Paul's South Coast Envoy **FINISHED**

[PaulBradley]

I'll be building the RS Models 1/72 Airspeed Envoy in the colours of Portsmouth, Southsea and Isle of Wight Aviation Ltd - or PSIOW from now on!






The blue on the front of the box is way too dark; that on the rear is what I'll be aiming for.

The parts:








A typical short-run IM kit, with resin and a small PE fret. Parts look pretty well detailed; the resin engines are very nice.






I'll be making a start later today.

[VickersVandal]

Very nice. I love that scheme.

[AndrewR]

That's going to look pretty spectacular. Great choice of scheme.

[PaulBradley]

Cheers, guys!

Some good progress yesterday and today.

Yesterday, I removed the large parts from the sprues and cleaned them all up - essential on limited run kits, as there's lots of moulding imperfections, ejection pin towers and flash around. Once that was done, some sanding to ensure mating surfaces matched properly, then I glued up the wings. The seams were cleaned up first thing this morning.

This afternoon, I concentrated on getting the fuselage together. The interior includes a full set of seven passenger seats and one pilot's seat, as well as three bulkheads and a variety of small PE parts for the cockpit. There's a nice PE IP with film backing. The floor is slightly too wide front and back and needed careful sanding to get it to fit. Not much will be seen of the cabin once the windows and roof are on, so I didn't spend too much time faffing around in there...

Here are the fuselage and wings completed:





I need to paint the control column.... And goodness knows how those front two passengers got to their seats!

I'll clean up the fuselage seams tonight, and play around with the fit of the wings to the fuselage - I might add glue if all seems fine.

I am aiming to get the airframe complete this weekend. I can prime it as well, but I am out of blue paint of any kind, so I'm ordering a pot of Tamiya X14 Mid Blue, which is (apparently) a good match for the Sky Blue decals.

[VickersVandal]

Looking good. Quick work!

goodness knows how those front two passengers got to their seats!

The good climbers are seated up front?

It's similar with the Ju 52. Not a lot of room to move around in there...

[TobyC]

Nice work so far. It's good that a lot of people have gone for the lesser known airliners.

[PaulBradley]

Thanks, guys. That might be as good as it gets......

Unfortunately, RS - in their infinite wisdom - decided to mould the cabin windows as strips, with a roof to enclose all. This would always be problematic - think Airfix Anson - but with a limited run kit, it means ill-fitting parts and seams galore. Which is exactly as it turned out. Because the floor was slightly too wide, it bowed out the fuselage sides slightly, meaning there was a gap along each lower window strip edge. While I could slightly bend each window strip to shape, I didn't want to force them too far to avoid cracking. The roof part was also a dodgy fit, and as the Envoy was fabric-covered, matching the angles of the fabric (think Hurricane) was never going to fly. All this meant much sanding and loss of detail. I addition, the fuselage bulkheads were slightly too big, so those needed to be sanded back on the fly to ensure good fit.

Throughout the sanding process, I could hear cracking and creaking - think submarine movie when the captain takes the boat to maximum depth - and, sure enough, some of the window strip has cracked.

Getting the wings to fit the fuselage was an exercise in patience, but that wasn't too bad - fit was fairly reasonable there. However, I am not at all happy with the results of the morning's work.





Frankly, it would have been far better for RS to mould complete fuselage halves with separate windows. Those are easy enough to sand back, as the wing light covers were on this kit.

[SJPONeill]

Good recover on a dodgy design, Paul...I suspect that the design would be to enable a SAAF version with the dorsal turret...probably seemed like a good idea at the time...

[PaulBradley]

That's an issue when accountants get involved - trying to get too much out of the moulds.....

[PaulBradley]

Yesterday was spent cleaning up seams, and getting the engine nacelles on. Because RS released three different version of the basic kit, there are different parts for each type of engine and nacelle. For some reason, the uppers are in resin, while the lowers are in plastic. The fit is ....OK...... but there are gaps to deal with, and I compounded the problem by mistakenly cutting too much off the front of the resin parts. So t now looks like the a/c has a pronounced underbite.....:



I'll need to add back a disc of plastic card to each nacelle front to correct that, then carve back the plastic parts to match with the resin parts.....

Today was spent getting the parts polished up for a coat of primer. I also spent about 45 minutes masking the canopy..... The airbrushing went just fine, thankfully, but did highlight the seamwork around the window strips that needs touching up:





I need to let the filler set overnight before I work on eliminating those seams. Next up will be the undercarriage, then a coat of aluminium.

It is a very pretty little aircraft, I have to say - I was admiring it's lines just now while I was on the phone. It has a dainty little pixie nose and lithesome curves.....

[DavidWomby]

....... It has a dainty little pixie nose and lithesome curves.....

You need more bromide in your tea, Paul.

Nice work. I am not sure they chose the best approach for the cabin windows. Did they ever actually release a turreted version of this kit?

David

[Purplethistle]

....... It has a dainty little pixie nose and lithesome curves.....

You need more bromide in your tea, Paul.

Nice work. I am not sure they chose the best approach for the cabin windows. Did they ever actually release a turreted version of this kit?

David

Freudian Slipstream?

[PaulBradley]

Freudian Slipstream Great name for a band!

[Purplethistle]

Freudian Slipstream Great name for a band!

Available now from K-Tel,

Freudian Slipstreams Greatest Hits

including -

Jung girl

He's not heavy, he's my Breuer

Kant get you outta my mind

....and many, many more

(This record is not available in the shops...or on the NHS)

[AndrewR]

Cover version of "Paranoid" naturally.