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Ladies and gentlemen, May I present "Matabeleland" ( Roden 720)


MikeW

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I had long wanted an Air Rhodesia Boeing 720 in my collection, and was inspired by Mitchem here ( thank you Mike ) but was not going to take on another vacuform, and neither could I make my own decals. Enter Roden, with their 1/144 720, and F-Rsin with their beautifully performing, whisper thin, decals, and off I went.

The Air Rhodesia Boeing story is straight out of the pages of "Boys Own World", depicting the derring-do of the Empire-Building type chaps. With U.N. sanctions prohibiting the purchase of aircraft, three crews go through the United Airlines Boeing 720 conversion course in Denver CO - saying they are part of a new low cost South African airline that is being formed. A Front Co. in Paraguay, an unlisted Liechtenstein finance company, fake flight plans to South America, and in 1973, the triplets, three Booeing 720's arrive in Rhodesia. All jolly exciting stuff!

Sadly, my modelling, and photogarphy, skills still need some honing, so YP-YNL Matabeleland is not quite the tribute I was going for - but here she is.

Cheers,

Mike

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A very nice model. I guess at some time I flew on this aircraft, great times! I have a set of MAV decals for a 1/72 DC3 which I will be using soon.

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How did you solve the tailplane mounting problem?

Well, turns out it was more my problem than Rodens'. While afixing the tail plane I could not see the Corroguard strip I had painted, and realized I was putting the rear tail plane on upside down. ( The Anheuser-Busch beer company has to take some responsibility here ).

Whipped it off in time, but the cheatline decals were already in place, and applying CA glue over decals is not my strong suit - and my next three attempts failed miserably. Was worried about the decals, but finally applied a touch of gel CA, and, with super clean hands, held the model where the rear stab was perfectly balanced, I counted to 15 ( and also made a deal with God that this would not be a good time for an earthquake ), and it held! Yay!

Overall, a very easy build, almost to RoG standards ( and I loved the tail mounted antenna option ), but the rear stabs were a small bump to be fitted into a small hole, as a guide, and after messing that up ( beer is my excuse ) it became a major challege to finish properly.

I'll build this particular model, warts and all, again in a flash!

Thanks for asking Jessica ( and impressed you remembered )

Cheers,

Mike

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Nice 720 Mike, and an interesting story to go with it.

Looks very smart in Air Rhodesia markings and those engines don't look anything like the oversized horrors we have been led to believe. (Or have you replaced the kit ones?). I'd say thats a winner.

Cheers

John

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Well, I don't do airliners (space problems!), but this is a damn fine build and you should be proud of it!

And I am sure that despite the sanctions, Air Rhodesia was a lot safer to fly than Air Zimbabwe.

Like the advert says: "Air Zimbabwe, a tradition of scaring!"

Happy new year.

JR

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Nice 720 Mike, and an interesting story to go with it.

Looks very smart in Air Rhodesia markings and those engines don't look anything like the oversized horrors we have been led to believe. (Or have you replaced the kit ones?). I'd say thats a winner.

Cheers

John

Hi John -

Those are indeed the kit engines. I had no clue they were of incorrect size until reading all about it, but for my model case, they certainly don't offend.

Cheers,

Mike

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Hi Mike,

Excellent modeling and interesting story.

Have to look into this some more.

Regards,

Dirk

The Netherlands.

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It makes for a fascinating story. Initially everyone assumed the South Africans and/or Portugese had trained the Rhodesians on Boeings ( Air Rhodesia at that time was flying DC-3's and Viscounts ), but to our shame we had also buckled under the U.N. sanctions and left the Rhodesians to themselves. ( We all hated Harold bl**dy Wilson, and his band of marauding socialists )

The 720's were on their last legs, almost rusted through, and the Rhodesians had to pay way over market price for them.

When the purchase came to light, Boeing, on their high horse, announced they would not be selling any parts, and the world expected this chapter to just fade away. The Rhodesians however, pretty much rebuilt these planes, and kept them flying, while, in effect, being at war. Marvellous stuff.

Guess the world forgot the Rhodesians were basically British, and as such, were capable of remarkable things.

Cheers,

Mike

http://rhodesianheritage.blogspot.com/2013/05/air-rhodesias-boeing-720s-continued.html

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...

A really nice build.

Have decals in the mail. Just need to get the kit now.

On the subject of the engines, does anybody know if there are aftermarket ones available?

Welsh models and Authentic Airliners (AA) both have sets (others may be available from other aftermarket producers, I'm only aware of these two).

I have the AA set but they require a great deal of adjusting to fit the Roden kit as they're from the 720 offered by AA. The detail is very nice and you can immediately appreciate how large the kit engines are by comparison, but the pylons do need a fair amount of work to fit them to the Roden wing; in fact my kit has stalled because I'm trying to work out if it would be easier to remove the resin engines from their pylons and just fit them to the Roden plastic pylons, must get it from the shelf of doom and give it a go.

I can't speak of the Welsh models engines, I don't have them.

HTH.

Jeff

Edited by pinky coffeeboat
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