I bought it as a Christmas treat for myself in December 2014. I paid the asking price on EBay, making it the most expensive kit I have ever (and will ever) buy.
It’s big. The box is over 2 ft. long, i.e. too big to smuggle into the house without questions being asked. The box needs to be over 2 ft. long because the wing span of the upper wing is 22 inches long and it comes as one piece – well, two really, i.e., a top and bottom. Cutting the pieces out is a major operation. But then, everything to do with this model is a major operation.
The kit has a separate shell that makes the interior. This is so that curtains can be shown inside.
The fuselage is not much short of the wing span. There are a lot of windows to cut out. There is no separate canopy for the flight deck so the windows there have to be cut out as well.
There is a detailed interior with seats and compartments. The seats on the aircraft had arm rests so I added them from scrap. They were painted in a rich floral pattern so I dabbed away with red, green and other floral colours. I did all this, knowing that almost nothing would be seen inside once the fuselage was closed up. I did not add luggage racks. I was not even tempted.
A flight deck had to be scratch built. This is a bit crude but as with other interior detail. None of this will be visible.
These are the tail fins and rudders, clamped and setting. Everything seems to come in multiples on thie aircraft.
The tail assembly is fairly straightforward.
These are the engine nacelles being sanded down.
The upper wing has quite a span. There are some leading edge slats that were usually open when the aircraft was on the ground, so I cut and opened them. The top wing curves around at the leading edge, wrapping completely underneath. The lower part of the wing joins underneath.
This shows the fuselage glued together with the lower wings loosely attached. By this stage, all the windows are in place, each individually cut to fit.
I hand painted the fuselage using Humbrol AquaColor silver. The wings were sprayed in aluminium from the Humbrol can. The fabric areas were doped linen so they need to look different. The wings are still only loosely attached. Blending them onto the corrugated fuselage was tricky, but they got there in the end.
The sheer immensity of the thing created all sorts of problems when picking it up. Fitting the struts was the most difficult part of the operation. There are 24 of them for the main wing. Each has to be cut to sized from Contrail strut material, then fitted at angles of about 45 degrees. The strut material in the kit is too wide so I sanded it down a bit - but probably not enough to make it really accurate. Don’t imagine for one minute that I managed to do this without problems.
At first, I found that I had attached the lolwer wing in a way that made the dihedral of the outer parts of the lower wing too shallow. I was able to bend them to the correct angle then support them with brass rods. I found it easiest to begin by attaching the struts between the upper and lower engines. For a time, that left the upper wing supported by only four very wobbly struts. Any sudden movement and the whole thing would have come apart. I worked my way outwards until all the struts were in place. I always pre-cut holes in the wings to help make this operation easier.
Then I noticed that the undercarriage legs were at the wrong angle so they had to come off. In the end, I discarded the kit’s pieces and scratch built some new ones. If only I had learnt how to make a jig, but I never have.
And here it is, finished. The engines and props are cast metal. They need a lot of cleaning up. I used some bendy wire for the exhausts. They are not quite right so I am thinking of replacing them when I can find something more suitable. The aircraft had almost no rigging wires. I used florists’ wire for the few bits there were, mostly on the tail.
I gave it some exhaust staining on the wings.
I worried about the decals because of their age, but then slid on beautifully with no rips. They even went on well over the corrugated areas of the fuselage.
What a night that was!
P.S. Ok. so I lied about building it overnight. I have been working on it for about three weeks.
