De Havilland D.H.89a, Heller, 1/72nd scale

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

 

I hesitate to post this work in progress endeavor.

Would I be given the plastic ostrakon and exiled from Britmodeller?

The case is that (and again, I hesitate to make this confession) as much as I have a soft spot for old Airfix, my nostalgic heart goes to old Heller.

Would it be a platitude, a common place, to state that Heller kits have a je ne sais quoi?

I know, how do I dare to say these things here at Britmodeller, Airfix's vacations' home.

But it is true, dearest subjects and unsubjected: Heller had a lighter, more delicate, more refined (French, after all) hand.

Paradoxically, it's one of Heller's British subjects what today congregates us here: the ubiquitous De Havilland D.H.89a.

Of the hundreds of models I have built, only two subjects were ever repeated: the D.H. 88 Comet (five times, three Airfix and two SBS), and the D.H. 89a (two times before, not counting this one).

The first two times I built Heller's D.H.89a. the molds had plenty of flash and horrible sinkholes, and the decals left much to be desired.

This box I got now, a relatively old Heller release, has fortunately no sinkholes and little flash, and the decals are, besides being a sadly bland an unappetizing choice, again not really of quality.

I wanted to tackle this third build to use the newly-produced set from Arctic Decals, which includes the "metal" frames and masks for the transparencies. And also to see if many moons later I could produce a better model than the previous ones.

I am not yet completely decided, but I would like to build any of the several machines that operated in Argentina under an array of successive civil transport companies.

We'll see, because there also versions on wheels, floats and skis with outstanding colors and schemes. Heller's D.H.89a is one of those models that offers almost infinite possibilities regarding decoration/liveries. Provided that you do some research and can either find (aftermarket), produce or commission the decals you want. There is also plenty of free-access material on the Net about the subject and it's details, and plenty of "living" airframes, so no issues there.

 

Anyways, here are the contents of the box. I am sure you heard the expression "shake and bake" in reference to certain kits. Well,  this one certainly was pretty well shaken during the years it took to reach my building board, and half the parts were rattling around loose, facilitating the initial job of detaching the parts from the sprues:

 

 

The parts. There is a full interior, cabin and cockpit:

  Surface detail is mainly raised:

 

Transparencies that fortunately deserve to be called that:

Some of the detail may need help: those exhausts and prop/spinners are outdated:

 Nice cantilever lower wing. It is a solid one-piece affair though, which precludes you from cutting and lowering those nice split flaps, unless you somehow carve them out preserving the upper surface and add ad-hoc parts:

 Arctic Decals set, a great help. Read the instructions as these accessories need proper handling:

 

[bigbadbadge]

Nice choice, this is a lovely kit, I did the Airfix boxing of this as a Royal Navy Dominie and it was a joy to build.  Good luck with your build.

 

All the best
Chris

[Courageous]

Thought it wouldn't be too long before you started another subject...it's not a vacform. No worries, I've been sitting on a number of your builds and their's always something learn...following.

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

1 hour ago, bigbadbadge said:

Nice choice, this is a lovely kit, I did the Airfix boxing of this as a Royal Navy Dominie and it was a joy to build.  Good luck with your build.

 

All the best
Chris

Thanks Chris

I have a pleasant memory of the ones I previously built. When I built them, my skills were limited, and I am curious to see how can I now handle it, and perhaps improve a thing or two. We'll see.

Cheers

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

1 minute ago, Courageous said:

Thought it wouldn't be too long before you started another subject...it's not a vacform. No worries, I've been sitting on a number of your builds and their's always something learn...following.

It was a hard decision between this one and the Broplan Hansa Brandembrug W33.

 

[CedB]

I was lucky enough to fly in one of Classic Wings Rapides a while ago and modelled that on this very forum - a bit of a challenging kit and I'm interested to see how you work it

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Ok im in  ... This is one of my favorite classic types.

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

1 hour ago, CedB said:

I was lucky enough to fly in one of Classic Wings Rapides a while ago and modelled that on this very forum - a bit of a challenging kit and I'm interested to see how you work it

Hi CedB: you lucky...indeed.

Could you please post a link to your build to share it with us all?

I vaguely remember some snags while building the previous ones, many moons ago, but I don't recall where the problems were, I guess I will soon find out, wouldn't I?

Cheers

 

Edited April 23, 2018 by Moa
to correct typo

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Ced, I found your build.

Here is the link:

 

[Brandy]

This certainly looks interesting. I never built one as a kid, but it's a very attractive aircraft  (not many dh aircraft weren't!) and an early kit, so I'll follow along!

 

Ian

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

7 minutes ago, limeypilot said:

This certainly looks interesting. I never built one as a kid, but it's a very attractive aircraft  (not many dh aircraft weren't!) and an early kit, so I'll follow along!

