1/72 Airmodels vacuformed

Cornelius XFG-1 fuelglider

by Matthias Simon

--------------------

 

Vac kits are not very common and unfortunately not very loved by modelers. Maybe some of them are afraid about the work they have to do to get a good result. I learned that building vacuum kits is not as difficult, as everybody telling about. Being creative in modeling and the satisfaction when it´s finished  may be only some good reason to try it out by yourself. And .... how much Cornelius XFG-1 have you seen at your last modeling exhibition?

History:
The Cornelius XFG-1 was a construction of the Cornelius Aircradt Corporation in Daton, Ohio in 1943.  It had been designed as a fuel-glider, which should be towed behind bombers to increase their range. Two prototypes had been build and tested. Its maiden flight was  11.Oct.1944. The first one crashed during test flight and the end of the war stopped further developments of this really unique aircraft.

The kit:
As usual the kit parts are molded in female molds. The most important parts are included (fuselage, wings, wheels and of course the canopy, but also the pilots seat, bulkheads and landing gear).

Building:
I always start building vac kits by marking outlines of the kit parts with a permanent marker. Using a NON sharpe knife I outline the parts two times and just break them apart. After that I sand the parts down to their correct shape (using sanding paper clued on a flat polystyrene card) . Now most of the work to prepare the kitparts had been done. I just need several minutes for that work. At this stage you nearly can compare it with every other injection molded kit.

Click on images below to see larger images

Detailing:
Detailing is the major difference between vacuumformed and injection molded kits. Mostly you have to scratch build all the details you want to add. Some modelers using small parts out of their "spareparts-box". My cockpit had been fully scratchbuilt accept the pilots seat, which I took from another kit. Unfortunately I only found 3 reference images of the Cornelius XFG-1 and non of them showed details of the cockpit. I decided to build it, like it might could have looked like. For the landing gear I used the kit wheels and polystyrene tubes from evergreen. The original landing gears had been very simple and so they are at my kit.

Painting:
This was my first try to use ALCLAD colours. I sprayed Aluminium overall accept two panels on the upper side of the wings. It worked well, though I had to learn that painting the hole plane black before, compared with a really fine surface leads to the best result. After polishing and sealing the plane with Future, I applied the decals which I also took from another kit.. The panel lines had been washed with oil-paints (black and a little bit brown).

Click on images below to see larger images

Conclusion:
I had a  lot of fun building such a rare plane. I placed it together with figures from the German company Preiser on a concrete plate which is also available from Airmodel. The inflight picture had been made in front of a "blue-screen". The clouds had been added using Corel Photo Paint 10. I hope you liked it, like I liked modeling the kit

with best regards

Matthias
Airmodel Products GERMANY

http://www.airmodel.de

Photos and text © by Matthias Simon Airmodel Products