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Showing results for tags 'Horton Ho IX'.
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This is my first finished model of the year, ready for inspection! I look forward to comments, suggestions and advice! It marks something of a milestone, the first I’ve started completed since returning to modelling after a 45 year pause….and the first where other than for the very small bits, no brush was used! I primed with a Humbrol primer can, sprayed the colours using my new airbrush, then sprayed with Tamiya gloss, applied transfers, a second gloss coat and then a flat coat. To seat the transfers, I used Micro Set and Micro Sol and finally fixed the canopy using Micro Clear. I’d had the Revell Horton Ho IX kit since it appeared, but it had been parked in the back of the stash as it doesn’t fit my RAF 1915 to 1995 mission. But after reading “Wings on my Sleeve” by Eric Brown I had an idea… So, here it is. The model represents the V3 prototype, it was discovered in Germany in 1945. You can see it now, fully restored, in the US NASM's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center next to Washington DC Dulles Airport. But why in RAF Markings? Well, according to Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown the aircraft spent time at RAE Farnborough where an attempt was made to fit the Metropolitan Vickers F2/3 axial flow jet, but although close in size to the Jumo 004 the effort was unsuccessful as the F2/3 couldn’t be made to fit into the Horton’s engine mounts. The F2/3 was 88cm in diameter and 4m long, the 004 was 81cm diameter and 3.9m long. My “What If” assumes this project was successful and the aircraft had been flown with the F2/3 engine, or the later “Beryl” development, by Brown at Farnborough during late 45 or early 46. The F2/3 produced about 2,700 lbs thrust, compared with the 1,900 lbs of the Jumo 004, so it would have been quite spritely. As mentioned, the kit is the Revell one, in 1/72 and whilst the basic build was simple but very fiddly, with many VERY small parts. The U/C is both complex and assembly is not exactly intuitive. I gave up building 1/72 scale some years ago and this build convinced me not to return to the scale, the bits are just too small. I finished the aircraft in the late war standard of RLM 83 Dunkelgrün and RLM 81 Braunviolett (Brown-Violet) on the upper surfaces with RLM 76 Lichtblau on the underside, all paints were Humbrol enamels. Where the German Crosses would have been I painted over with Dark Green on the upper surface and Medium Sea Grey underneath. The RAF late war markings were applied over these bands: there probably should be an “AirMin” aircraft number, these were usually applied to captured German aircraft flown in the UK. Most of the stencilling provided with the Revell kit I used. If this project has been completed and the aircraft flown in the UK then it probably wouldn’t exist today as elsewhere Brown writes that based on the problems at trans-sonic speeds experienced with the broadly similar wing form of the DH 108 Swallow, it would probably have crashed! I photographed my “RAF Ho IX” with a Spitfire XII in the same scale: the Ho IX is significantly bigger. It also shows the amazing development that occurred during the early 1940s given that only 7 years separates them, the Spitfire first flew in 1938 and the Horton in 1945.
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