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SMER (HELLER) 1:72 POTEZ 540
Reviewer:
Kevin Ronayne (kevin.ronayne@nuigalway.ie)
Kit Review submitted:
23 February 2002
The Potez 54 series of aircraft formed an important part of the French Air Force in the mid-1930's. The first prototype Potez 54 flew in late 1933, and featured a twin tail. However, for series production, the design was changed to a conventional single tail/rudder. Production machines also featured uprated engines, which were installed in a 'handed' configuration. Almost 200 Potez 540's were built. Variations on the standard design were coded as the Potez 541, 542, 543 and 544, in keeping with the French practice of the time. These were intended for civilian or export service, or in having radial engines instead of the regular Hispano-Suiza 12 X inline engines. The Potez 540 was a fairly typical twin-engined bomber of its time, with standard armament layout, and the ability to carry 900 Kg of bombs. It was of mixed metal and wood construction, with undercarriage which retracted into the underslung engine pods.
Some Potez 540 and 543 aircraft were used by the Republicans in the Spanish Civil war. However, with the rapid pace of aircraft development, the 54 series became obsolete in the late 1930's. From 1938, they were withdrawn from frontline service, and used as transports or trainers. However, some aircraft did see combat service in WW II, and some were even used after the war for a short time in various French colonies.
This is, of course, the ex-Heller mold, and this review is equally relevant to that kit. It was one of the best of the Musee series, along with the Bloch 210 - also available from Smer. I would guess that it dates from the mid-1970's, although I tend to underestimate the age of most Heller kits. The Smer kit comes in a big one-piece box. It is molded in light grey plastic enclosed in sealed bags. One bag contains the wings and fuselage sides, and another contains all the other non-transparent parts on two fully enclosed sprues. Finally, there are 27 clear parts on a large enclosed sprue in third bag. There are 130 parts in all. There was some flash on wing sprues, which was easily cleared. There was hardly any flash on the kit parts themselves. The mold is still in excellent condition, compared to a Heller-Humbrol pressing I bought in 1991. The price hasn't changed much either - just STG £6 from Hannants in the UK, although mine (for once!) was cheaper still.
The instructions are on a six-page A4 leaflet. The background information and technical data is trilingual (Czech, English and German). The 12-step construction guide is lifted straight from the Heller kit, albeit without any in-place interior or detail painting guide. There are two subject options:
The French aircraft is illustrated on the back cover; the Spanish aircraft is illustrated on the leaflet. Given the camouflaged Spanish scheme, it would have been better if this was done the other way around. Paint colours are given in Humbrol, and decals are from Propagteam. All in all, a typical Smer package.
Heller-Humbrol boxart
In terms of accuracy and fit, this is very much a kit of its age. However, because it's a Heller mold, you expect - and get - a better standard than you would from (say) an Airfix kit. The panel lines are lightly raised, with some riveting on the cockpit and turret framing. The wings show both a 'ribbing' construction effect, as well as a fabric-like texture. The Smer background information says that the wings were 'partially covered with duralumin', but that's not obvious from the wing pieces themselves. With 130 parts, and no stores or separate control surface parts, there is obviously quite a bit of complexity in this kit.
The box-like fuselage dictates that the fuselage should be built up from four 'slab' parts, and that's exactly what you get. The very first task was to cement the central engine mount spar unit (part #5) to the bottom fuselage part. The external sections of this part are aerodynamically shaped, and it seemed obvious that the 'flat' side should face downwards. However, it would be very easy to install it upside down - you could still complete the kit, but it wouldn't be quite right somehow. The instructions don't bother to bring this to your attention, an omission that seems just like Heller.
Next came the cockpit assembly had to be addressed. The Potez 540 had tandem pilot/co-pilot stations located on a platform, under which the bomb bay was probably located. This structure did not take up the entire width of the fuselage, but was offset to port. This left a walkway along the right-hand side of the fuselage, connecting the nose and rear sections. From what I could see from reference photos, the kit seemed to reproduce this layout accurately. Although the interior of the kit is quite basic, you do get foot pedals and two-part control columns for the pilot stations. The fact that there were two pilot stations set me to wondering whether this kit represented a bomber version at all. A closer look at the Heller instructions revealed that the sole subject of that kit did indeed belong to a 1940 L'Ecole de Air unit. However, as there was little I could really do about this without very detailed references, I decided to let the matter rest.
