Pegasus 1/72 BP Balliol

PEGASUS 1:72 BOULTON PAUL BALLIOL

Reviewer: Tim Beales (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 3 November 2003

Aircraft History:

The sexy Boulton Paul Balliol was conceived to meet a UK Air Ministry specification that was drawn up in 1946 for a three-seat turboprop trainer. Boulton Paul designed the airframe before the intended Bristol Mercury radial engine was ready, and so the Balliol also flew equipped with an Armstrong Siddeley Mamba engine. The UK Air Ministry then changed its specification again, and plumped for a two-seat trainer with a Rolls Royce Merlin engine. In all these trials, the Balliol was in competition with the Avro Athena, and the Balliol won. Near to 200 Balliols were built, with some going to Ceylon. The UK version equipped the RAF's Flying Schools until the mid 1950s, when the RAF decided to emphasise jet trainers. Some 30 Balliols were converted to Sea Balliols and served with No. 781 Squadron of the Fleet Air Arm.

The Kit:

Kits in bags time! This is a real rough-house limited run injection kit developed when Pegasus was young, (but come to think of it, their current mouldings have not improved on this either) The injection gates are enormous trees, and great care needs to be employed in separating the components from the sprue. There is some flash and overrun on all the components. One saving grace is that the plastic in Pegasus kits is a very soft, slightly waxy, dark grey plastic that readily yields to a No. 11 blade - rather like carving wood versus the injection plastic sculpting of stone. The kit has a some nice panelling, but has a thick, slightly hazy canopy, and white metal undercarriage.

The parts breakdown is: two fuselage halves, an instrument panel, two two-piece wings, two chairs, a rudder, two wheels, two undercarriage legs and scissor links, a single-piece spinner - propeller unit, a single-piece tailplane unit, and a comically absurd tail wheel.

Instructions:

The instructions are provided as basic staccato bullet points listed on the back of the header card. This also gives the five painting colours to be used in Methuen and FS numbers, but not in the popular Humbrol range used by most modellers! A light blue A4 sheet with dark blue writing provides a side, front, and semi-top line drawing view for painting.

Construction:

First, all the components were separated from the thick injection gates, and all the edges cleaned using fine sandpaper and a No. 11 blade. All the mating surfaces need some cleaning, including the mating surfaces of the two fuselage halves. One is expected to detail the interior to choice, so I constructed a bulkhead and a cockpit floor from Plasticard. I also made joysticks and anti-roll bars from Evergreen strip. Once the cockpit module had been constructed and cemented into the port fuselage, I turned my attention to the two gaping holes that passed for the radiator intake and rear aperture. Not being a super-detailer or a master modeller, I blanked these off using Plasticard and filler. All this of course was time consuming, but once complete, I painted the interior black, painting silver dials in the instrument panel, and painted the seats leather.

Cementing the two fuselage halves together resulted in a great trench at the join line that ran right around the model. I had to fill this with Humbrol filler followed by sanding for a few times to get a good finish. In doing this, I managed to remove some of the fine panel lines of the model, and so had to re-scribe these. The wings were in two parts, presumably to enable wing folding for the modelling of a Sea Balliol. Copious filling, filing, sanding, and aligning stages were needed to obtain a straight wing, resulting in the inevitable loss of previously scribed detail, which then had to be re-scribed. The single-piece tail unit sat on a ledge cut into the rear of the fuselage, and the rudder sat flush on top of this. Both were butt-joined. Once again, the Humbrol filler and sand paper worked on overtime here.

The metal undercarriage attached into recessed undercarriage bays after having appropriate location holes drilled in them. These had been pre-assembled with scissor links and wheels attached. In addition, undercarriage doors had been fabricated from Plasticard using a template supplied on the Pegasus sheet. The model was finished off by cementing the tail wheel in place and butt joining the single-piece propeller.

Decals:

Pegasus supplies the decals for a Boulton Paul Balliol T2 of No. 7 FTS at RAF Cottesmore in 1951/52. These are OK, but look a little grainy with some excess carrier film. I used Modeldecal and Xtradecal replacements. This Balliol is the usual RAF post-war trainer camouflage of all over silver with yellow trainer bands on the wings and fuselage. There is also a black anti-glare panel at the front of the cockpit and black wing walks. I assumed that the wheel wells were interior green. I also made whip aerials from stretched sprue.

Accuracy:

The Encyclopaedia of World Aircraft lists the dimensions of the Balliol as wingspan = 11.99 m and length = 11.13 m (in 1/72 scale these are 16.7 cm and 15.5 cm, respectively). My model came in at wingspan = 16.7 cm and length = 15.0 cm. The model really looks the part though - very Gerry Anderson!

Overall:

Methinks that this is one for the modeller who likes to actually model. It will test you, and perhaps make you develop skills that you haven't had to call on before, but that's modelling isn't it? I enjoyed making it, and I like the way the completed model sits besides the rest of my 1950s RAF trainers. I think this is the only currently available Balliol. The Contrail vacuform Balliol is long out of production. I can't see this airplane ever being introduced by a mainstream injection manufacturer. Given the nature of short run kits, even if the likes of MPM or Pavla had a go at it, I'm not sure it would be an easier build, but it would certainly possess much higher quality components.

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