D-Day Group Build Airspeed Horsa Mk1

Started by neil foster · 51 · 10 years ago
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    neil foster said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    The kit looks very nice in the box and is surprisingly big,I always imagined these gliders to be quite frail .You get two options to choose from , the Mk 1 or the Mk2 , and for this build the correct choice is the Mk1 ,the Mk2 is slightly longer and so for me the first step is to cut away the unwanted section of fuselage from just aft of the cockpit, also the Mk1 has a larger door and this also needs to be opened up, this is quite sraightforward as the moulding has a "cut line" to follow with your craft knife.

    The next step is to construct the larger door which is in three sections as it was in the real aircraft.

    Well that is as far as I have got up to now.

    Cheers N.

    7 attached images. Click to enlarge.

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    AL HOFFMAN said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Is the kit molded as a Mk2 & they give you a scribe line to cut it back to a Mk1?

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    neil foster said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Yes that's right, the scribe line was easy to cut.
    N.

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    Gregor d said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Great choice of subject Neil. Looking forward to see it build up 🙂 .

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    neil foster said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Well here is the second instalment of my Horsa build,the fuselage on this kit comes in three sections ,the nose ,the main body of the fuselage with the main wings and the tail section, these are where the hinges are on the real aircraft are so I guess this is so you can build it being loaded/unloaded in a dio.

    The cockpit is fairly basic on the real aircraft and so it is in the kit,I added some harnesses made from very thin strips of Tamiya tape painted up and once it was built up I thought the control columns were too short so I pulled them off and extended them a couple of mm's to raise them up a bit,I may well pose this in an in flight dio (not decided yet) but if I do I will need to source a couple of pilot figures .

    Thanks for looking ,N.

    3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

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    Simon Whitney said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Looking nice Neil. Raid the spares box mate.

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    Jaime Carreon said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Very interesting and different subject, Neil. Looking good so far. You might just have to build a Gooney Bird or a Stirling to tow it with...

    I may have missed it somewhere, but whose kit is this and in what scale?

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    Andrew Wainwright said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Looking great so far Neil 😉

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    Erich Goldbach said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Looking good indeed, being on one of those gliders during the invasion must have been a truly terrifying ride into hell!

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    neil foster said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Thanks for looking guys,the kit is Italeari 1/72 by the way.I can't find a lot of information on the Horsa's but from what I can gather getting these things back on the ground was more of a controlled crash than a landing.
    N.

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    Gregor d said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Great start Neil. Airfix had one of these out a few years back but it may be from the same moulds.

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    neil foster said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    I knew about the Airfix kit and I wouldn't be surprised if it is the same moulding but I sourced my kit from my mate Mark Housley's massive stash and this was the one he had.
    cheers for looking N.

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    neil foster said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    I recently saw a decal sheet on Hannants website that covered the 1/72 Horsa AND the 1/72 Shorts Sterling that would make an interesting dio.
    N.

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    Jaime Carreon said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Neil, I think Airfix does some figure sets in 1/72 that include British paratroopers, you might be able to source your pilots from there. The pilots were regular Army soldiers trained to fly gliders.

    I, for some reason, have an old Airfix Stirling kit that I'm thinking about converting to a glider tug (feel free to talk me out of it!). Found these while I was doing some research and thought you might be interested:

    http://www.valiant-wings.co.uk/short-stirling-mk-iv-nose-5-p.asp

    http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/128132.aspx?PageIndex=1

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    neil foster said 10 years, 1 month ago:

    Just went through the build for the Stirling tug ,WOW well beyond me ,I didn't know the nose was different, brilliant job he made though,cheers for attaching it .
    N.