Before cementing the cockpit/bomb bay assembly to the fuselage, I had to cut away part of the unit that should have attached to the port-side fuselage part. This was because the large transparencies used for the fuselage side windows. These were very thick (although still reasonably clear) and had very wide 'skirts' for attaching to the fuselage interior. It was clear to me that one of these windows would interfere with the cockpit assembly even before I tried to dry-fit it - however, it obviously never occurred to whoever had designed the kit. On reflection, it's more likely that they just didn't care!
The interior of the fuselage was painted Hu 94 sand, in accordance with the Heller instructions. The control handles were painted black, and the foot pedals silver. There were also four very large control sticks to be fitted - two in the nose section, and two in the main cockpit area. These would have been about 1.5m high in reality, and this struck me as a bit odd. Again, however, I just went with it, and installed the parts anyway. These were also painted silver. I then added the fuselage bulkheads - these weren't a perfect fit, but it didn't really matter,as they weren't fully visible in the assembled kit. After attaching the fuselage sides, I added the top section, covering the rear 3/4 of the aircraft. Obviously, great care needs to be taken here to ensure that all the joins are as clean as possible. Tamigawa this kit certainly isn't, and although the fit was generally very good, there was no room for any sloppiness in an area as critical as this.
Next came the main cockpit transparency and upper front nose covering. Because of the offset nature of the pilot stations, both of these sections had an asymmetric 'scalloped' profile. Think of the long-nosed Bristol Blenheim variants, and you'll get the general idea here. The kit parts represent this profile very well, including the asymmetric instrument panel which fitted under the nose cover part. This was painted Hu 94 as well, with the instrument dials being picked out in black. The cockpit glazing featured some very intricate framing detail, with the added complications of raised rivets. This made for a lot of painstaking painting, especially as I undercoated it all with Hu 94 first. There was also a lot of framing detail to be painted on the turrets. Although I assembled those in parallel with the rest of the kit, the design of the kit meant I could attach them at the very last moment, which is what I did. The rudder and tailplane assembly was straightforward, although I had to use some filler at the base of the tail/rudder part.
Heller boxart (old)
Next stop was the engine/undercarriage area. Now things began to get interesting. Each of these assemblies consisted of some 24 parts, half of which made up the undercarriage. The mudguard assemblies were extremely fiddly and required quite a bit of patience (and superglue) to get right. The insides of the engine/undercarriage pods are helpfully stamped with 'droit' and 'gauche', to remind you that the pod parts are specifically designed for the right or left sides. As a lefty, I wasn't too thrilled at being referred to as 'gauche', but it could have been worse. If this was an Italian kit, things would have been a bit more sinister. At least they don't burn us at the stake anymore! I sanded away these markings, as they would have been clearly visible even with the undercarriage installed. The Potez 540 had semi-retractable undercarriage, with the wheels semi-exposed - note that there were no undercarriage doors. However, the retractable option is not offered in the kit, even though the Smer boxart and instructions clearly show this configuration. There is also no forward bulkhead of any sort separating the undercarriage bay from where the engine would be located.
The engine pods differ between right and left for two reasons: one is the nature of the connecting points to the various support struts, which differ between inboard and outboard sides. The other is the fact that the engines are handed - or, as the Smer instructions say, 'wrong direction running'! The engines have some mirrored detail, such as a small intake on the outboard side of each pod. The propellers are also handed. The orientation of the blades means that the propellers would have turned inwards - thus, the starboard propeller would turn clockwise when viewed from the front. This is the norm, based on my limited knowledge of this area. The Smer front cover boxart and the picture of the completed model on the Heller-Humbrol cover both also seem to show inward-turning propellers. This issue is very easy to get confused about, especially as the instructions show the port engine assembly first. I know that that is a convention, but Heller are notorious for ignoring it in a completely irregular fashion. It would also have been typical of Heller to get left- and right-side parts mixed, and leave the poor modeller wondering if they're beginning to lose it. However, I think they were correct here. The propellers - indeed almost the entire engine/pod assemblies - were painted aluminium. Most of the undercarriage structure was painted in the wonderfully versatile Hu 30 green, which was the main overall colour.
