Hi everyone!
After admiring Tasos Tzigkounakis @t-tasos amazing Noratlas build yesterday... (https://imodeler.com/2020/12/1-72-heller-noratlas/)
...temptation started to rise for building my stashed kit. Tasos was kindly offered to provide me with any info I need (and I definitely will ask him for! - thanks again, Τάσο!) and Neil Foster @neil-foster encouraged me to start mine.
So, yesterday night I grabbed it out and started putting it together.
I intend to finish it as a Hellenic Air Force bird 52-133 “Νίκη 4”.
This plane took part in operation Νίκη (Victory), the code name given to a secret military mission of Greece on the 21st to the 22nd of July 1974 to Cyprus for the purpose of transporting paratroopers to the airport of Nicosia. The mission was partially successful and was described by the international press as a “suicide mission”.
52-133 was accidentally shot down by friendly fire, outside Nicosia airport, all but one perished.
It is a sad story.
My build will be a tribute to those brave men.
The Heller kit first appeared in 1978. It is an old school kit with raised panel lines and quite many rivets.
Mine is a 1996 rebox.
Parts look generally ok with not a lot of flash, but heavily warped, especially the larger ones, so I am prepared for quite a bit of twistin upon putting it together.
Clear parts look ok too, ifnot a bit on the thick side, but they are excused for a 1978 kit!
Decals thankfully look ok too (I will use some stencils...), not plagued by the usual Heller/Airfix color offseting of that era.
Instructions are provided in 2 two-sided printed A3 leaflets and are adequate and clear.
This is definitely not the easiest kit to put together...
So, here we go!
Warped parts triumph!
I first glued the six piece wing and laid it rest flat for the glue to start curing. Next I assembled the two piece booms (sans the fins) and the two piece horizontal stabilizer.
With the glue still curing (meaning the joints being still workable), I attached the above subassemblies together:
Fit of all above was bad towards awful, requiring a lot of twisting, bending and repositioning.
Thankfully, the Heller styrene is soft and workable (but this means that the landing gear might be prone to sagging with time, under the heavy finished model...).
Finally, I managed to have a reasonably aligned wing/boom/tail assembly!
As you can see, the front part of the booms is still unglued:
this is due to heavy warping!
I decided to do an all-doors closed model, as it is much easier and I also like the cleaner looks, inasmuch as I like to adore the nicely detailed open cabins and cargo areas...
So, I glued all 3 fuselage doors shut, then glued the 26 small windows from the inside of the fuselage halves, attached the cockpit floor, front wheel well and the two bulkheads at the starboard fuselage half.
Since the finished model will be tail heavy, I stuffed two hefty fishing weights between the two rear cockpit bulkheads, secured with my sons modeling clay (sorry, no pics, as I was kind of lost in all this putting together excitement - paraphrasing Dirty Harry's quote!).
I then joined the two fuselage halves. The usual bad fit was experienced, with inner reinforcements and liquefied styrene being my allies.
Finally, the wing/boom/tail assembly was attached on the fuselage. The attachment area is flat and large, so, in order to have peace of mind, I used liquefied styrene as glue, which, moreover, oozed out of the offending expected gaps, acting as filler.
After microtrimmings produced an acceptably aligned assembly, I left everything to cure;
More to come, with a surprise painting!
