Very rainy Sunday, so time to start a new kit. For some reason I have always had a soft spot for the DHC Buffalo. I have two kits - a very crude 1/72 Combat Models vac form that must be 30+ years old, and a 1/144 Amodel kit. I have been building 1/144 recently and so dig up the Amodel kit. I had built the Amodel DHC Chipmunk a few years back, so had no illusions this would be a shake the box build.
The first thing I notice after opening the box is the relatively few parts. The kit includes a
full cabin interior, a small photoetch fret and what like decent decals. A closer examination of the parts shows decent, but soft, detail. The parts have a lot of flash and no locating tabs. Definitely a short run kit!
A quick dry fit to test fit shows that the mit is going to require a lot of putty. It is also clearly a tail sitter, so I will have to remember to add nose weight.
A closer look at the decals brings disappointment. The roundels are silver maple vs the modern style. The silver maple appears to have also been used for the Canadian flag on the tai, and the flag dimensions seem suspect. The letters seem like they were hand drawn, wobbly, and with strange spacing. I have replacement roundels, and think I have replacements flags, but will have to use the lettering. At least the lightning stripes seem okay. Too bad CanMilAir is gone or I would simply replace the decals.
Construction started with the cockpit. Details are crude, but unlikely much will be seen thru the small windows.
The instructions don’t give any indication of how much nose weight is needed. There isn’t much space either, so I try and cram as many fishing sinkers in as I can.
On to the main cabin interior. The Kit included full cabin detail, with bench seats and roof insert. Initially I thought I thought I would build one side with the bench down and the other side stowed up. Pictures showes the seat back to be webbing, which is very visible then the cabin windows. The kits solid bench seat back wouldn’t therefore work. I found a picture with the webbing removed but the seat down, and decided to go that way. There was no way anything would be visible thru the cabin windows, but the kit allows the rear door to be positioned opened. That seeNed like a good way to show the interior detail. The kit doesn’t include legs for the seat, so I stretched some spruce and
cut 18 pieces to length. Pictures show a red Floor area under the seat, with a blue border, so this was dutifully masked and painted. The bench was a very fiddlely thing to construct but I finally got it together. It looked okay, and would be adequate when viewed thru the open main door.
A quick test fit of the floor and it quickly became apparent that nothing would be visible thru the open main door. Oh well!
it was time to join the fuselage halves together. Lots of tape and finger pressure and eventually halves were together. Things lined up quite well but my earlier thought that I would need a lot of putty was confirmed.
Good progress for the first day. Still raining but time to do some errands.
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