 

Ian

Welcome again, Ian.

We'll see where this road leads.

Cheers

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Very carefully the door is separated from the fuselage side. The good (not brittle) nature of the plastic allowed this to be conducted without a glitch:

 

 These ejector pin marks and little imperfections may prevent your window strips from seating comfortably where they should. Clean them thoroughly:

 

 

 

All parts have been cleaned-up:

 

 

The split-flap areas were slightly and carefully excavated towards the leading edge of the flaps. Flaps will be fabricated from styrene sheet and shown half-deployed:

 

Edited April 23, 2018 by Moa
to correct typo

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Independently of the things that may need correction on any kit -that you may tackle or not-, there are things that personally bother us.

In this case for me they are:

1) The void you see inside the engine gondolas when you look through the opening on the front

2) The curvature of the cabin floor that forces a converging angle on the seats

3) The props and spinners, way off what they should be

4) The legs of the seats, too big and unconvincing

5) The sort of not very practical way in which Heller wants you to rig the plane, splitting the upper wing into upper and lower halves and suggesting a convoluted and certainly cumbersome way to thread your rigging material that affects the building sequence, surface prepping and painting in a way that makes it not a solution, but a problem.

6) To be discovered during the build.

 

All these have solutions. I will attempt them during construction.

 

 

Edited April 23, 2018 by Moa
to correct typo

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Surprisingly enough, Rare Plane released a vacuum-formed model of the D.H.89 also in 1/72nd scale. Its fuselage is molded in clear plastic.

There is a photo-etched set that you may purchase (I did) to enhance and replace certain areas of the kit.

 

 

[John Masters]

I will be watching this carefully as I have one of these as well.

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

1 hour ago, John D.C. Masters said:

I will be watching this carefully as I have one of these as well.

[Courageous]

I notice that you take all your parts off their sprues. I think that would be a disaster for me, I'd bound to knock and whooosh...

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

http://frog.cocardes.com/dh-89-dragon-rapide-ref-339p

 

I just learned that also a Frog kit existed of this plane, in a somewhat odd scale of 1/68.

I found on the Net that the molds were also released by the firm Tri-ang.

It is of note that Airfix in turn released the Heller molds too.

A firm called Veeday produced yet another kit of the DH89 in 1/72nd.

(I am dizzy already).

The latter generated a bit of a controversy as there may have been the case that it could have been based on Gordon Stevens model (Rare Plane).

On a side note I have built some of Gordon's models and had the fortune to correspond with him, a source of wonder for which I am grateful.

 

 

 

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

4 minutes ago, Courageous said:

I notice that you take all your parts off their sprues. I think that would be a disaster for me, I'd bound to knock and whooosh...

Yes, unless the parts are really minute, I separate everything from the sprues to be able to do a good cleanup and later have free access to paint.

It creates suspense and drama, you never know where the parts may fly at any given minute.

 

[Eric Mc]

I don't recall FROG ever releasing the Heller kit. From memory, the Heller kit came out in 1979, a few years after FROG had gone out of business. Of course, it did appear in Airfix boxes during the era when Heller and Airfix were both owned by Humbrol. And it's also been available in a Tasman boxing.

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

8 hours ago, Eric Mc said:

I don't recall FROG ever releasing the Heller kit. From memory, the Heller kit came out in 1979, a few years after FROG had gone out of business. Of course, it did appear in Airfix boxes during the era when Heller and Airfix were both owned by Humbrol. And it's also been available in a Tasman boxing.

Hi Eric

as said above: Frog released a 1/68th scale kit, issued also by Tri-ang. These are not Heller/Airfix's 1/72 molds.

 

 

[Eric Mc]

I know that. I just thought that the FROG and Heller Dragon Rapides were being linked in some way. By the way, FROG was part of the Rovex Group - which also owned the Tri-Ang brand. Rovex owned Hornby, Scalextric and Meccano as well. It was the demise of Rovex that led to the end of Frog.

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

The flaps recesses are given some structure, and the split flaps are fashioned:

 

The engine fronts are a bit lacking:

 

More detail is added to them, and the scoops on the gondola are drilled too:

 

The props, one of the meh points of the kit, have inaccurately shaped spinners:

 

And not so accurate blades:

 

Blades are removed:

 

 

Spinners put in a chuck:

 

And easily sanded to shape:

 

 

[Martian]

Nice work! I have the FROG kit of which you speak and this thread has already got me casting glances at it.

 

Martian

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

2 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

Nice work! I have the FROG kit of which you speak and this thread has already got me casting glances at it.

 

Martian

Oh, go for it!

It looks like a nice kit, and surely will render a beautiful model!