DH 89 Dragon Rapide
Here’s my latest build, the new DH 89A Dragon Rapide in 1:48 from Armory.
Railway Air Services (RAS) was founded in 1934 when the four prominent British railway companies - Great Western Railway, London Midland & Scottish, London & North Eastern, and Southern Railway - got together with Imperial Airways. At the time, passenger transport by air was still in its infancy, with trains the usual mode of transportation for people wishing to move around the country.
Where trains fell short, however, was when it came to Ireland, the Scottish Isles, and the Channel Islands. For example, you could travel between London and Belfast in four hours by air, but if you made the same journey by train and boat, it would take 11 hours and 30 minutes.
For the railways partnering with Imperial Airways made perfect sense. By forming a partnership, the railways and the airline benefited as they were not competing against each other. Imperial Airways agreed to supply everything to do with the flying side of the business, including planes, pilots, maintenance, and airfields. For its part, the railways agreed to handle administrative duties, the selling of tickets, and marketing.
In the early days of this partnership, aircraft used were the DH 84 Dragon, the 4-engined DH 86, and the DH 89 Dragon Rapide.
I’m a fan old Golden Age aircraft of the ‘20s and ‘30s, so I was happy to get my hands on this one. It’s a very nice kit with good details, if a bit overdone with some little PE pieces.that I didn’t use. It was mostly a trouble free build, except for a couple of minor things: the fuel tanks aft of the engine nacelles over the top of the bottom wing have a large step between the tank and the rear of the nacelles that I didn’t notice during dry fitting, and needed to be sanded down. When installing the top wing, I found that is best to install the outboard strut on the bottom wing first to use as a guide for positioning the top wing. Otherwise, if attached to the fuselage without the outboard strut in place as a guide the dihedral and/or sweep is a little off and the outboard strut won’t fit. I needed a small amount of filler at the rear of the wing root because I had to sweep the wing forward a degree or two. The painting instructions were a little confusing. They call for Aluminum and medium gray, (Mr. Color C337/H337). That is equivalent to MM 1721, which I had a bottle of. It looked way to dark, nothing like the box art and some old black & white photos of this airplane that didn’t show much contrast. However, I believe that color is correct. I took some black and white photos of the model and they look close to the photos of the real thing. The kit comes with decals for 5 aircraft and they are excellent. I chose G-ACPR, "City Of Birmingham". I deviated from the instructions a little. I installed the fuselage and cabin top before installing the top wings for more strength and stability. I also painted the horizontal tail surfaces gray before installation and saved that for one of the last steps, after rigging the wings with flat wire. Now I’m thinking of doing another one with a different paint scheme
Excellent Rapide, Chas! Really imposing in 1/48!
Very cool
That’s very nice build of a beautiful and graceful aircraft Chas.
Nice to see a model of a civilian aircraft, Chas.
Wow that's a real eye catcher, beautifully done.
Great job mate. Love the paint job.
Nice work and research. I contemplated the RAS scheme for a 1/72 model but never got round to it. You've done really well.
Arctic Decals (Finland) has a nice sheet of decals for G-AKIP, the D.H. 89 that flies at the Shuttleworth Collection. Beautiful scheme of dark blue and white. That's how I intend to do mine.
Yours is really nice Chas, - inspirational.
Thanks, Tom. I'll check it out!
Beautiful model Chris !
A fine result, Chas @chasbunch
Your build clearly shows how beautiful this aircraft is.
A work of art.
What a beautiful build, Chas @chasbunch. Love the colors!
Wish Airfix did a new version of this plane!
Looks great! Such an interesting-looking aircraft.
What an amazing model! The fabric control surfaces look very realistic.