I built this as a comission
for a fellow as a 90th birthday present for his father
who used to fly these out of Walney Island in 1944. Not
my usual scale and not a subject I would have picked but
I think it turned out okay. Apparently the old gent was
chuffed to bits and that's all that matters. The last
time I built a comission was well over 20 years ago and
I swore then that I would never do it again. The fact
that it was a horrible Smer 1/48th Fairey Swordfish (this
was long before the Tamiya kit existed) and that I, a
chronic procrastinator, ended up pulling an all-nighter
on xmas eve to finish it may have had something to do
with that vow.
This was my first experience
with a Magna kit and though it isn't perhaps the finest
resin kit I've ever seen, it's by no means the worst either.
The white resin has the texture and hardness of a bar
of Dove soap but with the added bonus of a zillion air
bubbles in it. A great deal of time and effort therefore
went into filling all the tiny - and some not so tiny
- holes. The end result is okay, perhaps not to my usual
standards, but it was a good lesson in banging something
together and actually finishing it within a limited time
frame. I had a hair over 6 weeks to get it done and yes,
once again I put in a few very late nights the week it
was due but at least I didn't have to pull an all-nighter
this time.
With the exception of some
instrument dials from Reheat and an antenna from brass
rod and Uschi rigging thread, this is straight out of
the box; I had neither the time nor the desire to go to
town on any extra detail. Would I build another comission?
Probably - but I'd rather it be a bit more "shake
'n' bake" next time. Not a resin kit in other words!
Paint is Humbrol Dark Earth
and Pollyscale British Dark Green, cockpit is finished
in Humbrol Interior Grey Green. The bottom is Humbrol
RAF Trainer Yellow and Pollyscale Black. Decals are from
various sources with the kit serial number re-arranged
to represent JN601, a Walney Island based aircraft. It's
a big, ugly beast of an airplane, but I found myself kind
of warming to it after a while. Another unsung hero from
the second world war as were the people who flew them,
overshadowed by its sexier contemporaries, the Spitfire
and Hurricane and the exploits of their pilots.
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