The inevitable has happened

Last weekend I completed numbers 10 and 11 of my Airfix project: -

10) Dennis Fire Engine

Along with the Type B Bus, Airfix offered a model of a 1914 Dennis Fire engine. Unlike the bus this model was never really high up my to buy list, but looking back I do wish that I’d had a go back in the day. Dennis were a British firm manufacturing specialist vehicles, and they manufactured fire engines until 2007.

If I’m totally honest I am not 100% sure if this is the exact same model of Dennis fire engine as the Airfix model was, but it’s certainly of the right era. 

11) 1930 41/2 Litre Bentley

This was, I think, a larger model than some others of Airfix's vintage car range and some how it grabbed my imagination.

The Inevitable . . . 

Right, the inevitable. The whole project came about through my thinking about the Airfix models that got away – models that I never made when I was a kid and kind of wish that I had. I have said on this very blog that I had no intention of building them now.

The reason is that I did try to build an Airfix model 3 or 4 years ago. It was an Aston Martin DB5 starter kit – which came with glue and the necessary paints. I bought it on ebay. Maybe this was why the glue was very weak and hardly worked. The parts didn’t fit very well. As for the paint, it would not coat the plastic at all. It was a very frustrating experience. So – thought I – I don’t like modelling any more and I don’t plan to do it again.

Well, since finishing the 30x30 challenge and starting painting my Airfix challenge, I’ve been doing a little research to try to find out the models which were around in my 70s heyday which I never actually built. I’ve watched quite a few videos of builds on Youtube, looked at the official Airfix group on Facebook and slowly rethought my attitude. Last weekend I took my oldest grandson Ollie to the Helicopter Museum in Weston Super Mare. They have several Bristol Belvederes there. By Thursday I had decided that I was going to give modelling another try. I popped into our local Hobbycraft after work on Thursday and bought the Airfix Bristol Belvedere and a small tube of glue.

I didn’t buy any paints. They’re not ideal, but I knew that Arcylic paints would work okay on plastic, and I have plenty of those at home. If I do build another model then I'll start to get some proper enamels, but I wasn't tooling up just for one kit. This morning I built the model. Now, looking on the positive, the glue worked fine. The instructions were clear and the build pretty simple. Or rather it should have been. I don’t know how old the tooling is, but some of the parts had wee bits of plastic hanging off them, while the slots for the tailplanes were far too small to fit the tabs into. I mean, I remember using my penknife to do a bit of fettling when I was a kid, but nothing like as much as this.

I also rediscovered the delights of hunting the small piece of plastic that you’ve just dropped on the carpet.

The acrylic paint worked okay, but I needed three coats of white to even make it just about acceptable. As for the decals, well, I might have been better off masking off the thing blue lines and painting them in. Trouble is my fingers are now a lot fatter and older and more arthritic than they were when I was a kid. Still, there it is. It’s really not that well built or painted, but what I was looking for was the complete experience of building and painting one of the ones that got away, and I’ve had that. Did I enjoy it? Well, actually, not noticeably more than I enjoyed making my watercolour painting of the Belvedere, and that was a lot quicker. Will I do it again? Dunno. Watch this space.

The unopened box, the tube of glue and my trusty roll of B and M masking tape

What's inside the box? Parts, decals and Insturctions

Completed the build - glue-clouded canopy and all. At least I made the rotors spin freely.

Painting - masking tape in evidence.

Painted and decals applied. The Finished build

A better photo of the finished model

My Bristol Belvedere Watercolour painting.

It’s been a very busy weekend with my oldest grandson Ollie becoming a teenager yesterday. We took him and his first cousins Alfie and Elena to the Meadows Wildlife Park, then we picked up his other cousins Tobi and Amelia then took them to the cinema to see Minions and Monsters. Then we had a sleepover for all 5 of them. I’m exhausted. But not too exhausted to paint another Airfixer after they went home. Here it is

8) Supermarine Walrus

It’s another flying boat. This was designed by R.J.Mitchell. He and the Supermarine company would become much better remembered for another plane he designed and they built, the Supermarine Spitfire. The Walrus was first flown in 1933. They would come to be operated by the Fleet Air Arm, the Australian and New Zealand Air Forces, and the Royal Air Force.

