1/72 WhirlyKits Avro 707B

by Karl W Branson

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

 

Here is my 1/72 scale Avro 707B by WhirlyKits. The Avro 707 series of research aircraft was designed as the test bed for the delta wing design used on the Avro Vulcan bomber. Three variants of the 707 were designed, the 707A for high speed testing, the 707B for low speed testing, and the 707C a two seat trainer.

This model has a vac form sheet containing the fuselage and wings with white metal ejection seat and landing gear and a clear sheet containing two vac form canopies. Apart from the ejection seat there is no cockpit detail, probably because the intention is to build it with the canopy in the closed position and when painted there isn’t much glass to see the inside through. Decals are of the clear fix variety (I’d never used these before – more on that later…..) Also included is a nice instruction sheet with a comprehensive history of the actual aircraft, written building detail and a nice set of drawings of how the finished model should look.

Click on images below to see larger images

I started construction be removing the wing and fuselage parts from the vac sheet. This was done buy drawing around the parts using a fine indelible pen, and then using a sharp knife I cut along the pen line. This method ensures that you have enough excess plastic to on the parts so you can sand them down without loosing any of the actual part. When sanding, I would not recommend taping down a large sheet of sandpaper to a flat surface and rubbing the parts across it, the pressure that you use to push the part on to the sand paper deforms them and you don’t get the nice flat edge you might think that you would. I prefer to sand them free hand, inspecting the joint very often so as not to remove too much plastic, you can also check for a clean edge by laying the parts gently on to a flat surface as you sand. Using this method and some time and patience I managed to get all of the fuselage and wing parts to fit together as good as any injection kit.

Using a profile gauge, I built up some bulkheads at regular intervals along the inside of the fuselage, taking care to place one where the cockpit rear bulkhead should be, and one at the rear to support the jet exhaust pipe. As the cockpit on this kit was apparently designed to be displayed closed, there are no instrument panels, stick, floor or anything; this all had to be scratch built, made all the more difficult as I could only find a few pictures to help with the detailing, so some artistic licence was applied. The scratch built cockpit was installed in to one side of the fuselage. I also added some milliput and lead shot to keep the nose down just in case it was a tail sitter; the nosewheel well was also added at this point. 

The next step was to assemble the main components. Before gluing the fuselage halves together I made up some tabs to help strengthen the joint and help locate the two sides. The upper and lower wing surfaces were glued together and left to dry. To help position and support the wing joint (the standard attachment would be a simple butt joint) I cross drilled the fuselage in two places and inserted plastic cross member’s that would go through the inside of the wing to help keep them straight and rigid. The Avro 707B has a dorsal air intake to feed the Rolls-Royce Derwent engine; this was a separate part that had to be blended to the upper surface of the fuselage, a small portion of the forward edge of the vertical tail also had to be removed to allow installation. As for the business end of the Derwent engine, I used a length of brass tube to make the jet nozzle, this was attached to the rear bulkhead with CA. The kit comes with a three pronged pitot probe for the nose of the aircraft, the piotot’s on the fuselage and tail have to be scratch built, along with a small tail bumper.

As I had decided to display the cockpit in the open position, I had to cut the canopy into three sections. I removed the main part from the vac sheet and then, using the plans supplied, measured out the size of the rear section and the front screen, marking them with an indelible marker pen. Then, being thankful that I had a spare canopy in the box, I cut the canopy in to three using a razor saw – it was an absolutely perfect fit the first time round!! (phew!) The rear part was fixed to the fuselage. The white metal landing gear was assembled and painted. The supplied vac part doors for the under carriage were  completely the wrong size for the front wheel and for the large part of the two-piece main U/C door, so I scratch built replacements; I did use the supplied part that attaches to the strut as it fitted ok.

After filling and sanding was completed (no small task as you might imagine) it was time to paint. First thing was to get a decent primer coat on – I prefer to use Halfords auto acrylic primer. The main colour was quite difficult to decide upon, as all of the original photos of the 707B I had available were black and white. I did manage to find one colour picture of a model in a museum, I based my colour choice on that and decided on Humbrol #109, WW1 Blue, this looked just about spot on. When dried, I over coated this with Humbrol ‘Clear Cote’ Gloss. The panel lines were enhanced by running a 0.3mm pencil down them and sealing it in with another clear coat.

I painted the cockpit matt black and washed it with a light grey to make the dials stand out. Next up was to paint and install the ejection seat, and the remaining parts of the canopy. I detailed the U/C bays with brass rod and painted them in shades of aluminium and silver; then installed the landing gear and the U/C bay doors. 

Click on images below to see larger images

Lastly the decals were applied. As previously mentioned I had never used clear-fix decals – I also didn’t read the instructions on how to use them…. I detached a roundel and tried dipping that in water just like a water slide decal, needless to day it didn’t work out. Then I found the instructions on how to use them properly and the rest went on ok. I managed to replace the missing roundel with one from a set supplied in FSM magazine about a year ago; it was an exact mach for the missing one.

After the decals were applied, every thing was sealed in with one final coat of Gloss Clear.

I really enjoyed building this kit as I had to employ quite a bit of scratch building, and it’s probably the smallest model kit I’ve ever made - so far.

As for an encore, what else could I build now but it’s big brother, the Avro Vulcan B2 – I hope to be able to display them together; the 707B should fit quite nicely under the Vulcan’s wing..!!

I Hope you enjoy my model.

Karl

Click on images below to see larger images

Photos and text © by Karl W Branson