Wings of Intent: Fairey Rotodyne, the Revell chapter

After no little struggle and temporary abandonment of the build in utter frustration, here finally is Revell's Fairey Rotodyne in 1/78th scale (aka the “why?” scale). It was built as a comparison exercise with Airfix’s Rotodyne:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2025/02/fairey-rotodyne-modified-airfix-172nd.html

…it is not a question of which one is better, but which one is less bad, and I don’t really have an answer to that, nor to why both companies insist on squeezing repeated releases of them without bothering to correct even the most glaring inaccuracies by improving the outdated molds. I know this would imply some cost, but to offer again and again such outdated, inaccurate, ill fitting kit is kind of a slap to the paying modeler, as this molds surely have been amortized long, long ago.

If you want to elevate your blood pressure -as mine did-, here is the step-by-step building post that is also a comparison of the Airfix and Revell Rotodyne kits, and presents some basic historical material:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2024/12/fairey-rotodyne-tell-of-two-kits-airfix.html

Yes, they are very old kits, sixty-some years old, so… is it unfair to criticize them? Well, not if, as stated above, both companies insist on re-releasing them without making improvements at all. Both these kits are mostly for collectors or nostalgics, not for builders with any aspiration of accuracy or a smooth ride. Revell and Airfix’s Rotodyne kits are true dinosaurs, and yet unfortunately they are the only game in town for such aircraft. Both contain such a number of inaccuracies that their listing would occupy a couple of pages.

Revell offers the benefit of recessed panel lines and rivets, while Airfix regales us with cheese grater-like rivets. Revell offers more interior detail (most of it bogus or infantile), and a better rotor, although with detail mostly overstated. Revell’s front transparencies are utter crap, Airfix’s kit is perhaps –only marginally- more buildable. Revell has cleverer clamshell doors, while Airfix’s are crude and coarse. Airfix has a marginally better cabin entrance door, while Revell’s is in turn coarse and clumsy. None of them depict correctly the door's details.

As explained in the construction article and the Airfix Rotodyne completed model post, both companies depicted the aircraft at different stages in its life, and both as mentioned introduced plenty of inaccuracies, some of which were dealt with during both builds. The bad fit, poor engineering, outdated detail, and again very poor research on part of the kit makers puts both efforts almost in the toy, curiosity, build for the heck of it, or collector categories. Revell got wrong -among other inaccuracy pearls- the whole front of the aircraft and its clear parts, the propeller blades rotating in the wrong direction, forgot the ailerons that at this stage the wing had, forgot the battens on the wings added at the point in time the kit is represented, did not include the light on the rotor pylon, got the shape of the tip jets wrong, and on top of that gives the wrong color distribution on the instructions. Why, Revell, well done! After sixty years plus, you think someone at Revell would have cared enough to make some kind of corrections, at the very least to the instructions.

So, here it is, such as it is, after working quite a bit only to gain some meager improvement, for your modeling voyeuristic pleasure. Bear in mind that the Rotodyne never flew with the whole allotment of passenger seats as depicted in the kit, but reputedly for a short time with only half of them at the back. And during most of its life it flew with a suite of additional instruments to collect data, and no pax seats whatsoever, so this is to some extent a “what if” interpretation. I opted to show the model as provided for in the kit, in the form of a “cut away” display, also keeping the cabin doors and cargo doors opened. Not that the detail is brilliant, but puts it more in line with those travel agency props I used to look through the window when I was a kid. This is, among my later builds, the one that demanded more time and effort, and yet it’s the poorest.

Nostalgia is the key word here.

Now, imagine a good 1/72^nd kit of the very futuristic, beautiful and strange aircraft the Rotodyne is, produced at the standard the industry has today and not this unappetizing, ill fitting, poorly detailed refried beans from more than sixty years ago. A kit with good fit, well researched, with a fair interior and options to leave accesses opened. The fact that Airfix’s and Revell’s very poor Rotodyne kits keep apparently selling should entice someone, perhaps?

I think we mature (polite term for “old sod”) modelers like to revisit old kits, and I have built many, all in this blog for your visual pleasure, but there are old kits and old kits. We may accept simplicity, a certain degree of naïveté, “movable” parts, etc. But these two kits are certainly a challenge -and not precisely for their complexity- even for the most nostalgic of modelers.

Among other modifications:

-Addition of battens under and over the wings, as corresponds to the livery offered (timeline)-

-Addition of ailerons, present at the time the kit is depicted

-Pylon light, wingtip nav. lights

-Modified door to reflect reality

-Structural members added to clamshell doors

-Re-shaping of tip jets, inaccurate in the kit

-Reversion of the rotation of the props, which rotate the wrong way in the kit

-Addition of nose probes

-Removal of bogus exhausts and addition of home-made ones

-Substitution of some LG doors, as the kit's were too thick

-Addition of what seems like fuel tank vent pipes over the wings clearly seen in photos