Breguet 693 - Azur 1/72

[Brickie]

Picked this one up cheap at Huddersfield - a nice kit of an unusual subject:


Nice art on a sturdy top-opening box.


Some photo-etch bits. The parts labelled as "3" are fins for the bombs, but since they'll be all but invisible once the kit is built, I'm inclined to leave them for another project.


Resin engines and rear-facing MG. They're staying in the bag until needed.


Made a start on the interior.

[Zee28]

Interesting subject and a nice looking kit, I'll follow this build.

With the exception of the twin tail fins, it has shades of Mitsubishi Dinah about the shape.

Interesting stuff!

Zee

[PaulBradley]

This should be fun. I've always liked this a/c - I have the FM 1/48 kit somewhere. Reminds me of a tadpole with twin tails.

[Brickie]

It's also interesting to speculate what might have been if they'd been available in numbers in 1940...

[Dazzled]

Looking forward to watching this develop Brickie. I have quite a soft spot for kits from this stable of manufacturers

[bigfiver69]

I've got the Azur Maryland, and I'm hoping to get to it this year. Tricky kits, but with some patience they build up nicely!

[Brickie]

So far so good. One thing I'm finding with this kit is that almost all the joints are butt-joints, or possibly have a single shallow locator pin. This meant I needed to re-seat the tail fins, and lots of filler...



Still, everything's more-or-less where it's supposed to go and I've given it a spray of Halford's car primer.



Next problem is the resin engines:



As you can see, they're mounted on a circular backplate, which I need to remove. Razor saw? Copious sanding? Any ideas?

[Brickie]

Colour-wise, I seem to recall there being some discussion a while back about a manufacturer who does special colour ranges for particular nationalities; I'd normally make do but I have a few French WW2 aircraft in the queue, so...

[AndrewR]

Lifecolor do a set for French WW2 aircraft.

https://airbrushes.com/advanced_search_ ... c_subcat=1;

On the engines - do you need to remove the backplate at all, or does it stop the engine fitting in the cowling?

Cheers

Andrew

[Brickie]

Lifecolor do a set for French WW2 aircraft.

https://airbrushes.com/advanced_search_ ... c_subcat=1;

That's the fella. Can you brush with them, do you know?

Failing that, the one I'm most puzzled about is the underside colour, described as Gris-bleu clair. The name and most of the pictures I've seen suggest a slightly bluish pale grey, but the colour callouts and FS references suggest a simple light blue such as Tamiya Light Blue or Humbrol Aircraft Blue.

Anyone know?

On the engines - do you need to remove the backplate at all, or does it stop the engine fitting in the cowling?

You at least need to cut it back to the circumference of the cylinders - I'll try that.

[AndrewR]

There's a good discussion here about the gris-bleu clair colour, with a few builds.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/149674/t ... nch+colour;

[Dirkpitt289]

That sure is an unusual aircraft. Very cool.

[Brickie]

Engine update: I nibbled away the extra width and found it still didn't actually fit in the cowling.



So after much filing and fitting and more whittling, I've finally got it to fit widthways. Depth wasn't an issue as - although the instructions show you fitting the engine to the wing stub, then adding the cowlings round it - the engine had to be a lot further forward in the cowling to allow the prop to be added.

Before and after shot:

[Chris]

Yet another reason why I hate resin parts.

[PaulBradley]

I imagine the cowling parts are rather thick, it being a short run effort. That's a heck of a lot of resin to have to remove....