If you were in
the Air Training Corps (a junior branch of the RAF, where kids between 11 and 18
get to fly, fire rifles, make models and, err… “square-bash”) between 1960
and 1995, the chances are you got your first hands-on experience at the controls
of an aircraft in a Chipmunk like this one. Basic, but a joy to fly, you could
almost imagine yourself in a WW2 fighter as you strapped the little beast on and
tooled off into the wild blue yonder - with some guy up front doing the hard
work, but it felt good all the same...
I decided to
recapture my teens in styrene - I had about 6 hours on a Chipmunk (we got to fly
a LOT) from 4 Air Experience Flight, based in Exeter.
The Chipmunk
was originally designed by de Havilland Canada, and first few in 1946. Intended
as a successor to the irreplaceable Tiger Moth, the Chipmunk proved to be a
vice-less trainer, and 735 were built for the RAF. From 1953, Chipmunks equipped
University Air Squadrons, Reserve Flying Schools and Air Experience Flights all
over the country, giving hundreds of young men and women their first taste of
piloting. The Chipmunk served the RAF for over 40 years, and is still flying
widely in private hands.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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The
Aeroclub kit is based on the masters of their earlier vac-form but is now
offered in toffee-coloured injection plastic. You get a relatively small number
of plastic parts (fuselage halves, wing top and bottom, tailplane, rudder,
extreme nose, seats) and equally few white-metal ones (prop, wheels,
undercarriage legs, instrument panels, control columns, tailwheel). You also get
2 (NB: I didn't realise there were two, one snug inside the other) vacform
canopies.
The
plastic is soft and easy to carve or sand to shape: this is good, you'll be
needing to do a fair bit of it!
The
upper and lower wings make a complete unit, including the cockpit floor, which
slot into cut outs in the bottom of the fuselage halves. There's a lot of
carving, sanding down trailing edges and test-fitting to do to get the wing
halves together, particularly around the gull-wing at the back. There are some
serious lumps that get in the way (a short-run thing, I suspect) of fitting them
close, and the back edge of the top half is a lot thicker than the flaps and
ailerons moulded on the bottom half. Scrape and sand away.
The
cockpit is basic: just seats, sticks and panels. The seats are actually quite
accurate: the real things are plain buckets with a cushion. The sticks are also
fine. The instrument panels are white-metal semi-circles with raised blobs for
the instruments. I found a nice black and white diagram of the real thing on the
web, scaled it down to the right size, and mounted it behind a thin piece of
plastic card with holes drilled in place for the dials. A drop of clear varnish
in each hole gave the "glass" effect.
I
used Eduard seat-belts from their pre-painted "Late WW2" set to busy
up the cockpit, and made a couple of handles from wire for the flap levers. I
also added two compasses and rudder pedals. All this, bar the instrument panel,
mounts on the floor in the upper wing.
Getting
the wing into the fuselage is NO FUN. The floor is still sized for a vacform,
with thin plastic card walls; the injection fuselage halves must be 3mm thick.
Hence, you have to carve away the sides of the floor until the fuselage will
close around it.
Serious
filler is needed in front and behind the wing, and at the root.
The
white metal prop and undercarriage legs are good shapes, but need cleaning up a
lot, and are then superglued into the suggestions of holes.
I
opened up the hole under the prop, through which you can see bits of engine; as
supplied, it's a rectangular dent with some dubious engraved lines at the
bottom.
The
tailplane fits reasonably, but not brilliantly; again, filler underneath, this
time smoothed with a cotton bud with acetone on the end. The rudder fits very
well, and I turned mine a bit for animation’s sake.
Wheels
need cleaning up, again, but the hub detail is nice.
The
canopy is harder. At first glace, it looks all wrong - too high, to "sit up
and beg". I was always going to have it open, so I separated the
windscreen, and re-cut the bottom so that it sloped a bit more. The engraved
windows in the roof of the main canopy are the wrong shape, size and position:
the real ones are much shorter, wider, and asymmetrically cut out for the canopy
release levers. The engraving on the rear window is also in the wrong place: the
top line should be horizontal, not vertical. I made templates from the
(accurate) drawings in the kit, and masked the canopy as it should be (and
massaged the top so it was flatter and broader). I added the prominent red
release handles on the port side from stretched sprue
There
are four colour schemes in the kit: 2 RAF, one RN and one Danish. They are
silver with dayglo, silver with red, and the classic red, white, and black from
3 AEF, which is the one I built. The decals are very good, and go down well.
Don't use harsh decal softeners, though!
Overall,
a neat little kit (and the only game in town in this scale), but you do need to
give it some TLC, and be prepared to scratch build some details.
Matt
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