharp as good injected of resin ones, and require adjustment (as well as scores and scores of "normal" kits, by the way), so I may revise it. We'll revisit this issue down the road:

A few parts that come in halves are glued together. Align the tail feathers' halves taking the line of the horn balance as reference. Be aware that the wheel halves are different, one side being flat and the other domed, assemble them so each wheel has one of them:

I added an aluminium tube bush:

Assembly of the interior begins by cutting out some doors and gluing some of the structural parts. Those that are familiar with my work know that this will be yet another wonderful restroom paraphernalia opportunity:

If you are asking yourself why the aft section of the cabin floor that has the entrance and restroom is  separated, the answer is that the floor at that section angles upwards following the fuselage bottom, thus the bulkhead should be angled -relative to the floor- to remain in the true vertical relative to the trust line:

The aft section is added to the interior floor:

The kit provides a ceiling matching the restored plane at the Seattle Museum of Flight, but I am not sure I will be using it. If you do, be aware that the front will hit below the top of cockpit door, creating a misalignment that you would like to correct, separating that front ceiling section and elevating or angling it:

To complete the interior you will need to create a panel that goes between the two bulkheads, separating the restroom from the coat hanging closet. I also provided the aft bulkhead with further support for the floor:

And this is how it looks:

The two coat hanging bars were added to the closet. The toilet was fabricated. Leftover home-made seats are presented to the cabin to have a general idea of how things would look. This was the typical seating in the 80, 1-2 rows. To the sides of the cockpit you can see two corrugated panels to add to the interior, matching the corrugated metal outside:

Once the glue of this assembly sets, it will be time to present it to the fuselage for a dry-run, to evaluate how much sanding of the mating surfaces of the fuselage halves is needed to close properly.

Here is the spar, halves already glued. As I mentioned I may substitute it with an aluminium tube of square section, but it can be perfectly used, with the advantage that you can use normal styrene glue:

This is how it operates:

Now for the dry-run of the interior to evaluate potential gaps or too-tight spots:

At the stage the cabin door is excised. Some vac modelers prefer to do this (and also carve the windows) while the parts are still in the backing sheet, which is wise as then you have more rigidity, instead of the relative flimsiness of the vac parts once removed from their support; the drawback is that sometimes things do not align properly and you have to alter their position, thus I do this once the interior is constructed. Of course, going the other way around is a valid approach, modifying the interior as needed to fit the fuselage shell detail. Here fortunately we have a good match:

(Note: Lars Opland, friend, fellow modeler, and vac manufacturer at Khee-Kha Art Products, emphasizes that his approach (and he knows a thing or two Re. this) is never to cut any openings before sanding the mating surfaces of the parts, to preserve rigidity. This is wise advice indeed, but I have cut window and door openings many times without I believe compromising integrity, and completing dozens of models in that way with no unfavorable issues. His comment is absolutely valid, though, as it pertains to openings that are too large, compromise the rigidity of the part, or cross the separating line between part and backing sheet, for example with open noses, cockpit openings, cutouts for low and high wings and such).

Not over-sanding the fuselage halves paid off, the fit is very good as the dry runs closing the fuselage showed. If needed, though, the interior can be sanded down a bit to help the fit, but it's nice not having to do that. 

As you can see, there is a bit of a play here, sanding this or that or eventually adding a bit here and there to achieve a good fit as you go. Hopefully none or little of that would be needed, but trials and dry-runs are a must before you commit to detailing and painting and needless to say gluing, as the tolerances in general for vacs are a bit wider. With this kit in particular, so far so good:

The door and bathroom windows are carved. I may replace the section of the fuselage where the cabin windows are with a strip of clear plastic that is later masked as mentioned somewhere above:

Before you work on the seams of the engine gondolas, which may obliterate some of the surface detail, locate and drill the holes that let the vertical strut pass through. This strut passes through the gondola a bit to one side, and not through the centerline, besides, the strut itself is "kinked". Familiarize yourself with the area, and with the instructions and photos of the real thing. The holes' locations are engraved on the plastic, but may need some adjustment to let the injected plastic part pass without deviations. Work slowly and check repeatedly as you go:

Photos show that the tab was separated form the rudder:

Therefore it is excised, given a photo-etched control horn, and some anchoring wires:

As a general strategy, I try to deal with details as much as I can in advance, so they don't hinder the build later on:

The kit's instrument panel is dressed up, to some resemblance of the real thing:

The kit's seats, control columns and pedals are installed:

A basin and tap are added to the restroom:

