Northop Alpha - Dekno 1/72nd resin

 

(Photos from the San Diego Air and Space Museum flickr photostream. Notice in the second one the unfortunately too common misspellings: "Northrup")

Thrice praised be Styrene, the Modeling Muse, for inspiring Dekno to produce such a line of Golden Age civil iconic planes. I have built a couple of them and posted them in this blog (the Laird Super Solution and the B.A. Eagle II) and have at this moment in progress their Boeing Monomail. Friend David and his gaseous dog Toby just sent this Northrop Alpha, another interesting Dekno product, that -as it is closely related to the Monomail- I immediately started. The boxing I have is for the military VIP transport plane, but I will convert it to a Transcontinental Western Air machine (NC947V or similar) using the fantastic after market set from Arctic Decals:

https://www.arcticdecals.com/products.html?id=21443/885466

Dekno also produces civil versions, including the one with wheel pants.  

Now Dekno kits are not cheap, and require at least a moderately experienced modeler, and a bit of work to render a fair model, but they offer very appealing subjects that are not to be found elsewhere. So be prepared for some serious modeling, but if you persist you will be rewarded with a beautiful replica.

This Dekno kit can be taken even further: Khee-Kha Art Products of Alaska produces (among many other wonderful things) gorgeous EDO XA-5400 that can be used to represent that version (NR11Y, used by Frederick B. Lee in an around-the-world flight attempt). I have acquired a couple sets (as they also apply to other planes) and will be posting them here when they arrive:

https://www.opland-freeman.com/khee-kha/extras.htm 

(Photo SDASM photostream)
 

 

The kit:

Contents well protected in separated plastic sleeves and packed in a very sturdy box:

Out they are:

The kit provides two vacuum-formed windshields (thanks for that, Dekno!). The resin clear parts are a bit yellow, but that is less noticeable in the smaller, thinner windows. In my sample, though, only six windows arrived, where eight are needed:

Seats with belts molded. The seat arrangement was a bit different...

...as it can be seem here. One single horizontal seat and three backs, one of them foldable to allow cockpit access (again photos from the SDASM photostream):

Interior frame detail:

I will be replacing the kit wing landing lights (which are opaque and have yellowed) with the home-made items seen below:

The Venturi is a bit exaggerated in shape, and will be replaced with an aftermarket item:

The "grooves" around the horizontal tail root were actually details in relief, as they were leather straps designed to allow the stab to change angle of incidence as the wrapping sheet fairing "slid" on them:

Watch out for these guys, the landing reinforcing struts, as they need to be removed very carefully from their casting blocks without breaking the very fragile bit at their ends (that later will lock into the wheel hubs):

The panel lines all over the kit are tad pronounced, but in some places they may actually need re-scribing:

The wheels could have benefited from a more accentuated definition and a better shape between tire and hub/cap, they are a bit too flat:

Dekno provides a beautiful door can be posed open to show the interior, nice detail!:

The engine is above average in detail:

The cowl was marred during its fabrication, and has depressions and wobbly areas that will need correcting:

Those are diagonal ridges with a noticeable step that again will need fixing:

All parts separated from their casting blocks, washed and let to dry (do not lose the smaller bits!). At this stage check the leading edges of all flying surfaces as they need a cursory sanding to eliminate a few blemishes:

The surface needs checking for imperfections, and -after a coat of primer- you can tell that some work will be necessary to re-do a few panel lines:

(Dry-run) Some of these cottage industry kits have issues aligning detail, like panel lines. Here you can see that some do and some don't. I have chosen to align the detail at the fuselage top which produces issues under it. Again, some work will be needed to correct all this:

The windows as molded lack transparency. They may be polished and bathed in floor polish to improve that. As they are slightly curved, it won't be easy to just replace them with clear acrylic or similar:

As I started to read the reference material and look at the photos I have on the subject, two other candidates immediately caught my attention: one has beautiful and elongated wheel pants, as let's say a Lockheed Sirius would have, and the other is the very spiffy NS-1 (Department of Commerce) in a striking color scheme. Should I get another kit? Hum..

