Dan Hayward

Thank you all for the nice comments! -Dan

This is another one of those kits that I never got around to building in my youth. Not that I didn't try once or twice! But now that I'm older and stupider, I decided to give it another go by tackling one step at a time to see how far I could get it. I started by tossing all of the interior parts and scratch-built new cockpits from plastic sheet. I did use a resin seat for the pilot. With that done, I assembled the rest of the kit and sanded all of the rivets on the wings and fuselage down until just a hint of them remained. I also drilled out the dive brakes and fil

Thank you! I'm a huge fan of your builds and felt I was channeling you from time to time while I was working on this. I will definitely post a WIP here the next time I build anything worthy. I never know what direction I will go in next but I'm intrigued by the interwar civil scene now and have an Airframe DeHavilland D.H. 34 that is looking interesting. Thanks again! -Dan

Thank you all for the nice comments! -Dan

Excellent info! Thanks for those links, I was able to put some dates to some of the changes I saw in photos. -Dan

Thank you for the correction on Lot, I have to admit that I did all of my research on this via Google and Bing image searches and should have dug a little deeper to get some of the background info. I wondered if anyone would catch my incorrect propeller! The vac prop was too small so I looked through my supply of Aeroclub props to find one of suitable diameter. All I could find was the one that is now on the model temporarily and you can see that not only does it turn the wrong way, but I've painted the brass guards on the blades on the wrong edges. I'm afraid I'm probably going

I've been working on this for the past month or so and just finished it up today. This particular model depicts the Lorraine-Dietrich engined version as flown by LOT, the Polish national airline in the mid 1920s. The kit is nicely molded but the fuselage halves were quite thin in places so I basically built a box out of sturdier plastic within their fuselage halves. I also added quite a bit of internal stiffening to the wing as you can see. Definitely a fun project! -Dan

I buy .005". nitinol wire from Amazon.com here in the states. It is cheapest when bought in 72" lengths which ships in a long, heavy cardboard tube so that may not be very cost-effective for you. Ian's method using drilled holes and fishing line or invisible thread also works well. I used to do it that way but found I liked nitinol wire better and there are no holes to drill. -Dan

This is a really nice kit which goes together very easily for such a spindly biplane. I borrowed some techniques that I've seen on the forums to replicate the translucent nature of the clear-doped wings and I'm happy with how that turned out. Markings are for a 16 Squadron machine which carried the legend "St. Catherines Ontario" on the forward fuselage. I made decals for that and the tail code on my laser printer, the roundels are from the kit. I rigged the control runs with EZ-Line and the rest of the rigging was done with Nitinol wire. I kept track of how much went into it th

Thank you all for the nice comments! -Dan

I finished it! More pics in the Ready for Inspection forum. -Dan

I was looking for Breguet XIX kits on ebay last year and got a good deal on a couple of Formaplane vacs, one of which was molded with a cockpit enclosure, wings and other details that meant it could only be built as "Cuatro Vientos", the plane that made the first flight from Spain to Cuba in 1933. The plane disappeared without a trace on the second leg of its journey, enroute to Mexico City. I think Formaplane's kit had its origins as the Hispano Aviokit vac, photos of the parts look the same to me. No decals were provided but Arctic Decals now has a set available, which I used

Thanks Tony. I wasn't sure how well that stringer solution was going to work, I'd only tried something similar once before and that was on a much smaller scale. I can't wait to pull the masks off the cockpit enclosure and see how much of the interior is visible! -Dan

Thank you all! -Dan

Definitely a replica, the original was lost somewhere over Mexico. I hope it is somewhat accurate though, I'm basing a lot of the details of my model on photos of it. -Dan