Seats minus frames:

The seats are now ready (dry-run), with a few spares:

Painting of some components starts:

The passengers' reading lamps that are attached to the fuselage walls above the seats are fabricated:

Kit's mudguard on top, reality as per photos below, it ended in a curved shape, not cut straight :

I made a paper copy to the exact size of the decals to "practice" with them. If you are cutting out the windows as you would normally do, the side window decals are almost the right size needed, but seem to be 1mm shorter at one end for a perfect fit. The decals can be separated in two sections and this very small gap filled-in with a scrap, so not a complicated solution, but I am thinking of departing from the kit's decals (yet again...) and do a version of which I have only three photos, a very short-lived "Boeing Airliner" livery (reg NC229M) of a different paint scheme, so as to not present the same scheme usually seen and skirt the potential complexity of the kit decals. I still have to ascertain the colors, but they are most likely the ones used by Boeing everywhere at the time.

A few more parts are painted. The wood color base is applied to the fuselage bulkheads, closet, restroom and doors. Yes, the restroom was also covered in mahogany veneer too (not the floor, though). Oil paints will later be brushed on to create a more convincing wood effect. Keen modelers may notice that at this time I did not paint the fuselage sides and ceiling. The former because I still have to decide to go for the clear window strip, and the latter because I am not sure if I would use a section of it or not at all:

Or...maybe I will go for the Inman Bros Flying Circus joyride machine, in a different scheme of the red and green:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/50597902606

"Wood" treatment:

More work is done to the interior:

Fellow modeler Bill Glinski tipped me about a small inaccuracy Re. the stab, which should be moved a bit lower. The cutout to allow for the trim should be added too:

The fuselage aft cone has to be engraved on the right side, as it was missing there. The red arrow on the bottom half marks the position of the stab as molded, the blue one the correction:

Lower wing bottom halves are dissimilar in detail, which is correct according to the plans I have:

A half-cane of styrene is carved:

And the fairings for the landing lights cut from it:

Home-made lenses are added:

I am making a new prop for the center engine:

The restroom got furnished. The importance of the toilet roll was learned by many during the past 18 months:

Three "instruments" that were there to inform the passengers on the flight are added to the main cabin front bulkhead as per photos of the original:

Getting some of the bits ready, to save time later. Replacement props, and metal pin provided for the kit's tailwheel:

The way the locking of the lower wing is designed, the top halves insert into recesses in the fuselage sides, whilst the bottom halves span the gap and unite in the middle, forming the fuselage lower surface. After some dry-runs it was obvious that the fit wasn't perfect (I was also tipped about this by fellow modeler Bill Glinski), something better dealt with now, than later. I decided I will glue a bent styrene stick as a reinforcement spar and assemble the wing before mating it to the fuselage, and because of the above-mentioned fit issues I will remove part of the female matching volumes on the fuselage side moldings (you will later see what I will remove in photos). In this way the wing will be straight, more rigid, have the proper dihedral, and get a more adjusted fit:

The little molding edges need removal for the parts to fit:

Also a section of it on the upper wing:

A long session of dry-fitting everything ensues. In the upper wing, the central section is the one that rules the fit, as the small fairing curves are made to coincide. The external panel is the one that is carefully and gradually sanded, always checking the fit, until proper alignment of the top and bottom halves is achieved (more on that later):

The fit is correct now. But if you make the wingtip coincide, the aileron would be a bit shifted. In fact, the bottom length of the aileron is larger than the top, so there is no way to align everything. I have chosen to let the wingtip rule, and then fill and re-scribe the aileron edges as needed:

The seam between both panels should be reinforced either with alternating tabs on both sides or with a false thick rib, but whichever the case, clearance for the spar to go through is necessary:

I used for this dry-run the kit's spar, which is a good fit:

And here we have again minor fit issues. The not-so-precise nature of vacuformed parts means that some sanding/sawing (and perhaps reinforcement) would be needed. Again, this is better fixed as much as possible in advance. Work at a later stage will only introduce dust into the cabin, or knock things off, with the results we all know (and want to avoid):

As with the lower wing, I plan here to remove some of the volumes to be able to achieve a tight as possible fit:

As a little break, here is a page from the 1932 "Skycraft Book", by Laura Harney, portraying one Boeing 80A-1 in "Express Service":

 I decided to use only a section of the provided ceiling, spanning the main cabin. The area to be substituted on the fuselage sides for a clear part is already marked in pencil:

