It's a Quickie ! Really weird
Idly leafing through the Hannants’ newsletter a couple of months ago, hoping to resist the urge to increase the stash pile, I noticed a new release from Brengun of a resin 1/48 scale Rutan Quickie. Perhaps unknown to many, the Quickie is a curious single or two-seat kit-build plane, designed for those of limited means who want to fly.
It caught may attention since my brother and two like-minded friends built a two-seat version back in the 1970s. This was lovingly finished and registered as G-KUTU, flying very briefly a few times before one of my brother’s co-builders managed to put it down none too gently, after which it has never flown. My brother eventually bought the other two out and since that time, it’s been stored in various hangars and one of our Mum’s garages. It currently resides in France where my brother has aspirations of completing its renovation and flying it again. While he’s had the engine re-conditioned, it’s in a queue behind various auto projects from a similar era, so who knows when this may be ready for inspection..
So I thought the Brengun kit would be a suitable project for me to complete as a birthday present for my brother’s next birthday in August, complete with the livery of G-KUTU.
Little did I notice before buying the kit from Hannants that the Brengun resin version was actually the single seat version, rather than the two-seat model currently occupying part of a barn in NW France. Hey Ho, I thought. I’ll do it anyway and paint it in a similar scheme like G-KUTU, using what I thought was an appropriate spurious US registration.
I’ve concluded from the build that I’m not good with small resin kits. Of some advanced years, with poor eyesight despite detail lenses, clumsy fingers and a tendency to over-complicate builds, this one proved a bit of an unfulfilled challenge for my talents. Small resin parts are much more delicate than their styrene equivalents, a lesson learned after breaking several and losing tiny bits to the hairy monster covering the floor. I’m well aware of the horrendous fit of the canopy which I put down to my ineptitude rather than Brengun’s accuracy.
If nothing else, I hope you all find this an amusing little (it’s tiny! 105 x 105 mm) novelty, a long way from my usual diet of WW1 and WW2 fighters. Something perhaps to lighten the lockdown load.
Burt Rutan was guilty of many weird contraptions. We had many of Long-Eze, Vari-Eze and the odd Quickie flying nearby my childhood house in Stockholm. Most private little planes ate gone now, even the odd airliner make me raise an eybrow in covid times as just about anything that flies is grounded.
This is a tiny little plane in the full scale, so I can only imaging how hard it must have been to construct one that is 48 times smaller... You mentioned the exact reasons why I no longer build anything in 1/72 scale anymore. I'm sure that your brother will like his birthday gift. Maybe this will be the inspiration he needs to get his back in the air again.
I pressed the "liked" button too.
Its still a nice looking model of something that you don't see every day in model world.
Everything's a learning curve. The next resin kit will be better. My recent Anigrand Skyshark post is evidence of that as I wish I could have redone the canopy.
Something different for sure, looks great.
Nice plane indeed, but definitely nonstandard shape, took me 30s to figure out what direction it flies forward 😀
What an unusual plane it is indeed.
And just 10cm for a 1/48, that is really small.
For sure your brother will like it.
Looks great, Paul!
What an interesting build, I like it a lot...