SCALE MODEL AIRCRAFT

When I was 10 or 11 years old, I had a book of aircraft illustrations by Maurice Allward. At the page dedicated to early commercial aviation was a red biplane presented as a "De Havilland DH.34". It must have had a certain effect on me because when I learned many years ago that a vacform producer of California named "Airframe - Aeroplanes of Yesteryear" had released a 1/72 kit of this 1922 aircraft, I decided I had to get that one, to realise that the producer had ceased activity long time ago and that the DH.34 kit was one of the hardest to find (I learned very recently that the creator of this kit was a Canadian citizen named John Tarvin) . A couple of lost auctions on eBay during the previous 3 years proved that the kit's value was closely following that of the oil barril, which I thought was not really worth a couple of styrene parts.

But one day I had a good surprise when I found the rarity at the bottom of a dusty carton during a swap meet (including a decal sheet in perfect condition) which I purchased for the huge price of $ 5 !!!

The De Havilland DH.34 so superbly ignored by today's kit manufacurers is nevertheless a key aircraft in aviation history, as one of the first purposely designed airliners to get commercial success. It was also the first airliner in which the level of confort was so high that any passenger who had boarded its ventilated and heated cabin could talk with the person in the next upholstered wicker seat without the need to shout at his face, nor to wear ear plugs. In addition, a lavatory was installed and a flight attendant could serve some meals and refreshments if needed.

The reliable 450 hp Napier Lion engine could be easily removed by undoing four bolts, and a standby engine could be carried in the cabin by inserting it through the purposely built cabin door. There were other innovative features such as a highly successful rigid differential aileron control (made of metal rods and ball bearings thus reducing to a minimum the use of control cables), inertia engine starting, or the Blaisdell Petroflex soft steel piping fuel feeding system.

Reference Material is also hard to find. The best you can get from the web is available at the fantastic Flight Global Archives: Type the name of the aircraft in their search engine and you will get 4 to5 PDF extracted from 1922 issues, showing quite interesting drawings, pictures, technical data, and descriptions.

Other than that, there are very good articles in the following publications:

• De Havilland Aircraft since 1909 by A.J. Jackson (Putnam)

• Wings of Peace – De Havilland DH.34 by John Stroud (Aeroplane Monthly, June 1984).

Although normally supplied with decals, the Airframe 1/72 vac kit is very basic with two sheets of styrene for half fuselages and strengthening system, flying surfaces, tail, engine basic shape, and radiator inlet.

I purchased two white metal items from Aeroclub: The Napier Lion engine (E31) and a 11' two blade airscrew (P009).

The rest of the parts (wheels, struts, transparencies, interior, and small details) have to be scratchbuilt or supplied from the spares box.

  

The decals are supplied for G-EBBT “City of New York” with the 1922 silver wings and blue fuselage Instone Air line livery. If the overall "pillar box" red Daimler Hire Ltd livery would be elected, a three blade airscrew should also be fitted instead of a two blade.

Construction began with side windows transparencies made from clear plastic. The opening designed by the manufacturer is too small, it had to be widened, and there is actually no triangular window to be cut on the right side, so it was filled with plastic card and superglue. Before filling the gap with superglue, I set some Maskol on the interior sides of the clear plastic strip in order to prevent it from fogging and fume deposits. The exterior sides did not need such a treatment as to be sanded flush later on. Some more superglue was used to fill the precut holes of the roof “windows”, but more about them later.

As no reference material was available to me for interior colors, this led to my own inspiration using different shades of blue and wooden effect decals. Seats were made from styrene tubing sections and curtains from kitchen aluminium foil. For upcoming construction matters and because the strengthening device for the fuselage is not made of bulkheads but of a single part to be inserted along the joint lines of half fuselages (seems a typical Airframe feature) I elected not to represent the full cabin volume but only the remaining part of it which would be seen from outside.

  

For the cockpit, I made a wooden instrument panel using wooden effect decal and the instruments are from Mike Grant Decals. I used two photoetched control wheels from the spares box, even not knowing whether only one or two were fitted on this aircraft.

Before gluing half fuselages together, rolls of Blue Tack were applied to the bulkhead joint lines to prevent the interior from receiving dust and plastic bits during the rest of the construction.

  

Once half fuselages glued together, some engraving was made on the forward section, and I had to scratchbuild one of the most significant features of the DH.34: A huge device immedialely forward the cockpit windshield which looks like a sort of tower protected by a streamlined fairing. I couldn't find out what it actually was but suspect it being an oil system tank and pump with its line feeding the engine's carter and propeller shaft installation. That device is already moulded on half fuselages but after close interpretation of photos I realized it was not mounted in the middle but offset in front of the port cockpit seat.

Wing construction implied the use of brass rods as spars to strengthen them and keep the desired dihedral in place. Dihedral was obtained by bending the brass rods at the wing root area once superglued in place. Prior to that operation, holes had been carefully made where the struts and rigging wires would be placed.

Wing struts were made from Contrail airfoil section. I noticed at that point that the internal struts were wider than the external ones.

  

After gluing wings to fuselage, I scratchbuilt the windshield, cabin air inlet, and outlets. Then could begin the painting process, and I used some masking tape and tooth picks as struts to keep the whole thing strong enough while handling the model during the following operations.

A coat of Tamiya TS-30 silver was sprayed overall as fuselage primer and wings color, followed by a coat of TS-15 blue which seems a good match with the rather dark blue livery that one can interpretate from photos. The window and passenger door framing was partly handpainted while masks were still in place, the rest being made from silver decal stripping. Note that the passenger door is incorrectly represented on the kit's instructions profile (see above): It should continue to widen by a couple of millimeters each side below the window, otherwise there wouldn't have been enough space to let the broaden arrow shaped Napier Lion engine come through.

