1:144 Aeroclub DeHavilland Dragon Rapide

[lufbramatt]

Finally made a start on this lovely little kit last night after having a good catch up with John Adams (owner of Aeroclub) at Telford last weekend. He sent it down to me last year after running out of the ktis at the 2012 SMW exhibition! I've also been inspired by the great dinky diecast restorations on here by Red Firecracker, and will be using some of the techniques he shows on his threads



It's a basic kit with just 10 injection moulded parts, a fret of etch brass and two white metal spinners. This is my first attempt at a short run kit, but so far it's going well.



My plan is to paint it up in the current scheme of silver with yellow bands that G-AIYR wears as I have flown on that 'plane with my dad from Duxford. John sent me down a few sheets of 2mm and 4mm lettering for the codes, and I've ordered a sheet of 1:144 RAF roundels to complete the scheme. Planning on rigging it too

Got the fuselage, engine nacelles and lower wing on last night, making sure to sand the mating surfaces flat first to minimise cleanup. More progress as it comes!



Sorry for the quality of the photos. I snapped at 6am this morning before I left for work on my phone!

Edited by lufbramatt on Thursday 14th November 08:38

[perdu]

Very good start Matt

(I tried to find you at SMW, no bugger seemed to know where you were!)

Rapides are amongst my favourites

[lufbramatt]

perdu said:

Very good start Matt

(I tried to find you at SMW, no bugger seemed to know where you were!)

Rapides are amongst my favourites

We were so busy all weekend, I think the only time I managed to get away from the stand was Sunday afternoon, when I was on the Aeroclub stand chatting to John! Had a very quick look round the competition but that was it really

The engines needed a bit of fettling to fit at the right angle, thankfully the engine panels on the 1:1 Rapides aren't a great fit either ;-)

[Eric Mc]

Looks nice a nice little kit. I bought the Skeeter from John at Aeroclub.


Thanks Matt too for the very informative talk you and the other members of the Airfix team gave on Saturday afternoon.

[Red Firecracker]

That's very kind of you, Matt. Looking forward to watching the build.

[lufbramatt]

Tailplane parts had no solid location so I drilled and pinned them with short lengths of fuse wire:



Got the upper wing on, filled the gaps and added the PE interplane struts. Had to drill out the location holes as just small dimples were provided on the kit parts. Same with the undercarriage struts. Next to each strut hole I drilled a 0.2mm hole to accept a length of 2lb fishing line to represent the rigging.

First attempt at rigging a model, very fiddly but very satisfying!





Again sorry about the pics, I dropped my compact digital camera in the science museum whilst taking pictures of the napier sabre they have, and replaced it with a DSLR that is useless for close up stuff!

Edited by lufbramatt on Monday 25th November 20:48

[Red Firecracker]

Put the camera into Aperture Priority mode and set something like F16 as the aperture.

[lufbramatt]

Red Firecracker said:

Put the camera into Aperture Priority mode and set something like F16 as the aperture.

the camera on my HTC doesn't have an aperture priority mode ;-)

I'll have a go with my proper camera, haven't really got a suitable lens- I think the minimum focus distance is longer than the width of my modelling room!

[magpie215]

Had a flight in one of these 1:1 scale though.....amazing experience.

[Red Firecracker]

lufbramatt said:

the camera on my HTC doesn't have an aperture priority mode ;-)

I'll have a go with my proper camera, haven't really got a suitable lens- I think the minimum focus distance is longer than the width of my modelling room!

Ah, sorry, wrong end of stick grabbed!

[lufbramatt]

OK had a play with decent camera. Got the "It's 10pm Matt, WTF are you doing?" . . ."err taking pictures of a tiny plane to show people on the internet" talk off my wife hehe

[perdu]

Tell her we said "Thanks"

Thanks for that

Looking good, 'specially the rigging wires


Have I got this right, you were only just taking pictures of a Sabre when you dropped the camera?

Didn't you see that bloody wonderful Airfix Sabre at Telford?

What on earth were you doing while we did?


He he, incidentally have you seen the Sabre at the museum at Arromanches?

Recovered from underground ISTR after the machine ploughed in...

Not sure if from a Tiffie or a Tempest, but an awfully sombre exhibit.

[lufbramatt]

I dropped the camera about a 18 months ago, taking pics for the Airfix Tiffie. ooops. Got pics of the rag wing hurri on the same trip. I spent most of my weekend at Telford talking to people about the big typhoon, lots of interest by people just wanting to make the engine and cockpit as a standalone model. Maybe some mileage in that as a kit.

Not seen the Sabre at Arromanches but I know what you mean. One of the most powerful exhibits for me is the remains of the Hurricane at Hendon next to the roll of honour. Sobering stuff.

[perdu]

Looking around at the usual suspect modelling fora ('ums'?) the Tiffie has become the most wanted Airfix model ever

So well done all on your team for that


Even I want one and I really do not have room for displaying it afterwards

Did you know that Birmingham Museums are said to have a fabric winged Hurri that used to be a metal winged one. The word was that the wings were swapped for the one now used by the BoBMF, not sure if there's any mileage in that story though. I also read that it was for the Science Museum "in that London" but I can't think of any reason to swap wings betwen museums

[Yertis]

perdu said:

Looking around at the usual suspect modelling fora ('ums'?) the Tiffie has become the most wanted Airfix model ever

So well done all on your team for that


Even I want one and I really do not have room for displaying it afterwards

Did you know that Birmingham Museums are said to have a fabric winged Hurri that used to be a metal winged one. The word was that the wings were swapped for the one now used by the BoBMF, not sure if there's any mileage in that story though. I also read that it was for the Science Museum "in that London" but I can't think of any reason to swap wings betwen museums

I just spotted the Pacific Coast 1/32 Tempest V kit in my local model shop. Will have to buy, to add to my growing collection of unstarted Typhoon and Tempest models.