1/72 Contrail Handley Page HP42

by Stuart Quinn-Harvie

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Contrail are long out of business now, but in their day were second only to Rareplanes in the UK as manufacturers of great subjects in Vac-Form. Some of their kits have been re released by Aircraft in Miniature, and Sanger, who between them seem to have most of Contrail's moulds.

This is a very impressive kit, a huge box, packed with Vac formed parts, as well as a lovely decal sheet, a large instruction sheet, a bag of injection moulded parts and a huge sheet of detail photographs of the prototype.

The decal sheet gives you a choice of aircraft - any of the HP42s that saw service with Imperial Airways as airliners, and a couple in RAF camouflage which were transferred from Imperial to military duties.

The instructions are a mixed bunch: the sheet of detail photographs was very welcome, being as they were, both large and well reproduced. The main instructions were printed on good quality paper on an A2 sheet, with a set of 1/72 scale 3 view drawings. Initially, I was pleased with the drawings, but several times I was to find that the parts were so different from the drawings that it was impossible to use them for reference without re-shaping most of the kit parts. As it is, I decided to use drawings from the internet for scale reference and take all measurements for structure from the kit parts.

Speaking of which, the vac formed parts are another variable lot, veering from superb (the upper wing) to "oh dear" (fuselage halves).

To be fair, the HP 42’s corrugated forward fuselage must have been a nightmare to accurately mould in this medium, and quite clearly, hundreds of the breather holes necessary in vac forming were needed to get the plastic to sit in the moulds properly. Unfortunately, the sheer number of the resulting "pips" as well as their location means that it was impossible to remove all of them and stay sane.

The Injection moulded parts: engines, propellers, wheels etc are really very basic, and indeed crudely moulded in very brittle plastic. I would have preferred better raw material to work with, but the owner of the model wanted it built straight from the box.. That said, with work, they look okay and do the job.

A sheet of clear plastic is supplied for cabin and fight deck glazing, but I elected to use Humbrol Clearfix instead, particularly as the cabin windows were all moulded slightly differently: unsurprising given that the kit is 30 years old and the masters would all have been made by hand. Using Clearfix meant that I would not have to tailor each window exactly to its’ aperture.

The kit really is a product of its’ time, and was a much more challenging than I anticipated, with a rather unique approach to the interior, and some odd discrepancies as regards the drawings when compared to the kit parts.

Construction starts, not unusually, with the interior. However, this is where similarities with other kits end: firstly, there is almost no interior detail provided for the flight deck, which is a shame considering the highly visible nature of this area behind the very large glazed area. Secondly, a complex sub structure is provided for the cabin area, with different layouts for the two different operating divisions - East or West.

I fabricated a basic but more than adequate cockpit from the contents of my spares box and some plasticard, with steering columns made from fine wire. The instrument panel was the only detail provided for this area in the kit.

The Cabin was supposed to be made up from two clamshell halves, incorporating the curtains for the windows, and a series of walls and seats, which would then be inserted into the fuselage before closing it off.

Nope.

Didn’t fit at all well, and I was worried about the possibility of the whole lot coming loose one day and turning the model into an elaborate marraca.

So, the walls of the cabin were separated and secured to the inside of the fuselage, and the rest of the detail added in the normal way.

Here’s when I found my next..er..Challenge. The seats were so poorly moulded that the suggestion of filling them with car filler was out of the question - they would simply have melted, so after narrowing down the seats that were useable, I filled them with Milliput and hoped for the best.

Thankfully, the seats I had were fine, but I was some seats short of a cabinful (some would say that’s what I am most of the time) Still, the seats, walls and kitchen area were all painted up, and, quite frankly, you can’t see them anyway. Still, I know they’re there. (Most of the seats, anyway)

All of this work done, it was time to close the fuselage, and here I was most impressed: the fit of a lot of Vac Forms leaves much to be desired: it’s not uncommon for left and right handed parts to be slightly different in size, but there were no problems here. There are 3 bulkheads, and all helped in keeping the, frankly huge parts together.

The wings came next, and were actually pretty standard for a large vac form in that the top wing needed to be strengthened. I used a balsa wood spar in 3 pieces, cut to maintain the correct dihedral, and four large balsa hard points to maintain rigidity near the struts.

