1/72 Matchbox Handley Page Heyford

-The Ectoplastic strikes again-

by Gabriel Stern

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What a truly delicious model. It probably falls in the category of medium-weight dinosaurs (a heavy weight would be the ICM TB-3) with their awesome shapes, old age and green skins. I received it from some friends as a Christmas present, probably after they saw my face at the hobby store where we found these (yes, more to come) treasures.
The kit has a not often seen logical brake-down of the parts, reasonable fit, certain level of detail and is very appealing subject -if you like ugly, of course- What else can you ask for?. Yes, I know, the kryptonite-like colors: green kryptonite, maroon kryptonite, black kryptonite and the not very defined shapes plus the infamous panel lines...but, who cares, we have the Heyford!

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A few parts were incompletely molded, necessitating replacements or a quick fix with card and filler. I just added some interior, aileron mass balances, an appendix below the front fuselage and refined some bits here and there. No rigging information is provided, but the instructions in general are good and clear. It certainly took some time, and no without some little struggle, but at the end all went OK.
Acrylic paints were airbrushed, using different shades to create the illusion of something fading in a mist of time -and hopefully hide a couple of boo-boos-. The decals, after all these years, were, surprisingly, still alive, although they have a somewhat uneven and pitted surface, were less than flexible, shoved a sliver of the backing color and silvered just a tad (if you have one in pile, replace them).
But, if a I am willing to spend so much time with "limited-edition" kits, how can I not love the old, venerable, ectoplastic-made Matchbox Heyford?

Gabriel

Photos and text © by Gabriel Stern