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Showing results for tags 'Junkers F.13W'.
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This build is of the same airframe (Junkers Construction Number 650) which I've already modelled when it was registered as D 260 and participated in the Junkers Spitsbergen Expedition of 1923. That build is here: After coming back from Spitsbergen, it knocked around Germany, Estonia and Norway under various registrations before ending up under the ownership of pioneering Norwegian aviatrix Gidsken Jakobsen. Unable to obtain a licence to operate her company Nord-Norges Aero as a commercial airline, she flew the aircraft on sight-seeing trips around Balestrand on the Sognefjord. Here it is outside Kviknes Hotel, which still stands: The aircraft is well documented with photographs at Norway's Digital Museum, but many of them (the image above excluded) are copyrighted in various ways, so I won't post them here, but will include links to reference photographs in what I write below. By this time in its life it was much changed from its appearance as D 260. Most obviously, it had acquired what seems to be a frame-and-fabric rudder, which was later painted black. Evident in the photograph above, it had at some point lost the aerodynamic fairings around its float struts. It may also have had a new engine fitted--it certainly lost the characteristic rhino-horn exhaust, which was replaced with a rather informal looking set of six pipes on the starboard side. The factory-fitted step on the port side was removed, and replaced with a ladder connecting the port float and the trailing edge of the port wing. Its flying career came to end on 27 June 1934, when it lost its engine during a flight over Sognefjord. Literally lost its engine, which fell out of the aircraft and landed in the fjord somewhere between Hella and Vangsnes. The pilot retrimmed the aircraft by persuading the front-seat passenger to climb out on to the cowling, and then executed a safe "power-off" landing. The airframe was reportedly still (largely) intact, but the aircraft never flew again. So my plan with this build is to depict the aircraft as it took off for that fateful flight. Again, the kit has been supplemented with resin extended ailerons provided by LumÃr at Master-X free of charge, and the decals are from Arctic Decals. When I noted in my WiP thread that these decals didn't reproduced the typographically unusual letter "N" used on this aircraft, Mika from Arctic Decals immediately contacted me with news that he would revise the decal sheet and replace the one I'd bought--and he also threw in the decals for D 260! So I've really benefited from the kindness of strangers with these builds. The pilot and passenger are heavily modified WWI pilot figures from PJ Production. The display base is from Coastal Kits. I designed and printed the propeller disc myself, and added the boarding ladder, custom rudder, and exhausts. The hole for the original exhaust needed to be filled, and I added a pair of cowling tie-downs visible in the reference photographs. As with D 260, the underside of the tail section needed to be modified, because the kit features a moulded triangular support for a tail skid, absent from the "W" version. The stand comes from an old bag of assorted Airfix stands, which I modified with neodymium magnets, one inside the wing section and one on the stand, so that I could keep the model's underside intact and allow it to be loaded on and off the stand. And here are a couple of comparison views of the same airframe at the beginning and end of its life: D 260 in Spitsbergen and LN-ABH in Norway: Build log for this combined project is here: