1/32 Matchbox Tiger Moth

Hempel’s Aviation

by Dean Large

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The Tiger Moth. What can you say about this aeroplane that hasn’t been said already? It looks right, flies beautifully, and there’s nothing like stooging around in an open cockpit on a summer’s day. Every pilot should try this at least once.  

A couple of years ago I went to Australia for a month’s holiday. While I was there I decided to fulfill a longstanding ambition and do a loop in a Tiger Moth, so I rooted out a local flying club that ran one for pleasure flights, Hempel’s Aviation at Archerfield Airport on the Gold Coast. I enquired about the chances of taking the controls myself, and was told that as I had 150 hours of taildragger experience in my logbook that wouldn’t be a problem.  

I arrived, and strapped in to the most colourful Moth I’d ever seen, and proceeded to spend the next hour looping and spinning over the coast just along from Surfer’s Paradise. I took some photos of the plane, and when I recently started modeling again I decided to use them as reference to build a replica of Hempel’s Moth. It’s the first time I’ve ever made a model of an actual aircraft I’ve flown.

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I searched the Ebay listings for a suitable candidate, and got an old Matchbox model. (I’ve found out since that Revell also do a Moth in 1/32, I don’t know if that would be any better.) Luckily, the real Moth is fabric covered, and so panel lines virtually don’t exist on the model, which is a relief as they would almost certainly have been raised. I was surprised to find the baggage hatch behind the cockpit was engraved rather than raised, though.  

The model was typical 70’s in terms of fit, and a LOT of filler was needed on the fuselage, especially around the tail. The wings needed no filler though, as their joint with the fuselage on the real thing is hardly seamless! The engine cowling caused some headaches though, as its fit was abysmal. Never really sorted that one out, either.

Matchbox tended to mould fine details very thickly and clumsily, so I had to scratchbuild certain parts that were just too thick out of the box. I had to make certain parts of the undercarriage, the cockpit hatches and both windscreens, the rudder and elevator horns, fuel lines, and the two aerials behind the cockpit. The cockpit itself was pretty sparse, so I made throttle levers and linkages from stretched sprue, and positioned the stick forward as I intended to drop the elevators. Hardly noticeable, but I know it’s all there. I also made some seat cushions out of Milliput and added some seatbelts so I could casually fling one of them over the side of the front cockpit.

Paints used were Tamiya acrylics, with Johnsons floor wax as the gloss coat. I learned something valuable about airbrush painting, too – always make sure the undercoat is the same colour on every part of the plane! I’d primed the fuselage in white and the rest of the plane in grey due to availability, and had a hell of a time getting even the red to come out the same shade on each part. I had no idea the undercoat would have such an effect on the final colour…maybe preshading DOES work, after all!  

I used steel wire in 0.015”  and 0.020” thicknesses for the rigging wires, cyano’d into predrilled holes. The rudder and elevator cables looked thinner than this, so I made them from stretched black sprue.  

The decals were tricky, as I had to make them myself. The Hempel’s logos and serial numbers were just a matter of patiently trying out sizes and fonts, but the nose art was a different matter. I had a photo showing the cartoon of an aviator in leather helmet giving the victory V sign, but it wasn’t clear. I emailed Hempel’s themselves explaining what I was doing and asking for a clear picture of the art, but received no reply, so I did it myself. I sketched the nose art out, scanned it in to the computer and printed it onto decal paper. It came out a lot better than I’d expected. I printed the decals out, let them dry overnight, and then coated them with Microscale Liquid Decal Film – disaster! The ink ran all over the place. In the end, after ruining another set of decals, I tried thinning the decal film with alcohol (as I knew water wouldn’t work) and airbrushing it on. Success! Third time lucky…

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So all in all, I wasn’t too unhappy with the way it turned out, considering I’d had to do a fair bit of extra work to get a result. I thought I’d return this Australian Moth to its home turf, so I printed out a large photo I took of Archerfield Airport to use as a background, and photographed the model against this as a backdrop. It seemed to work OK for the most part. Do you think Hempel’s would approve?

Dean

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Photos and text © by Dean Large