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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