Clear Prop 1/72nd 3D-printed + photo-etched parts De Havilland Gipsy Six R engines

 

I bought a pair of these Clear Prop 3D-printed + photo-etched parts De Havilland Gipsy Six R engines after watching a video of its virtual assembly that the company put online. This aftermarket accessory is meant to complement Clear Prop’s release of an injected version of the famous De Havilland D.H.88 Comet, and thus tailored to it, but it could be adapted to other 1/72^nd DH88 on the market.

When my engines arrived I saw that the 3D-printing was of good quality and nice detail, and not marred by the layering often seen on those products. At the same time, I was puzzled because the parts didn’t really match the video. The parts and assembly were significantly differently, the number of parts on the video greater, the assembly process dissimilar to the product I bought. It looked like the video perhaps depicted a bigger 1/48 rendition. Looking at the P.E. fret that accompanies the parts I saw that there were parts you did not use, but were present in the video (part 1) and a spare for part 5 (ignition wires). It looks like the video depicts perhaps a first production approach that was later discarded and replaced by a much simplified product, or as said a bigger scale one? The tiny instructions are printed sharply, but the position of the parts is frustratingly vague, and the drawings minuscule. The “wires” are inaccurately depicted as to glue them as they come (straight), but in fact you are supposed to “bend” the leads that go to the spark plugs, an almost impossible task due to their size and flimsy nature. The attaching tabs of this P.E. wires are difficult to file away, as they are heftier than the parts they hold. I discarded the “wires” as they proved too much to deal with -and didn’t really look right compared to photos- and just used part 2 and the other, smaller 3D-part that depicts some ducting and accessories. The printing is of good quality, but care and patience is needed as usual with these products to remove the printing pips that profusely surround the parts. 

Unfortunately Clear Prop does not provide the engine mounts with this engine, but they are present in their DH88 kit sprues, which is a little cheeky, as you may want to use the engines in another kit (like the ones cited below), and you are deprived of the necessary mounts which you then must fabricate yourselves. Again, a little cheeky methinks.

As I often like to detail kits, this is a welcomed accessory for planes that used it, and besides the Clear Prop kit (which again is matched to these engines) two candidates that immediately sprung to mind were Dora’s Vega Gull and Heller’s Dragon Rapide:

These engines no doubt will look smart on them. Although the engine as mentioned is tailored to the Clear Prop Comet, perhaps it could be used with all the D.H.88 on the market (which now are plenty) like the ones released by SBS (great kit, but solid nacelles, so some chopping will be necessary):

 or the KP release (nacelles provided as two halves which may help if you want a partially covered engine):

 or even Frog or Airfix vintage editions (also providing two-part nacelles) -if you are willing to deal with these two really outdated kits:

Contents:

Dedicated modelers can surely add to this engine which I assembled in a straightforward way just to see how it went together:

I see photos of the Gipsy Six having various colors -which may benefit the visuals of this little engine- but I opted for the simplest of them all, black:

Now to look for a candidate to use it.