NS-1:

Smarty pants (the ONLY photo I could get of it):

Western NC947Y is seen with both, full windows (and even curtains) or with the first two on both sides blocked and carrying mail. Just in case I may go for the latter, a dividing bulkhead is made. NC942Y, NC999Y, NC933Y, NC961Y are seen in photos on the latter configuration:

It is of note that several details have to be modified or added, depending on the registration represented. Some have "cone-faired" landing lights, some very large antennas on the wingtips, some small red "passing lights" on the left wing, besides different Venturi, Pitot and small nav. lights.

From the Gallica repository, L'Aéronautique:

Flight magazine:

Les Ailes:

L'Aéronautique

Aviation Week:

Clarity is restored to the resin clear parts to some degree, by carefully sanding them with the tip of a finger on a very fine and somewhat soft sanding stick on both sides, and then bathing them in acrylic floor polish. More clarity absolutely (compare with previous photos of them), but the yellow tinge is still there. Still, two were missing on arrival:

The seat is modified to resemble the photos. No seat belts are present in those. Rudder pedals are made:

The kit's joystick broke on extraction, so a replacement was made:

The tailwheel is metal-pinned to provide a more secure anchoring, and a fire extinguisher is made as per photos of the original:

Various parts are airbrushed with their base colors:

The deformed cowl. The bumps are better seen here after a coat of primer. This fellow shouldn't have escaped quality control:

And more:

Perhaps some putty, sanding and re-scribing will save this part, this will depend on the thickness of the material. But I wish I rather didn't have to deal with it. The unavoidable stigma of 3D-printing in the form of those pesky ridges is quite visible.

Poirot once worked on a strange case: "The Propeller That Flew Back and Forth at the Same Time", replicated in this case in the kit. As you can see, the prop is symmetrical, that is, is resembles a plane with its wings viewed from the front, where both blades "pitch up". Sigh...You could try to rectify that by repositioning one of the blades...

...or using an accurate propeller from your spares bin. This is how a prop should look (below), you see the front of one blade and the back of the other blade, not two fronts as above:

The cowl was a good recovery after sanding the putty and re-priming:

The seat gets a bit more of color variety:

The engine is dry-brushed, and a new, correct prop is added:

The instrument panel is dressed up with some aftermarket decals:

The wheel caps, previously painted aluminium, are masked to paint the tires. The seat is painted and the molded-in seat belt is given aftermarket fasteners:

The interior is making progress. A little fire extinguisher was fabricated:

The fore windows are blocked as per photos of the original using pre-curved styrene sheet then cut to measure and individually shaped. As mentioned, photos exists of these Western planes with full windows or as treated here. The final decision was forced in a way by the short number of windows provided in my sample. If you have the same problem, but want the full windows version, you may find a clear plastic that doesn't craze while bending, and try to make the windows from it:

As in my sample a huge gap run in the middle of the cockpit floor, a piece of styrene was glued to span it:

The conduit that runs on the spine of the fuselage floor will be removed as it is a bit uneven, and replaced by a length of styrene stick, also eliminating the need to add at the front that weird and potentially difficult to blend-in little small part provided for that purpose in the kit. Notice that, as mentioned before, if you make a vertical panel line coincide, the others don't. This will need some puttying, sanding and re-scribing later:

And guess what? the perfectly finished instrument panel is too big for the already painted interior, necessitating a nice shaving. Yet another way to mar a just completed interior. What is with this issue? Do most manufacturers actually build their models (other than in a virtual way on a computer screen, which as we know has very little to do with reality)? Sigh...

