Going to Buckingham

[Gondor]

I recently bought this kit by Valom of an aircraft I know very little about. It looks, different. Anyway, in the box it looks very nice. Finely engraved surface detail, but otherwise it is definitely a smaller producer's kit with all the hallmarks of that.

I started by removing all the bits that have x's marked on the sprue plans and adding them to an old margarine tub, very handy things for storing spares. Typically, though, the wings are butt-jointed to the fuselage. To me, that is a future breakage waiting to happen, so I need to add a spar. First, let's find where the centre of the wing is, as we can find a common line that matches the top and bottom of each wing half.



This line will be used to generate the location to place the spar. I decided that 2cm from the front of the wing would be a decent location to place the spar. The wings were duly marked.



As were the wing roots on the fuselage.



That's it for now, more later, possibly even tonight.

[Rheged]

Is our esteemed colleague Gondor about to demonstrate an alternative use for a wire coat hanger?.............or does he have something even more appropriate in mind?

[Gondor]

Is our esteemed colleague Gondor about to demonstrate an alternative use for a wire coat hanger?.............or does he have something even more appropriate in mind?

No coat hangers, washing-up bottles or sticky-backed plastic involved, nor have I prepared anything in advance.

[NARSES2]

    

[kerick]

Looks like maybe from the Beaufighter family? Very interesting.

[The Wooksta!]

No, although it kind of began as a Beaufighter derivative.  By the time it was ready, it was already outclassed by the Mosquito.  Many were finished without engines and just pushed into a storage field.  A few were converted into couriers but I doubt they saw much use.  The wings, engines and tail surfaces were mated to a new fuselage designed for the Beaufighter, morphing into the Brigand.  They then realised that they need a trainer for the latter, so reworked the Buckingham nose with side by side seats and came up with the Buckmaster.  Both Brigand and Buckmaster served until the early 60s in second line roles.

There was a proposal for a PR version, which I've thought of doing with my Magna one, albeit in flight so I don't have to deal with the vile u/c.

[Gondor]

It's been a Spar Day

Wing spar as opposed to a spa, unfortunately.



The ultrasonic knife has made fairly short work of cutting the holes. The downside is that the vibrations tend to make the knife melt its way through the plastic, so there is a bit of cleaning up to do.



Certainly quicker than cutting out the holes for the spar conventionally though.



And as you can see, the marking method I used worked out. I may put some internal bracing inside the wings, but I might not.

[NARSES2]

And as you can see, the marking method I used worked out.

It did indeed 

[The Wooksta!]

I've dug out my Magna Buckingham.  The canopies are a wonderful shade of yellow...

[Gondor]

So, I looked at the sidewalls of the cockpit



Now I am not expecting 100% accuracy; I would be a fool to do so, but I find it difficult to relate the above picture with the one below.



I think that the one on the left of the first picture goes to the pilot's right, and the right side part goes to his left, when he is facing forward, that is. Colour will be predominantly black with the floor and bulkheads interior green, then interior green for the rest of the fuselage interior. While on the subject of colour, I am thinking of having this aircraft as operating in the Far East, as they were slated to go there at one point. I am thinking Medium Sea Grey/Green uppers with Light Grey underside and Blue/White roundels.

[The Wooksta!]

Your model obviously, but I'd go with either what most of the Buckinghams seem to have be  n delivered in - Extra Dark Sea Grey/Dark Slate Grey over Azure Blue (which is a fantastic combination of colours) or the Dark Earth/Dark Green over Azure Blue which is what some of the Mosquitoes were supposed to have been repainted in, but the units involved never bothered with the Azure Blue underneath - the Mosquitoes had been delivered in the Nightfighter scheme* of Med Sea Grey/Dark Green Over Med Sea Grey and the Far East units simply sprayed Dark Earth over the upper surface MSG.  Or you could go Tiger Force, with white uppers and Night underneath. 

I rather like the first option on an 8 Sqn aircraft, replacing their Blenheins and Wellingtons when they were in Aden.




*By the end of the war, Mosquitoes were being produced in only two schemes - Overall PRU Blue for PR aircraft, and the Nightfighter scheme (MSG/Dark Green/MSG) - and delivered to RAF maintenance units in those colours.  The MUs then repainted or didn't according to the intended end users.