 Propping the fuselage shells on a wood block, the window section is excised. This is an approach that solves some problems (cut out and then reproduce each window in clear plastic, trying to achieve consistency), but creates others (the need to make a set of matching masks for inside and outside the clear part, and deal with the seams of the inserted section), so it shouldn't be adopted without consideration:

Very careful cutting in several light passes without deviation and using a sharp new blade is how it's done:

Priming and painting of the ancillaries continues:

The backs of the blades are masked, and the metal color applied. In turn, the metal color is masked to paint the white base at the blade tips, the first of the three colors that need to be applied there. The section of the ceiling that I will be using is painted: 

The clear strip is cut and measured to one fuselage side:

And then the other:

As explained, the individual windows will be masked (Arctic Decals has in production a set for these, exterior and interior):

Once again the typical modeler's genius manifests: I had in the past made trials to find adequate glues for the clear material I am using here (polycarbonate) since common plastic cement doesn't work with it, but forgot the results, so I had to repeat the tests. In this particular case acetone and the brand in the photo worked very well. I am shunning in this occasion from superglue, as I want a not too rigid bond and avoid potential fogging. If you are using this approach, test the kit-to-clear plastic bond in scraps, as effective glues vary depending on the types of plastics:

White applied and masked, and red airbrushed:

Red masked, blue applied:

Unmasking and ready to go:

 And of course the logo decals. So it's only five airbrushing session with masking in between, and one decaling session:

Metal control horns added to ruder and elevators:

The fixed and retractable landing lights are prepared. Photos show different arrangements and numbers of these on different planes, some on only one wing, some in the two, some only the retractable ones, etc., so, as usual, study photos:

A piece of scrap is glued from inside to avoid the lenses to fall in:

A little faired bump that goes on top of the water reservoir for the restroom is added. The kit provides it, but I made one. The cockpit area is removed, and the transparency is very slowly cut to fit, in increments and checking:

It looks it will be a good fit:

Some technical notes:

The relatively small compartment between the main cabin and the cockpit could be used for either a three-passenger row of seats or mail/cargo. If the latter, the compartment according to references was metal-lined, if the former, it followed the main cabin decor. In photos you can tell apart the mail/cargo airplanes as they show some thin metal bars through the windows, a tell-tale sign. Accounts also mention a side door that exited from this small area, to the right, on to the lower wing, on a walking section also skinned with metal. This door is clearly visible in photos but absent from the kit detail, and encompasses the fore window on the right fuselage. There is also a hatch to a cargo area to the left and below the cockpit, that one is marked on the kit. It is also mentioned that the double hatch above the cockpit was made of green pyralin, thus the modeler should tint it. Props are described as Hamilton Standard: nose two-blade 10' in diameter, and side three-blades 9'6". Windows were 18"x20". Main wheels 54", tailwheel 15". Three Hornet B series powered the last versions of the 80.

As I am adding a partial spar to the lower wing, clearance has to be provided for it on the area where the wing seats:

  The lower wing sections are glued together, as well as some of the upper wing parts, checking that the halves are straight at the leading/trailing edges, and not warped:

After assembling the wings, trials with those male-female interlocking shapes in the fuselage started. They are meant to help with alignment and strength, but the fit -about which I was warned by fellow modeler Bill as mentioned above- is not good. Some cutting, sanding, and shaving was gradually performed until a reasonable wing-to-fuselage fit was achieved on upper and lower wing, but it's not really a tight fit yet, and will need further tweaking once the fuselage is assembled. If I had to do this again, I would completely remove those molded shapes and re-engineer the area:

The auxiliary vertical surfaces are metal-pinned and their locations drilled:

At this stage, all the holes I can think of for the rigging and control cables on wings, tail, and fuselage, are drilled:

There was a handle for the passengers to grab while boarding, thus its anchoring holes are drilled. The elevator lower cable exit location is shown drilled too. Doing all the possible drilling at this stage means you will not have burrs later on clinging about in the cabin or cockpit or inside the windows, attracted by static:

The clear sections are glued to the fuselage sides, and reinforced from the inside with a thin styrene sill:

 I will be able to apply now the Arctic Decals window masks from the interior to be able to airbrush it:

 After a long hiatus, some work. The flying surfaces are primed to spot potential blemishes:

 The other sides of those surfaces is primed:

I hate with all the might of my soul software and complications, and opted not to deal with a plotter/cutter like Silhouette, so I use a simple Olfa circle cutter when I need circular masks that are not covered by commercial sets (that offer mostly much smaller circles):

 

To be continued....