I present the venerable Glencoe (ex-Hawk) 1/96 Vickers Viscount 720, in what has to be my all-time-favorite airline livery, the famous ‘Flying Roo’ of Trans Australia Airlines (TAA). TAA was the first non-European operator of the Viscount, introducing the revolutionary turbo-prop design into service – to wide acclaim – in 1954. ‘My’ aircraft, which was acquired new by the airline in 1955, is shown as in 1967…newly repainted after being returned to the line following a long-term lease to ‘rival’ airline Ansett-ANA. This second stint with TAA would last only six months, before the now-aging airframe would be sold on to a broker and returned to the UK.
The old moldings have held up quite well, showing overall excellent fit and little flash. Interior is non-existent…so since I intended to display mine with the aft passenger door open, I did a minimal interior of cabin floor, seat shapes (HO scale model RR seats, cut in sections as necessary), and a few bulkheads to suggest cloakroom space and a loo.
Externally, the build was OOB except for a few cosmetic additions: wing-tip nav lights, fuselage aerial fit and pitots beneath the cockpit, and wipers and a de-icer nozzle for the windshield. Decals were drawn up in MS-Paint, sized in Open Office, and printed out on my trusty (and long-serving) HP inkjet printer.
And now, our lovely stewardess Sheila…in period-correct white gloves, no less [when was the last time you saw those on a flight attendant?]…stands ready to assist you in boarding. Enjoy your flight!
A whimsical side-note:
The kit included the boarding-stairs and (4) figures: captain and stewardess, and one male and one female passenger. ‘Our lovely stewardess Sheila’ is either a fine strapping lass of truly Amazonian proportions --seemingly unlikely, especially for '50s-'60s flight crew – or somewhat out-of-scale: positioned at the top of the stairs…where I originally had her stationed for her photo-op…she was literally head-and-shoulders above the top of the passenger door:
But with a little ‘change of perspective’…you hardly even notice. [;)]
PS. As far as whote gloves go though, I seem to recall the flight attendents on British Midlands Airlines wearing tem on a flight I took from London to Bergen Norway maybe 10-15 years ago [:P]
While Glencoe turned out some junk, they also had some very nice kits, especially their airliners. I built their Curtiss Condor (civil version) years ago and it turned out great). Still have it.
Sad that I never got to fly in a Viscount. Reading about the particular a/c I modeled, she set something like a dozen point-to-point speed records between various Australian cities in her first year of service. But by 1967…when I was 11 years old…she was ‘clapped out’ and sold on for small-line service or parts or whatever.
I believe one has been preserved in Oz and restored in its ‘prime time’ TAA livery. Good to know those colors survive, if only in a museum piece.
The windows are the kit’s weak point…about a scale foot thick and mostly seriously concave…so there isn’t any chance of seeing through them, so more seats would have been wasted.
An insert with the kit instructions actually suggests – and this is the first time I’ve ever seen this, in an actual kit – not to use the clear parts, opting for white glue or Kristal-Kleer type products after painting is done. In my case, I like to put ‘curtains’ in airliner windows, so that would have been tough. Plus, I actually did test-shots with both the MicroScale product and clear UV-cure resin…and they didn’t look much better. (The kit’s ‘frames’ are too thick to give a neat thin window…and I really didn’t feel like Dremel-ing down all those ports, on a ‘quick build’ project, so the kit parts were ‘good enough.’)
In retrospect, however, I do wish I’d replaced the windshield…or at least narrowed-down the main center panel frames to something closer to the real thing.
It’s ok not to always have clear windows. Reminds me of something.
Long time ago I built and painted a old 50’s style resin pick-me-up in HO. It obviously had no windows. Must have been the instructions suggested painting the ‘windows’ gloss black and adding 3 tiny white diagonal lines to a corner.
Ended up being my favorite thing I ever built in HO. Saddens me that it got lost somehow in the domestic reorganization.
I’ve never heard of a kit’s instructions advising not to use enclosed parts, either. That’s funny.
When available I find window decals fine and often more accurate. They usually have highlight spots as Greg suggested.
The Viscount designers had a love affair with circles. I don’t know if that was based in part on lessons learned from Comet or which came first. Even the seat backs were pleasantly rounded things.
Theres an old school technique that seems like lot of work to me. Mask over openings from the outside. Fill with clear epoxy from the inside. Dry, unmask and polish.
Guess what? I was going through the Garage this morning looking for something NOT planes related! Found this plain airplane model sized box. " Hmmmm" I thought ,“What is this?” Then I cut the tape and opened it. Can you say an original Viscount with Capitol Markings? And the Decals were bagged up between two pieces of glaze paper they use to protect them. Then slipped in a Zip-Loc type bag.
The price on the box was Eight Bucks! I do not know where I got this. Models have a strange way of finding me. But, that makes four of them. One converted to an airfreighter! I am so glad this came up. Those Decals are Beautiful, By the way.
It was a “back into the (plastic) pool” project after having spent the summer on two fairly elaborate paper-model projects. I’d actually done the hard part – the decal art – a few months before, so it was a pretty straightforward shot from there.
Plus, opening that '60s vintage kit was nostalgic as well as therapeutic…just like when I was first smearing tube glue on plastic bits, starting out. (Made a little better job of it though, with a few decades of building under my belt.)