Fairey Rotodyne, a tale of two kits: Airfix 1/72nd and Revell 1/78th

Sometimes we just can't have enough of a certain design we like. By default I don't like to build the same kit...unless I MUST. Several examples of this weakness are spread along the pages of this blog. Long ago I built Airfix's rendition of the Fairey Rotodyne, an old (1959) and pretty rough kit, so covered in prominent rivets of very hard plastic that it could be used as a block file for wood, plastic or plaster. The kit has those sort of puerile features considered "detail" in those times, like "operating" aft fuselage clamshell doors. The fit of course is rather horrible, the cabin is a barren void, and subtlety was still in the future of kit making. At the time I first built it, I had no references, and my modeling skills were in its first stages of development (and still are after decades). 

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2014/07/172-airfix-fairey-rotodyne.html

Wanting to scratch the Rotodyne itch, I bought again the Airfix kit, and the equally old and odd-scaled Revell kit, coming from a time where manufacturers gave a rat's ass about scale consistency. The Revell kit is similarly outdated presenting again the same issues, but offers the possibility of showing a very stiff, toy-like, and primitive interior, the way travel agency models were displayed (travel agencies, for you fledglings, were physical business where you acquired physical airplane tickets and could get help programming your traveling adventures, in the times where people still dressed like they cared to board a plane, and behaved like civilized passengers). The two kits were sleeping the sleep of the just in a crag of the closet, when fellow aviation enthusiast, fern-bandit and dedicated mathematician David the Uncontainably Tall manifested the unquenchable desire of having a replica of the discussed machine. Oh, the joy. Which kit should I use? Should I build one for him and the other for me? Should I kit-bash the two kits, for example grafting the Revell interior in the Airfix fuselage? Would the scale difference (damn you, Revell!) interfere or be noticeable? For what I can see in photos, seats are not installed in the Rotodyne, but a book I bought on it states that the aft half of the seats was at some in place. A few images show data equipment at the cabin front. Should I replicate that instead? The clamshell doors are so pathetically depicted and their fit is so despicable on both kits that it would perhaps be better to glue them shut? Oh, kit building philosophy! Ah, the disquisitions and reveries of the poetically-inclined modeler.

Another adventure begins, jumping into the time tunnel of model-making to 1959 and 1961...

Some notes:

-On repose, the rotor blades sagged significantly, a feature that needs replicating if the model is posed so.

-Associated with that state, the outer vertical fins must be angled out, as otherwise they would be hit (in real life) by the rotor if it somehow turns or starts to rotate.

-Photos show mainly two schemes, one with the Fairey logo and the word "Rotodyne" on the rotor pylon (plus Fairey logo on the forward fuselage) and the engine gondolas unpainted, and another with the whole "Fairey Rotodyne" legend on the pylon and the engine gondolas painted in the same color bands motif as the fuselage (no logo).

-A photo on the previously described scheme shows a third central vertical tail, an attempt at better aerodynamics.

-Photos of the frame unpainted show additional strut supports for the main LG and other tail mods.

To make the build easier I bought a set of masks (for the Airfix kit, the Revell kit has none offered) and a book on the subject. I also stocked 20,000 sheets of sandpaper and a 100-gallon drum of putty, knowing the kind of "vintage" kit I would have to deal with.

Airfix’s and Revell’s response (known in the manufacturing world as "JIT") to sink holes and flash was a technical achievement of simplicity: “Just Ignore Them!”

If flash would a currency, you would have been able to recover the kit’s cost with largess.

Surprisingly, the stupid-scale (1/78^th) Revell kit is much, much more detailed than the Airfix kit, and to a (coarse) degree more accurate. The number of parts on the Revell kit is outstanding, as it covers (unlike the Airfix kit) a fully detailed interior, structural detail, and “actionable” parts, plus pilots, porter, and passenger figures -all rather pathetic for today’s standards. It also allows, through alternate parts, to display the model in a sort of “travel agency” cutaway format. All in all, for the time, a terrific kit…nowadays it’s just sort of terrifying.

It looks a bit as it the Revell guys (who released their kit a year later than Airfix, in 1960 according to Scalemates) were saying “let’s show them”. And show them they did, in a way. Their rivets and panel lines are recessed, not in relief, their fins show the correct outwards angle to avoid the rotor blades at rest and at the beginning of starting and as winding down, and they even include a central fin that was at some point added

So, the REVELL kit:

Kit's parts galore:

Very clear transparencies, but notice that the nose, a single part on the Airfix kit, has here individual glass panes, surely with a perfect fit and easy to add...🙄

Full allotment of seats. The book I purchased 

 

states that only half of them were added in 1959 on the aft fuselage:

 

The zombie crew and pax:

Nice ejector pin marks:

Look, mom, the cockpit door comes half open!:

The joys of old kits wrongly packed or stored...

The cabin floor seemingly had a depression at its center through which liquids may run...🙄

But here we see the nicer surface of the stupid-scale Revell kit, with engraved panel lines and sunk rivets, instead of Airfix's cheese grater surface "detail":

Year of the kit's moldings 1961:

 

 

 To be continued...