1/48 Hobby Craft Canada DHC-3 Otter

by Chris Parsons

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I started this Turbo Otter conversion thinking all I had to do was build a new nose.  I was wrong.  The basic kit is out of the box.  The details of the kit are a little lacking but the dimensions are quite good.  The clear parts fit and clarity is good, I had no real trouble fitting the main or tail planes although I had to install main wing spars to get rid of some sag,and warp.  (The main wings looked like UH-1 rotors.)  I took a vacation from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada to the town of LaRonge, Saskatchewan, Canada to get my walkaround pictures... (obsessive? well, yeah...)  Anyway, I got my walkaround pictures and a very nice book by Fred Hotson on De Havilland Canada and continued with my building.   Starting with the interior I used brass rod and evergreen sheet to make the revenue earning seats.  The pilots office also got warmed over until nothing of the original remaind.  Well, then I had to have all the doors hanging open to air the thing out, and to allow looking in.  I added all the antenaes on the roof from bits and scraps, new wing fences to replace the kit items which if in actual scale, could shame the great wall of China.  I added the quilted, diamonded headliner made from tin foil textured with a criss cross pattern made by a pizza cutter.  In pictures 3 and 4 a couple of folded seats are waiting to be installed.

I glued the airframe all together then epoxied a block of pine to the nose.  This was cursed and cajoled, ground filed and chewed on until it took the shape of a Turbo Otter nose.  Then I broke it off the model and did the silicon rubber, resin thing with it.  Now I have a resin nose, I added various scoops and vents to it, then attached it to the model.  I made the exhaust stacks from slightly squashed aluminum tube.

The operator of the real thing told me it was equipped with Beech-18 floats, and gave me the (aproximate) overall dimensions of those floats.  I found adding a 10 mm plug behind the step in the floats gave me floats, (that looked right.)  rigging the things was a bit of a job.  I used steel picture hanging wire and, aluminum tail light wiring from a mid '80's Chevy.  The bording ladders are .045" brass rod.  A prop blade was made from laminated evergreen strip then filed and sanded to shape then copied in resin.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  

I shaped a prop spinner from a 1/72 Hasegawa P-3 Orion and finished it with Bare Metal Foil.  The elevators and rudders got scored through and repositioned just a little, as did the water rudders.  After priming filling and sanding (how many times?) I sprayed on almost two bottles of Gunze white.  Masked it up and sprayed a home made concotion of blue+green thinned with gloss clear, also Gunze, after about 2 weeks of drying I made cheat lines from Bare metal foil black.

Art for the decals were made up on my computer ,I used a scanned picture of the duck on the tail from the real aircraft and found the script in my computers fonts. The art and script were taken to a local printing place.  (Of the sort that make custom Tshirts and coffee cups.)  I had them transfer my art to their waterslide decal paper (which worked very well.)  The real plane is powered by a PT-6 gas turbine engine and is always parked with the props feathered, so I did the same.  

This model was destroyed in my car on a trip from Saskatoon to Calgary for a model contest.  I think rebuilding it took more time and patience than the original build.

I'll be building another one soon, but the next one will be Harbor Air in BC. Canada.  Any questions or comments are welcome. I hope it meets approval.

Chris 

Photos and text © by Chris Parsons