Before attaching the wings, I had to attach the support struts that run from the engine pods to the junction of wing root and upper fuselage. Helpfully, enough wing root was molded onto the top fuselage section to allow this to be done without having to attach the wings first. Less helpful was the design of the struts themselves: as usual, no attempt was made to mold the end of the struts so that they would mate properly with the intended target surface. Since the struts were barely long enough to begin with, it wasn't that easy to correct. Thankfully, the outer engine to wing struts were better. In other words, I had some problems with these as well, but it was easy to cut and shape the ends to correct matters.
The main problem with the wings themselves was their orientation. The Smer instructions seem to show very slight sweepback on the leading edge, whereas dry fitting seemed to indicate a very small amount of forward sweep. In the end, I tilted the wings back ever so slightly, meaning some filler was required at the wing root join. Another area of confusion was the underwing aileron control runs. The Heller instructions show these to be angled backwards. The Smer instructions are unclear, but the Smer front cover boxart shows them angled forwards - even though the aileron itself is raised. I did it the Heller way.
Last of all came the turrets. Each consisted wholly of transparent parts, apart from the guns themselves. They were designed like propeller subassemblies, so that they can be plugged into the kit at any point. Just as with the propeller assemblies, I left them off until the very last moment, to aid painting of the main model. Each turret base has a thick pin protruding vertically in both directions. The gun attaches to the pin protruding into the middle of the turret - it looks as if the gun is just suspended there by magic! On the other side, the pin protrudes through a circular base that is cemented to the fuselage itself. The Smer instructions omit something here, as they do not instruct you to flatten the end of each pin once the fuselage base has been positioned. Otherwise, the turrets will simply fall out at the first opportunity. For the nose turret, this is irrelevant, as the base won't attach to anything inside the nose anyway. For the moment, I've left the turret loose but in position. I may just cement it in place at some future point. The detailed turret framing required some more painstaking painting, especially as some of the framing detail was inconclusive, or contradicted the boxart. This was mainly true of the nose turret, and I had to ferret out some reference photos on the Web to guide me.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
The French machine presented in this kit is supposed to be painted Hu 155 Olive Drab overall (Smer calls it Khaki). I would have thought this was most unlikely, but it didn't matter as I was building the Spanish Republican aircraft. I used the suggested paint scheme, which was an overall base of Hu 30 green with Hu 98 chocolate blotches on the upper and side surfaces. The painting guide showed the upper wings, but only the port side of the fuselage. Even some of that was obscured by the engine. Therefore, I had to engage in some guesswork. In retrospect, I should also have painted some of the 'problem' camouflage areas before attaching the wings - or even the engines. As usual, I was in too much of a rush to get the main structure complete.
Spanish Republican Version
The Propagteam decal sheet is quite basic. Indeed, I ended up only using four decals - the rudder markings and tail codes. Decals were provided for the wide red wing bands, but I didn't use them. I painted them instead. I did this not only to get a better finish, but also because the rear section of the fuselage had to be painted red anyway - it was better to be consistent. The painting guide showed the ailerons to be a bit longer than they actually are in reality, which made deciding where to place the bands (by paint or decal) a bit tricky. The decals that I did use were ok, although the rudder markings had to be trimmed a bit, and touched up afterwards. Also, the rudder decal red was not dark enough, so I just overpainted it with the same Hu 60 shade (matt red) I was already using. Again, if I were thinking ahead, I would have planned for the rudder control run on the port side of the tail unit. I should probably have attached the it only after the rudder decals were fixed in place - Propagteam decals are not the most reliable when it comes to cutting and shaping your way around some obstacle or protrusion. Lastly, the decals were coated with MattCote once they were fixed in place.
I have heard that the tail/rudder unit is not quite high enough, but I personally can't see anything terminally wrong there. The wingspan looks to be very accurate, at 22.1 metres. The length seems to be about 10 cm short of the quoted length of 16.22 metres. However, I always find that measuring the 'correct' aircraft (or kit) length can be a matter of judgement. At any rate, it seems to be very accurate, which is what you would expect from Heller.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
Building this kit was at times a tortuous experience - although the serious fit problems were relatively few, the complexity of the structure meant that any problems that did arise had to be dealt with very carefully. Once the assembled aircraft took shape, however, I knew that it had all been worth it. Ugly and ungainly it might look, but you can't deny it has a certain character!
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