Dan Hayward

Very nicely done!

Thank you John, Roger and Graeme! I believe it is true that this is the only kit he ever produced. I've read that a Gee Bee was to follow but it never happened. I was not aware of the Williams Bros. connection, that is interesting. As for the decals, the set in my kit still looked very good and possibly useable but I scanned them and printed a new set on clear decal film. Better safe than sorry! -Dan

I've been wanting to build one of these kits for quite a while and finally got ahold of one in a trade last summer. At first glance the kit looks a little crude but closer inspection reveals some very finely molded parts, especially the landing gear legs. The biggest problem with my kit was the main wing which had a lot of waviness and sinkholes due to the fact that it was molded in one piece. I decided to aggressively sand it to smooth it out which also removed all of the detail. That was replaced with plastic strip, rescribing, etc. Other than that is is basically "out-of-the-box", I d

Thanks for the info. I've been meaning to try the Hataka paints so this will be a good color to start with. Your thread sounds a lot like the smoke colored mono-poly invisible thread that I use from time to time. -Dan

Beautiful! There's nothing that gives away the fact that it is a 1/72 model. May I ask what paint you used? I need a good source for Polish khaki. Would also like to know what you rigged it with, it is very impressive. -Dan

I just finished this today. I admit I was intimidated by the way the lower wing attaches to the fuselage but I managed to get it together- twice, since I knocked it off due to clumsiness shortly after getting it together the first time. I used a set of old Airfix decals and rigged it with >005" Nitinol wire. -Dan

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