The windows are fitted, each one individually adjusted:

The interior is completed. A more elegant solution would have been to provide the interior as a slide-on separate sub-assembly. After some touch-ups the fuselage halves can now (we hope) be glued together:

Given that the fuselage halves are far from being a happy match, 5-minute epoxy will be used to glue them, allowing for adjusting, prodding and coercing. Dekno is sitting on a gold mine of Golden Age subjects, and there is a commendable will to provide them to very eager modelers, but more refinement is needed at the production stage to render a more amicable product, and, above all, a competitive one, as for a somewhat similar price you can access state-of-the-art resin kits. Fit, resin clear parts (vacs are ok), decals and in part the engineering need improving. As Dekno has been continuously evolving, we hope that upcoming releases will be more polished in the departments cited above.

Had to go medieval on the fuselage. Even so, and as explained above, if you make some section coincide, others won't. Of particular concern in my sample is that the aft fuselage from the fin to the tail cone would not coincide no matter what, thus ended up with displaced stab roots (viewing the model from behind, one root is above and the other below the fuselage centerline. This will require some sanding to reshape the area, restore the stab roots with perhaps some styrene sheet fashioned as a thick airfoil, and filling of the inaccurate groves surrounding the stab roots that -as explained above- were actually strips of leather applied over the fuselage:

Clamps off (for a moment I thought I had to impose the Comfy Chair on the fuselage, but it confessed!). Here the removed conduit is replaced by a section of styrene stick (dry-run):

Now  it's putty and sanding stick:

It was chosen to make things align on the fuselage top, but you can see how it went below. Work will be needed to fix things here:

Little chunks need removal, or the wing won't fit or align properly:

After much sanding, scraping and several trial and error runs, the wing now fits, but the karmans will need to be extended to match the wing trailing edges. Besides catering to the civil audience, Dekno kits provide plenty of exercise and learning opportunities:

The wing is on, as well as the conduit that runs on top of the fuselage. The labor of filling the gaps and dealing with the blemishes and misaligned panel lines has started:

 In fact, this part of the build could be entitled (and our British visitors may be in the know):

The horizontal tail is metal-pinned to better secure it:

Headrests are carved to chose the best. More blemishes are puttied:

Some of the Western planes had conical fairings for the wing landing lights, so they are fashioned, just in case one of those is chosen:

The horizontal tail is now glued:

With a bit more of work, the model should be ready for the first coat of primer:

Dekno kindly -and wisely- provides two vac windshields. One is being trimmed:

A coat of primer, and some color on the headrests and tires. You can see the rudder in the background, as it detached while starting to paint. It has an extension (the white bit at one end) as it was short. It's also thicker than the fin (which is too thin, by the way), and needs to be matched with it sanding it down. The rest went quite OK:

A gloss black base is airbrushed in preparation for the metal paint:

Metal color applied. As the kit's surface is not really completely smooth and the panel lines are not the cleanest, in spite of the partially-remediating primer and paint coats, a perfect finish is not in the cards:

One by one the details are added: tailwheel, navigation lights, "passing" light, Pitot, engine, headrest, cockpit coaming, the two antenna masts on the wig tips, the hole for the antenna lead behind the headrest fairing, etc.:

The landing gear legs, as explained somewhere above, have very fragile "neck" sections at the end of the reinforcing struts and the "triangles". The little heads of those are supposed to go into recesses on the wheel hubs, but of course they don't fit, so those recesses have to be made bigger with the tip of a blade. If you try to force the ends of those two parts into the hub, you will brake them, as they are attached just by a minuscule bit of resin:

The suspense continues...

The wheels and LG struts are on, so are the cowl, engine front shield, exhaust tubes, Venturi, and two retractable steps:

Waiting now for the aftermarket decal sheet and masks, finish the windshield and add the antenna wires.

A more careful study of photos revealed that the Pitot and the antenna masts were painted in color, most likely red to make them conspicuous:

The excellent set of decals and masks arrived from Arctic Decals:

Decals applied, and the antenna wires and cabin door are added. In the background the masked windshield waiting for the paint. Prop will be added when the model is completed.

Model ready. When possible I will post the completed model article: