Search the Community

Beechcraft Model 18 (03811) 1:48 Carrera Revell Beechcraft’s management decided that a twin-engined small airliner would fulfil an upcoming need to act as a regional feeder to the main airports in the 1930s, and conceived that it could also have military uses that could further increase sales. The resulting design was a traditional one that meant that it could be easily mistaken for others from a distance, however it had a graceful line, and could carry between 6 and 11 passengers, depending on stowage area and the seats fitted, although headroom was always a little constrained, which led to a later variant that gave everyone an extra 6” (15cm) space above their heads, which was backward compatible and was fitted to some older models. The engines weren’t powerful, but they were reliable enough for their operators’ needs, with more powerful motors fitted after WWII. It first flew in 1937, and had an extremely long production run that finally came to an end at the same time as the 1960s. Of the 9,000 plus that were made, around half saw military service, with the majority of America’s WWII bombardiers and navigators having spent at least some of their training aboard a Model 18, which was known as the C-54 Expeditor or AT-7 Navigator in US service, and you can probably guess the training the Navigator was used for. Following WWII its service continued, and it also saw widespread adoption in civilian service with many upgrades and alterations occurring as the need arose. The E18S was the variant with the improved headroom, and the H18 could be adapted to land on tricycle undercarriage, giving it a more modern look than its predecessor. Floatplanes, crop dusters and drone motherships were some of the more unusual jobs the type took on, and even though production ceased as the 1970s began, there are still a few hundred of them airworthy doing all sorts of job with grace and classic lines. The Kit This is a reboxing of one of ICM’s kits from 2014 with new decals, and an additional sprue that contains a trio of stands that give the modeller the option of depicting their creation in-flight. The kit arrives in a sturdy end-opening box, and inside are six sprues in grey styrene, two clear sprues, a large decal sheet, instruction booklet printed in colour with profiles on the rear pages to assist with painting and decaling. Detail is excellent, with finely engraved panel lines, plus plenty of raised and recessed features around the model, which makes a nice package overall. Construction begins with the port fuselage half for a change, adding the side glazing for the cockpit, and the rear door with clear porthole that mounts on a lip within the cut-out. A quick note on the fuselage halves while we’re there. One fuselage half has half the D/F loop moulded into it, while the other has the rest of the D/F fairing and two long narrow aerial masts moulded into it. Unless you are the perfect modeller that isn’t prone to snapping this sort of delicate part off, it may be as well to remove them with a sharp blade at this stage, marking their location with a drilled out hole or depression, as it will make handling and seam filling a much less stressful process later. There is a small porthole behind the side door, and side windows are inserted from within on a long carrier, with an overhead quarterlight for the crew, then a doorway equipped cockpit bulkhead is fitted up against a raised line, and a console is added into the roof by the window. There’s another bulkhead at the rear of the passenger compartment, which has a door moulded into it in the closed position with a separate handle fitted into a hole. The instrument panel includes the footwells and centre console in a single moulding, to which is centre panel is added on top, with rudder pedals fixed into the footwells, and a circular part in the console. Four dial decals add detail to the panels once they have been painted, then the assembly is inserted into the nose of the port fuselage half. A short interval has you making up the first of seven seats from a surround with separate L-shaped cushions, to which a back frame and kick panel is added behind, and four-point belt decals are applied. The other seats are interspersed between the airframe build, and vary slightly in their mounting, the crew seats having proper braced legs, while the passengers have frames and a rear kick panel, but everyone gets a four-point belt decal, which is safety conscious. The starboard fuselage is prepared with glazing like the port side, except for the side door and the console above the quarterlight in the cockpit. The first seat you made up is glued into the rear of the passenger compartment in front of the raised support for the bulkhead, then the two halves of the fuselage are brought together, trapping the tail gear bay’s roof in position as you close the tail. You might be wondering how the rest of the seats will be fitted to a closed fuselage, but they are all mounted into the space between the upper wings later, and that includes the crew seats too as there is little of the fuselage forward of the wing leading edges. The engine nacelles and main gear are created next, starting with the struts, which have separate scissor-links added, then the lateral mount is built with support struts linking it to the engine mounts, which are mounted on a section of forward spar that inserts inside the wing. An oval firewall is pinned to the front of the engine mounts, which allows the gear support to be glued in place, then the gear leg is slipped into a slot that matches the groove at its upper end, sliding it forward to properly locate it. This is repeated in mirror image for the other nacelle, then both engines are mated to another circular bulkhead with a square cut-out in the centre. Four small intakes are made from two halves each, then the completed assembly is inserted into the centre of the nacelle on a pair of raised location lines, fitting two intakes per nacelle into the bottom of the cowling before dropping the engine on its bulkhead into another location guide. An aft spar section is fitted into the rear of the nacelle behind the cut-out for the landing gear, and the ailerons are inserted into their cut-outs nearer the ends of the wings. Another chair interlude happens, also building two bow-tie control grips on L-shaped columns, which is followed by joining the upper wing to the lower, and for a change the upper wing is also full-span, as it also forms the floor for the interior, with a short depiction of the forward spar inserted into slots in the floor. With the wing inverted, the landing light is inserted into a depression in the port leading edge after painting the reflector a chrome shade, adding cooling gills to the sides of the nacelles, and exhausts to the outboard sides of the nacelles further back. The instructions have so far had you building up the landing gear in the down position, but confusingly to me at least, they now show the retracted gear bay doors being inserted into the main bays with the wheels installed in retracted position, and you are told to flick forward a few pages to see the deployed instructions, then come back to make more seats before inserting them into their respective holes in the floor between the wings along with the two control columns, which are handed. If you have the gear legs down, the wheels and a retraction strut are fitted to each leg, then doors are fixed to the bay sides, with the tail-wheel on its four-part mount in the rear of the fuselage. The H-tail has its elevators moulded full-span in top and bottom halves, to which the single part rudders are each installed on two pegs, taking care to align them correctly. The fuselage has its three-panel windscreen part inserted from outside, then it can be lowered over the seats into position between the upper wing sections, adding the tail over an open section at the rear of the fuselage, then flipping it over to add the gear bay doors to the tail-wheel bay. The props are each twin-bladed and moulded as single parts to which the spinner is glued, after removing the rear section along a dotted red line marked on the drawing. If you cut the aerial masts off earlier, now is the time to put them back in place, perhaps adding some brass pegs to strengthen the join, then using your preferred aerial wire material between the two masts, then again from the front mast to the tops of the twin rudder fins. I use invisible mending thread and create small insulators from super-glue dots as required, but you might have your own preference. Markings There are two options on the large decal sheet, one in military service, the other in civilian service, which should please plenty of modellers. You can build one of the following from the box: Naval Air Station, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1950 Eastern Caribbean Airways, Cuba, 1962 Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin matt carrier film cut close to the printed areas. Conclusion A welcome reboxing of an attractive late interwar design that saw service in WWII, even though it could only be described as active when it worked as a light bomber in China. Plenty of detail is included, along with a well-printed decal sheet. Highly recommended. Carrera Revell model kits are available from all good toy and model retailers. For further information visit or

Hello all, Here's my just finished 1/48 ICM JRB-4 Twin Beech. I saw the kit with these markings at the hobbyshop a couple months ago and thought it would be nice to build something bright and colourful for a change. Painted with Tamiya (white) ,MR Paint (international orange) and Humbrol (the hinomaru), the decals came from the kit and were very nice to work with. Other than the engine cowlings with a nasty horizontal seam, the kit was a joy to build. I did change the antenna on the roof and pitot tubes under the nose to look more like the later ones. Gear doors were not used, as they are missing from the ones on photos of the real ones too. Thanks for looking, I hope you like it. Pete