They were used in anti-submarine operations, and search and rescue missions too. Over 700 were made and several are preserved in Museums around the world. I’d say that it’s nowhere near as well known now as the glamourous Spitfires and Hurricanes, or even Britain’s most iconic world war II flying boat, the Short Sunderland, but the sterling service it put in during the second world war must have been what made Airfix decide to create the first kit of it in 1957.

New Painting - Boeing 314 Clipper

So this is the sixth of my 'Airfixers' collection. Basically, it's just a few paintings, the subject of each of which was in the model kit range produced by Airfix. With each of them, I never bought them when I was modeling as a kid and I have no desire to buy them and make the models now, but I still wish that I had done back in the day. 

Designed and built in the 1930s, the Boeing 314 Clipper was certified for civil aviation use in 1939. It was designed for carrying passengers across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and in 1943 became the first aircraft to carry a sitting American president, when FDR flew in one to a conference in Casablanca in Morocco. 12 of these in total were made, 9 of which were operated by Pan American Airlines. BOAC did operate one for a time. The last was retired from service in 1951.

This is the 5th painting I've made with my Daler-Rowney Graduate watercolour set and I have to say I am enjoying using it very much. A little bit cheaper than the equivalen Winsor and Newton it's a highly acceptable alternative.

New Painting - Bristol Belvedere

Last week I painted the Fairey Rotodyne. Today I made something a a companion piece. A helicopter that Airfix made a model of that I never actually bought or made was this, the Bristol Belvedere.

It was Britain’s only tandem rotor helicopter. 26 of them were built and they were solely used by the Royal Air Force. They entered service in 1961 and were finally retired in 1969. There are actually three preserved Belvedere’s with the nose section of another on display at the Helicopter Museum in Weston Super Mare.

Here's a photo of the five paintings I've made since finishing the 30x30 challenge

ANother One that Got Away - Ford Trimotor

Funny how many of the ones that got away with me were civil aircraft. This is the Ford Trimotor. Henry Ford bought an airplane manufacturer and this was the result. It looks very similar to the Fokker Trimotor, but the Ford plane’s fuselage was metal, while the Fokker’s was plywood. There were almost 200 of these Ford planes made, a significant number, but Henry Ford lost interest in aviation and ceased production in 1933. Nonetheless over 100 airlines used the plane at one time or another, and they continued in use even after the second world war for some time.

2nd Painting Today

 Yes today was one of those Saturdays when, in the early evening I decided that there was enough time left to do a second painting. So this is a painting of a Bristol Superfreighter. 

Yes, there was an Airfix model kit of this plane and no, I never made it when I was a kid.

The Superfreighter itself was first made in 1953 and it was used essentially for cross channel air services. Sir Freddie Laker, the budget airline pioneer, got his start in the aviation industry with his airline Channel Air Bridge which used Superfreighters and other planes.

I will be honest, now. I am running out of subjects to paint of which there is/was an Airifx kit that I never owned and built, which I wish that I had done. I’ve got three or four more up my sleeve, though.

Another kit that got away

This is my painting of the Fairey Rotodyne, which was another well known Airfix kit that I never owned and I wish that I had built back in the day, like the SRN4 Hovercraft, the Type B Bus and the Short Skyvan. 

Was it a helicopter? Was it an autogyro? Was it an airplane? Well, actually it was none of these. The official description of it is that it was a compound gyroplane, and it was just one example of a number of what-might’ve-beens of post war British Civil Aviation.

The rotors were powered by tip jets – literally jets on the tips of the rotors – which would be used during take off and landing. During level flight the rotors ran free, like the rotors of an autogyro, and the machine was powered by the engines mounted on the stubby wings.

On paper, this certainly looked like a good idea and the one prototype that was built performed well in trials which began in 1957. But there were concerns about the noise generated by the rotors and firm orders from commercial airlines failed to materialise. The project had been funded by the British Government and they ended this in 1962. The prototype was dismantled, although pieces of it are on display in the helicopter museum.

I painted this using my new Daler-Rowney watercolour set.