  

The decals were in great condition and easy to apply after all those years and I cut them tight to avoid sivering as much as I could. However, the “IAL – CITY OF NEW YORK” decals were in fact wrongly printed as “THE CITY OF NEW YORK” which led me to replace the beginning by letters from the spares box. The manufacturer also ommited to produce the stenciling relative to loading instructions between the passenger and baggage doors. It was too late when I realized it as the model was already Future Floor Polish coated to protect it, improve the transparencies, and seal the decals. Anyway I am not sure I could have found the suitable white decal size in my spares box.

About roof “windows”, these are not actually windows as the kit's three view illustration suggests as well as some drawings or illustrations available on the web. These oval and round shapes one can see are fabric surfaces left unpainted. Such device was a simple and smart way to provide the passenger cabin with daylight without direct exposure to sunbeams, and some could even be used as emergency exits. I noticed that these patches of unpainted fabric were varying in numbers and locations from an aircraft to another. For instance, Daimler's G-EBBS has two oval patches each side of the cabin ventilation outlets, as Instone's G-EBBT has only one. One thing for sure is that I really had hard times trying to cut nice oval shapes from white decal! For the top roof round patches I used under roundels decals provided by Model Art and placed them according to a Daimler Hire aircraft and my own inspiration, no photo being available of this area for G-EBBT.

From the Aeroclub Napier Lion engine I kept only what could be seen from outside, the rest being cut down and sanded to fit the engine area. I left unpainted the areas on top of cylinders but steel wool polished them and applied a coat of Future Floor Polish, to preserve the shine. Once it had cured I added a bit of enamel based weathering. The real trick was to build the exhaust system, the one supplied with the Aeroclub kit not being suitable because of a different architecture than that on the DH.34. This was made using electric wire and Evergreen styrene rods of various sections, the thinnest of which being turned into coil shape under warm water to represent the curved individual cylinder outlets. On the port side, a wider section is added to the pipe to represent the muff from which the cabin was heated.

  

Then time came for insertion of interplane, stabilizer, and aileron control struts, followed by rigging, which I completed using stretched sprue after a full day of ugly swearing and other rudenesses in every language I know (and some others too!). Since I've had the foolish tendency to build from short runs, vacforms and resins for some years, it became clear that I was running out of good quality sprue sections and I finally got supply from the unbuilt kits side!

  

Undercarriage: Wheels come from the North American AJ-2 Savage Mach 2 kit. They were the perfect size! The hubs were partly sanded away using a Dremel tool then replaced by caps made of thin styrene sheet cut at the appropriate size using a punch and die set. They were given a slightly conic shape by applying strong pressure with the blunt end of a pencil against my cutting mat, then by piercing their center with a scribing tool. The undercarriage structure is made of brass rod sections, some of which being streamlined by gluing them Contrail airfoil sections sanded flush. The most complicated part of the undercarriage was the rubber shock absorbers, which were not covered by a fairing on the real aircraft. In order to obtain a realistic effect I cut small sections of thin Evergreen rods, which I glued one by one to their framing. I wish I won't have to do that again...!

About tires, some might find unrealistic their light grey color. As I already had such remarks from fellow modellers, this deserves a bit of explanation: Until 1918 tire rubber was not mixed with carbon black. Such a process began to be applied after the great war in order to improve the tires strength and longevity, but many years were to come before one could see real black tires and aviation firms could use a lot of war surplus material until the early twenties. Therefore it is an error that many modellers and illustrators do by painting black the tires of early aircraft up to the Golden Age, as there should be various shades of grey instead. When no carbon black nor similar additives are mixed with tire rubber, tire color is close to that of natural latex: A light grey shade. That said I do not pretend being 100% realistic, but careful examination of DH.34 pictures showed different shades of grey from an aircraft to another. The color I elected to use (Light Grey USAF) is somewhere between realism and personal taste.

  

The building of this model ended by adding such details as a pitot probe to one of the interplane struts, fuel tank caps, navigation lights, and finally by gluing the airscrew which was sanded to shape then painted dark brown.

  

There is no doubt some errors and inaccuracies were made during this build. The most noticeable is certainly the location of the triangular window next to the flight attendant seat on the port side of the aircraft. It actually should be located further back, partly across the "G" registration letter. For that reason, the port exhaust tube should also end farther than the starboard one. The windshield is a bit too large but compensates the too low built area in front of the cockpit. There is also a problem with the wing navigation lights and it was too late when I stated that Daimler Hire Ltd had them located on top of the upper wing leading edge (the very place I glued them), while Instone Air Line looks to have another option with navigation lights underneath the upper wing leading edge instead. Then I could have rendered a better shape to the tail skid and propeller.

  

To make some picture of my newly completed model, I made a first try with the Tamiya portable photo studio which was recently advertised by Hobby Link Japan in SAMI. I must say I am very pleased with the result although it looks a bit complicated to set up at first glance.

  

Some pictures were made on a grass-like surface besides a 1/76 1922 AEC Type bus from Matchbox, a 1/76 1923 Bullnose-Morris lorry and a 1922 Thorneycroft J Type bus from Oxford Diecast, and a flock of HO scale sheep by Noch which I purchased in a railway modelling supply shop.

  

This build was quite challenging for my modest abilities, but the result is well worth the amount of difficulties I had to face.

  

My warm thanks to Jean-Claude Guell for providing me with essential reference material.