The
real thing (taken from the Classic Plane instructions)
Since
the early 90’s, the Extra 300, one of the world’s best aerobatic planes, has
been built by the the experienced aerobatic champion Walter Extra. The
high-performance wing is built totally from laminated carbon-material, as are
the elevators. The fuselage is of aluminium covered steel-tube and the plane is
powered by a Lycoming engine with 300 PS.
The
Kit
All
25 parts come at a light-gray sprue with very little flash. Additionally there
is a vacu-formed clear part for the five bottom windows and an injected canopy,
of which I found two in my kit. Furthermore there are four resin-casted parts
for the reproduction of the optional four bladed prop. Despite its short run
qualities, for example there are no locator pins, all parts have fine recessed
panel lines.
As
Classic Plane’s box just adresses the “collector and serious modeler”,
this shouldn’t be too much of a
problem. Whereas the Instructions raise more questions than they can answer. The
double-paged black and white DIN A4 sized copy shows a quite useful 1/72 scale
drawing, and also some pictures of the two planes you can decorate with the kit
decals, i. e. the D-EGEW and the D-EAEW, but these are so dark that they can
just help with the placing of the decals. Unfortunately there are no step by
step drawings and only the painting of the two planes is described separately.
For this, reference pictures are a must have if you want to achieve an accurate
paintjob. The same goes for the empty cockpit area.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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Let’s
get started…
As
there are neither step by step drawings nor any numbering of the parts, you’re
completely dependent on your reference material and your more or less given
modeler’s intuition. Ok, there isn’t much to do wrong on this bird when you
have a look at the compact sprue. Nevertheless there was one part which
concealed its constructional purpose for a long time. But more about that later.
This
was my first model with which the first step was to glue both fuselage halves
together. Owing to the large cockpit opening you can add the interior details
later with little trouble. For this, the kit provides one cockpit floor, two
seats and two panels. But already the floor separates prematurely because of
technical KO: Because of its tubular structure the Extra 300 doesn’t have a
real floor. Furthermore the lowest of the bottom windows which is left space for
in the two fuselage halves would be covered by that part. Sanded down and cut
into two parts (because of the window) I used it anyway to cover the unavoidable
internal seam of the real cockpit floor. Next some plastic sheet was shape-cut
to be used as a bulkhead in front of the empty engine section to prevent any
straight view through the air inlets into the cockpit.
There
are two instrument panels included with the kit, but they show no detail –
just flat pieces of sheet. In addition the rear panel is completely under-sized
and the front panel appears somewhat too large. So I had to scratchbuild both of
them according to my reference pics. Also the seats were extensively modified,
they received control sticks and seatbelts made of painter’s tape. However,
the trickiest task was to imitate the mentioned tubing structure in the cockpit.
Both seats, pedals and the rear panel were mounted “hanging”, attached to
stretched sprue, in the cockpit.
The
assembly of the few remaining parts caused far fewer headaches. Fit of the
wings, the horizontal stabilizers and the main landing gear was quite good and
needed only minimal filling and sanding.
As
I wanted to attach the the tail landing gear, the exhaust pipes and the prop
after the paintjob, there was only the above mentioned ominous part left. In the
meantime I had at least learned that it was a piece
of the lower engine cowling (the sloping plate under the exhaust pipes). But
only the in progress pics of a 1/32 scale Extra 300 model of a helpful ARC
regular (thanks, Barneydhc82 ) made things clear so that I was finally able
to finish the main construction and to hurry to the paintjob.
Painting
One
of the two canopies was fixed to the cockpit using a bit of white glue to mask
everything during the painting. After the openings for the five bottom windows
had been masked with some foam material, red FS 21310 was to be painted first.
As the decal sheet provides only the blue fuselage strips, the red strips on
wings and horizontal stabilizers were masked. Now I mixed the blue colour,
trying to match the tone of the decals as much as possible (should be FS 25102).
The spinner is painted in this blue, too. The blades are black on the backside
and white with red tips on the front. A coat of Erdal Glänzer (Future-like
German product) prepared the model for the decals.
The
decals
The
decals are well printed and in perfect register. There are only two layout
mistakes which degrade their rating: On the one hand the white lines between the
blue and the red areas on the horizontal stabilizers were much too short and had
to be made up for by some material of the spares’ box. On the other hand the
four three-star-bars for the wings were printed in a wrong angle. This problem
was solved easily by cutting out each star separately and applying them in the
right angle with the single point looking forward (just like a Soviet star).
With the use of some softener, the blue fuselage strips went on quite well, even
around the engine cowling and the vertical stabilizer. Another coat of Erdal Glänzer
sealed the just settled markings.
Weathering
is litterally non-existing on this aerobatic plane. Only the ventilations which
are engraved at both sides of the engine cowling were highlighted with some
diluted black oil pant.
Final
steps
When
the window masking had been removed all five bottom windows were cut out from
the vacuformed part. After some shaping and test fitting they were fixed with
some white glue. In the meantime the second canopy has served as a form to
create a new thinner one from heated clear sheet which I attached in the open
position. Now it was time to install the tail landing gear and the propeller,
which are the most breakable parts of the kit. Each wingtip got a clearance
light made of a little drop of white glue. After drying this is completely clear
making it a good way to create small transparent parts. The last things to
attach were the two spades (counter balances at the ailerons) which were made of
spare brass and stretched sprue.
Any
comments?...
Classic
Plane’s Extra 300 is surely not an everyday kit. Till now I’ve only found
one other built up kit on the internet. If you are happy enough to come across
this civilian gem, all the more reason you should consider it (for example try
Modellbaustudio Rhein Ruhr, Germany: www.classic-plane-mrr.de).
Because already with little extra work (always keep in mind that were’re
talking about a limited run kit) you can turn this one, despite or even because
of its “size”, into a real eyecatcher for your domestic showcase.
References:
·
Kit instructions (oh no – forget it!)
·
Do some googling with “Extra 300”,
“D-EGEW”etc…
Special
thanks to Mark Miller who helped me with this translation (original German
article can be seen at www.modellversium.de
in the civilian airplane-gallery).
Text
is from myself and photos by Deun Yu and myself. Thank you again!
Bernd
Click on
images below to see larger images
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