Airfix Handley Page 0/400

[freolic]

The main thing I am wondering about is the internal colours, the instructions say olive drab but I have a feeling that they would have been just the colour of the lining and wood. I was wondering what you guys I thought? Just going through the Windsock Datafile books to see if they say anything.

[Beardie]

I would have said varnished wood and natural linnen.

[Martian]

I would have said varnished wood and natural linnen.

That's what I painted mine.

Martin

[freolic]

That's what I painted mine.

Martin

I would have said varnished wood and natural linnen.

That was my thinking too, I can see that they went to bother to make it the same colour as the outside. Thank you for confirming what I was thinking.

[Beardie]

Just been looking over a superb scratchbuild of an HP 0/400 in 1/28 scale on Largescaleplanes and the chap has gone with varnished wood and clear doped linnen. Looks awesome.

[Black Knight]

I would say a light brick-red coloured linen interior.

Undercoat/primer for the green was red dope, which tended to soak through and tint the inner side of the linen.

Wood could be aluminium primer.

Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast was building O/400s and by 1918 they were using an aluminium wood primer on hidden woodwork to prevent fungal rot of the wood.

[FZ6]

I've almost got a 1:32 0/400 fuselage assembled and I plan to do mine in Natural wood and linen as well with the large fuel tanks in black probably when I get round to those bits.

Regards,

Mark

[Graham Boak]

A red primer was certainly used in later days, but that may not read back to the days of the O/400. (Not 0/400 - HP used a letter code for its aircraft types.) Whatever primer was used, it would tend to soak through and show on the inside, though probably not as a consistent colour as a paint would. It would be interesting to know what primer was used on other WW1 types, which then could be read across.

[Dave Fleming]

PC10 was designed as an ultraviolet protective coating. so the insides would most likely have been the colour to seep through - trying to recall, but I think a clear coat of shrinking dope was applied first, then a couple of coats of PC10 then a protective top coat of clear varnish. So any inside effect would be a seep through of PC10, but not a lot.

Red Oxide as a primer didn't come in until late 1918 as AMAPD replaced PC10 or early 20s IIRC, once they went silver, but I'd need to look that up.

That's assuming they didn't paint the interior.....

Edited September 6, 2016 by Dave Fleming

[Graham Boak]

Given the sensitivity about weight on early aircraft, I don't think that the interiors would have been painted without good cause - metal parts to avoid corrosion, wood varnished to prevent infestations. They were more sensitive to weight than mid-war later types, and they didn't paint the insides overall until the arrival of metal skins, and not even then, immediately.

[Dave Fleming]

Inside the cockpit

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r19/angelopicardo/0400.jpg.

Fabric from the serial number of D4569 - I suspect the PC10 is applied over white, but the edges of the artifact show just a slight darkening of the fabric

Edited September 6, 2016 by Dave Fleming