The lower wings were less of a delight, with the port wing being slightly longer than the starboard. Still, easily fixed, it just reminded me to keep checking everything as I went.

A second balsa spar, with the correct anhedral for the lower wing roots was made and inserted into square holes cut into the fuselage walls, and the wings slipped over them and secured with Cyano and a good helping of Miliput to close the join.

This left the tail and detailing to be put together, and apart from the fact that the tail surfaces were moulded in stock that was really far too thick for the job, necessitating a Herculean effort of sanding back, this was all pretty straightforward.

Until you try and secure the tail unit to the fuselage. In Contrail’s defence, I must point out that they do admit moulding the wrong camber onto the tail seat, and it’s a really simple job to stick some more Milliput in the hole.

Getting the top wing on was going to be interesting, so I had some tea. Then some more tea. And some cake. Finally, I decided to make two balsa jigs for the outboard struts to hold them at the correct angle while the glue (a mixture of Cyano and baking soda - very strong but it left a small fillet at the base of each strut. I considered this a fair compromise for getting a good secure joint and finishing the model before judgement day) cured. When the struts were cured, the upper wing was glued into place using the same concoction. This left the top wing, secured by the four outboard struts, resulting in my being able to cut the remaining struts to length and being able to glue them at both ends to each wing.

It also resulted in the strongest strut/wing joints I have seen on a plastic model.

Click on images below to see larger images

I now tackled the under cart, which is built rather like the undercarriage of a flying model: it’s a bent wire, clad in plastic fairings. Unfortunately the drawings show a wire shape/length and fuselage thickness that are too narrow. Basically you need about five millimetres more on each end.

Still, nothing that couldn’t be fixed…

The model was painted next: window openings were masked off and the model primed with Halfords grey primer: this stuff really is excellent.

Next a coat of Halfords Ford Galaxy silver gave me my basic silver finish, and a foundation to work on.

The rear of the fuselage was airbrushed in Humbrol Metalcote Matt Aluminium and given a good polish. Various areas were then shot with Metalcote Gloss Aluminium, Metalcote polished Steel, and other Humbrol variants of silver, to reflect the differing materials used on the original aircraft. Tyres were painted dark grey, as I hate seeing black tyres- far TOO black. A dark grey gives you a better scale effect in my belief.

The instructions recommend that you use a strip of plastic rod supplied to represent the exhaust pipes, but I found it to be unusable, possibly due to age, as it was very brittle. I used wire instead. The exhaust on this aeroplane really are that skinny.

The engines were added, and painted with a mixture of greys and dry brushed with Humbrol Aluminium. Holes were drilled in the engine fronts to take the Prop axles, and the props painted in a dark brown and drybrushed in various lighter shades to represent the mahogany of the real thing. Boss detail was dry brushed.

Nearly done!

The decals were next, and were a lovely surprise in a kit of this age. They were superb: well printed, in register, thin, and the colours seemed perfect. I used Micro Sol and Set to settle the decals into the fuselage detail, and to help minimise the carrier film. I then applied a coat of Klear and left it to cure.

Only two stages next: weathering and rigging.

Weathering was not a huge task, as the real aircraft seemed to have been kept very clean, as befits a world leader in the airline industry.

I kept it simple and gave the aircraft some exhaust staining and shaded some control surface panel lines, finishing it off with some earth colouring over the tyres.

Finally, the rigging. Dead simple for this lovely aeroplane: the HP42 hardly had any rigging, unusual for a biplane. This is because the aircraft used a Warren girder construction for the wing bracing, largely negating the need for wire bracing, except for at the outboard struts.

The tail has some rigging also, and it wasn’t until I had applied some rigging to the undercarriage that I realised that the drawing I was using for reference was wrong.

I have checked lots of pictures, and found no rigging anywhere on the under cart. Bah! Rigging by the way was achieved with a very small drill, some cyano and some invisible mending thread.

Unfortunately, as the model was to be posted, it was not possible to rig the radio wires over the wings, as they would have been damaged no mater how well I had packed it for transit.

Overall, challenging as it certainly was, I really enjoyed building this kit, it has its’ faults, but doesn’t everything? It builds up into a very impressive finished article, and it’s certainly a change from F-16s.

Recommended, but NOT for beginners.

Stuart

Photos and text © by Stuart Quinn-Harvie