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SPECIAL HOBBY 1:72 LOCKHEED L10 ELECTRA |
Reviewer:
Peter Hobbins (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted:
21 January 2003
First flying in 1934, the Electra was a popular pre-war airliner that filled a gap between small single-engined types and the bigger twins such as the DC-3. VH-UZO, the particular aircraft I decided to model, arrived in Australia in 1937 and led an active life with Ansett Airways (christened ‘Ansertes’), the USAAF and various post-war owners until struck off the civil register in 1967. During the 1980s it was restored and flew again in 1991. I took a fancy to the aeroplane and decided to model Ansertes in its post-restoration scheme as an uncharacteristically non-military project.
This is a limited-run kit and as such had some of the typical pluses and minuses you would expect. The 40 injection-moulded parts were generally nice: rather feint engraved panel lines but fairly crisp trailing edges, and a few flow marks on the wing uppers that had to be filled and sanded. The small bag of resin bits contained a nice dash, the engines, a pair of seats and the control yokes. While the side windows were relatively clear injection-moulded shapes, a single vacformed piece provided the cockpit roof and windows. Decals were included for four machines: an Rumanian civilian plane, Amelia Earhart’s ill-fated Electra and two Spanish Civil War numbers. The decals were quite nice and even included the tiny Pratt & Whitney logos for the engine cowlings. The 8-page A5 instruction booklet was pretty clear about what goes where and which small parts the modeller has to fabricate.
I try to avoid starting with cockpits, so I first built the wheel wells – the uppers are provided but no sides, so lots of fun judging bits of scrap card until it all fitted snugly. The bottom wing is one piece to provide a good dihedral; the top sections fit reasonably well on this, although the ailerons took some time to separate owing to the thickness of the plastic. Adding the engine nacelle next was a bit fiddly as the parts didn’t fit too closely and only have a small mating surface. A semi-circular bulkhead is also a good idea to avoid see-though into the engine cavity. I joined the cowling halves at this point, sanded the join smooth and thinned the rear cowl lip before test-fitting against the wing.
The tail area was next and is not the model’s high point. I cut the elevators free, but had many problems attaching the vertical tails. The pieces are too wide to sit on the tailplane – they overhang at front and back – so a lot of slicing and sanding was required to get these bits to match up. With no positive attachment points, getting the upper and lower fin parts to sit perpendicular to the tailplane was also something of an achievement!
Finally I moved on to the cabin. Unfortunately, although the cockpit is nicely catered for, there is only a floor and front and rear bulkheads for the cabin interior. This was a shame as I wanted to model the plane with the access door open, which I did after drilling out a hole in the fuselage side and creating a new door from card. After scratching around for references and supplies, I finally took the copilot’s seat and made 10 resin copies of it to serve as passenger seats, then glued a strip of plastic to cover the interior roof join. To this I added a series of plastic circles which were later painted to represent ceiling lights. I then created curtain rails out of rod and tiny curtains from bits of champagne bottle foil! The interior was then painted in a pleasant period fawn colour and the seats were added. Not a huge amount could be seen through the windows or the doorway, but I felt better for having done it!
© Peter Hobbins 2003
Due to uncertainty about the placement of the cabin floor and bulkheads in the instructions, there was a bit of trial and error in joining the fuselage halves together, but I got there with a bit of tape and strong glue. I found one fuselage half marginally smaller than the other but some sanding at the extremities helped solve this. The fuselage mated to the wings and tailfeathers reasonably well, and the cabin windows popped in nicely. Adding the cockpit roof/windows piece was an exercise in patience, slowly slicing it away until it fitted perfectly, then various layers of clear parts cement and filler helped fair it into the fuselage curvature, but it was tedious work.
The resin engines were rather generic; they didn’t really look like Wright Whirlwinds or Pratt & Whitney Wasp Juniors, but I decided to use them anyways, although I replaced the rather crude kit propellers with some suitable Aeroclub ones. The undercarriage is poorly represented, and needs several additional pieces added from rod to look anything like the original; the wheels are also rather squarish and to my eye too broad. Various aerials and exhaust pipes, etc, were created from scrap, while the fuselage-top red navigation beacon and the distinctive twin nose lights were from model railway supplies.
Once the model was built I sanded it all over, rescribing where necessary, then polished the plastic. In line with my references, the undersurfaces were sprayed with a pale fawn colour, then masked. This was followed with gloss Tamiya black, which was masked off for the leading edges and given a coat of flat. The rest of the model then received Alclad II ‘Polished Aluminium’, which although bright was probably the wrong shade, as the restored aircraft is buffed to an almost chrome sheen.
The problem with modelling a unique machine is you have to source decals from where you can. I was amazed that I came up with a complete set of markings from many places in the spares box, but this also created its own problems. Some of the decals were rather old and stuck so hard to the paint that I ended up having to scrape the surface to reposition them. As Alclad is pre-thinned for spraying it can’t really be brushed on to touch up damage, so at the last post I felt a bit disappointed that I’d ruined the finish in a few spots. One day I may have the courage to strip and fix this error …
To my eye the kit looks a bit fat in the guts compared with the real thing, but when you fill the interior with seats there isn’t much room, so perhaps that’s correct. In terms of dimensions it is about right in length but a few mm under in span.
Overall this project wasn’t too hard, and would certainly have been quicker without trying to add a cabin interior, which you can probably live without. However, several elements like the tail fins, undercarriage and anonymous engines do let the model down a bit, and require some ingenuity and experience to fix. I’d be interested to see how this kit compares with the old Rareplanes vacform, but it’s certainly a buildable kit of a sweet little airliner that presents lots of esoteric markings options.
© Peter Hobbins 2003
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