1/72 Special Hobby

Percival Pembroke C1

by Stuart Porteous

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Prototype:

The Percival Pembroke first flew in 1952, 45 examples entering RAF service the following year. It was based on the civilian Prince, but with an increased wingspan to allow a greater weight to be carried. The Royal Navy used another version of the Prince, renaming it the Sea Prince, and the Pembroke was also used by the air forces of West Germany and Belgium.  In RAF service it served mainly in the light communications role but could also carry out photographic reconnaissance if required, a number being modified for this role.

It served in several overseas locations, but it is probably best remembered for its role with 60 Sqn as a general transport and communications hack in RAF Germany. The current Special Hobby boxing describes it as a “Cold War Spy Plane” - I have not been able to find any further information on any clandestine roles, but it would certainly make sense given that part of it’s routine work would have involved overflying the DDR in transit to and from Gatow. There are certainly a number of interesting lumps and bumps visible in some of the published photographs which could correspond to camera mountings or aerials.

A refurbishment programme in 1970 re-sparred a number of aircraft to extend their lives, and the remaining seven were finally withdrawn from RAF Wildenrath in 1988.

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Model:

I used the original boxing of the Special Hobby kit, which only includes decals for West German and Belgian aircraft, so I bought the appropriate Model Alliance sheet to provide the RAF decals.  I believe the solid nose on the RAF version may be different from that provided in the kit but I couldn’t see how so I ignored it.

The Special Hobby kit is rather nice. In common with most short-run kits there are no locating pins and the sprue gates are quite thick, but the parts clean up nicely and the mouldings are very crisp with finely engraved panelling. This is especially true of the moulded transparencies which are spot on.  Full interior detailing is provided, including passenger seats and fittings to set out the cabin as a wireless operator’s classroom, and a nicely detailed cockpit. Hardly any of it is visible once the fuselage is closed up. The fuselage windows are a simple interference fit in the holes, there are no flanges or any other locating aides so I had the bright idea that leaving them off until painting was complete then fitting them from the outside. That way I could save a lot of tedious masking later by just bunging the holes up with Maskol. Big mistake, more of which later.

The interior and fuselage went together well, except that I managed to get a small step in the fuselage halves. This is entirely avoidable and down to my ham-fistedness rather than any fault with the kit, but explains why there is so much filler around this seam on the photographs.. The kit is very tail heavy so I crammed as much chopped up lead sheet as I could fit into the nose cone and under the cockpit floor. If you choose to model the version with the clear nose panel I imagine you will have problems here, although given the limited view through the cockpit windows you could probably fill that with lead too and no-one will notice.  

The kit includes optional parts to model the original Prince wings or the extended Pembroke ones, and it is here that I encountered the only major problem - the wing extensions are a bit thick. However, 5 minutes with a large file followed by sanding and re-scribing fixed that. The wing tips themselves are moulded as separate transparencies allowing the navigation lights to be modelled by simply masking them off.

Attaching the wings to the fuselage repays care and attention in getting everything set up square, and there is some filling to be done to achieve a smooth join. It is very easy to get the wings straight but the fuselage slightly skew whiff, and it is a pain to correct. There was a slight difference in levels on one side, cured by more filler. I eventually got everything square and level, and left it on one side for a week until everything had set solid. The engine nacelles will also require filler around the wing leading edge to get a smooth join.

Painting was carried out with Halfords white plastic primer, followed by Citadel Skull White for the upper fuselage and Xtracolour Light Aircraft Grey for the rest. The Skull White dries matt, so a couple of coats of Future were applied where required for decals.

I always think decalling is the best bit and was looking forward to trying the Model Alliance decals, but I was sadly disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, they are beautifully printed, crisp and in register, there are enough for two aircraft and they go on a treat. However, the underwing serials are too big, there are no stencils, and the instructions are just wrong. Sorry. 

At first I thought this was just down to me not having the reference quoted on the instruction sheet, so I spent quite a while studying the many Pembroke photos on Airliners.net thinking these may be just minor variations in livery. Then I noticed that the graphics on the instructions didn’t match the thumbnail photos which MA had helpfully provided on the same instruction sheet !  

Apart from the underwing serials, the diagonal ‘flash’ on the blue cheatline goes in front of the leading window not through it, both anti glare panels provided are the wrong shape, the demarcation between the white fuselage top and the grey wings is straight not curved, and the prominent red AVTUR filler markings on the top of the wings are shown on the instructions but not provided on the sheet. The instructions suggest using the kit stencils, which are incorrect for an RAF machine (and in any case are in Belgian or German) and the roundels are so thin that the grey/white demarcation line shows through on the fuselage sides. I know this latter problem affects most aftermarket roundels but a couple of white blanking discs would have helped. Sorry, but at nine quid a sheet this was a bit disappointing, especially compared to some of their other releases. 

Since I was going to have to make up the underwing serials myself I went for WV740, for the simple reason that it had plain grey props rather than stripey ones, and that meant less masking. AVTUR filler dots came from the spares box and I have ignored the stencils for now.

Once decalling was complete I gave everything a coat of Humbrol acrylic satin varnish. The real aircraft were gloss but this does not scale down well and I therefore never use full gloss on a model. Then I set about the windows.

The theory is simple - test fit the window in the hole, file to fit as required, then glue in place with a bit of Clearfix. Hmm. There followed a lot of shaking and poking and general faffing about trying to fish loose windows out of the inside, but eventually they were all done. Next time I’ll fit them while the fuselage is still in two bits, at least then you can get behind them easily to push them back out a bit if necessary.

The finishing touches were the camera (?) fairing under the nose and brass strip aerials.

Conclusion:

I enjoyed building this. It’s different, it went together fairly painlessly and it looks good sharing the tarmac with my 2 Sqn Jaguar. Recommended. 

Stuart 

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Photos and text © by Stuart Porteous