[Gondor]

Yesterday evening, I fitted the parts into the cockpit. In the process, I had to pull apart the back wall and floor of the cockpit; otherwise, the floor would have been too low. Once that was corected I needed to adjust the width of the wall so the other half of the fuselage would sit against the right fuselage side, into which everything else was fitting. Pictures of that, after I perform the detail painting.

I also looked at the engines provided. Not too bad, no exhaust pipes though. So what can I use to look like them? Wire is the answer. Flexible, easy to manipulate and will hold its shape when it is put into one.



I bought the wire a while ago with the intent on moterising an Airfix Hercules with engines they sold for the big 1/24 scale kits. But that was several decades ago, possibly in the 70's. Anyway, the diameter of the wire is about right, so I have cut a length from the roll and put it into the kit box for use.

I want to put the main undercarriage into their wheel wells once the fuselage and wings are all together. Unfortunatly the mail legs would not go through the openings in the nacels. I found out why.



The kit parts are very nicely moulded; however, the technology used to make the kit means corners are sometimes taken, and here the corners of the holes for the undercarriage to pass through have become a victim. The lower nacelle has the edge of the undercarriage hole at right angles to the outer surface of the nacelle. This means that the hole tapers as it goes further into the nacelle. This makes the hole too small for the undercarriage leg to pass through, which is not ideal, and it looks wrong, showing the thickness of the plastic, which is unrealistic for the scale. The upper nacelle in the picture has been modified. Below are two pictures that show the difference in a much closer view.

Unmodified



Modified



There is still a bit of cleaning up to do, as I used a motorised bit to do the hard work, but it's getting there, and I am happy with how it's going.

[Gondor]

Today, I have been mostly painting



Centauri, not part of the Republic



The undercarriage bays, including the nacels and the engine cowelings were all painted in the same basic colour.

Hopefully, I will get further with the painting over the weekend.

[Gondor]

Not much to show for today's toil. Most of the time, I have been doing bits and pieces. The only real achievement that I can show is one of the engines.

Here is a before picture. You can see between the cylinders nearest the camera, there is a lump of extra resin. Very odd, as the other engine is perfect.



And here it is after I removed the best part of it. I stopped as I didn't want to damage any detail that was left.



The mess that has been caused and the lack of detail should be partly covered up by the front row of cylinders and by my adding exhaust pipes. Being buried inside the engine cowling should help as well. An interesting thing about the engines is that the propellers as supplied in the kit will not fit. The back of the propeller hub has a shortish and stubby rod that extends from it. This is way too wide for the recess in the front of the engine, so I have drilled the holes out to 1.4mm as I have some brass tube that is that size. I also removed the stubs from the back of the propeller hubs and drilled a similar hole. Part of the brass tube will be glued into each propeller hub, leaving a length to slot tightly into the front of each engine.

[Gondor]

I have not been getting very far with this build recently, too much real world things getting in the way, unfortunately. At the moment, I am getting hung up on the exhausts for the engines, as the resin ones provided don't have any.



When they should look more like this,



I may end up having to try to make the cooling fans for the front of the engines to hide the lack of exhausts.

I have, though, managed to solve a problem I was having with pictures of the turret fitted to the Buckingham. The question was how many guns and of what type were fitted in the turret?
To answer the question, I had to get my hands on a copy of "British Aircraft Armament, Volume One by R Wallace Clarke", but once I did, I was able to look up the aircraft and found that the Bristol B.12 Turret, which is what was fitted, had four different versions. The Mk.1 had four 0.303 in Brownings, the Mk.II had two 0.5 in Brownings, and the Mk.IV had two 0.303 in Brownings, which explains why some pictures show the turret with four guns, while others and some plans show only two. Accompanying pictures also show that the "chair" supplied in the kit looks nothing like the parts that make a B.12 turret. As a point of interest, the "Under Turret" is a B.13, and the nose armament is in a mounting called the B.14, which was supposed to be developed to move to some extent, but with the cancellation of the aircraft, so was the development of the nose armament. Both the B.13 and B.14 were 0.303 in Brownings.