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Fokker F27 Friendship


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Hello all!

 

I have just had plenty of fun building the Airfix 1/72 Fokker Friendship.

 

The Friendship was the first model I ever had, but it was the old Revell box-scale one. I was so impatient to build it I used sellotape - I did not know you needed glue! Well, I was only 6 at the time...

 

Just before Christmas last year I treated myself to 9 ancient kits from KingKit, and this was one of them. I was quite surprised at the surface detailing (no knowledge of accuracy but the raised lines were very fine and no sign of the rivets Airfix became famous for). The cockpit had quite a bit in it - no inbuilt slab and stick a pilot in here but it had floor, seats, control columns and console and all. I added some tape belts and left the improvement at that. The fuselage sides were warped but went together with a bit of persuasion, as did the wings. I fitted the cockpit glass but left out the cabin windows, used rolled up paper pushed through the fuselage from one side to the other to mask them off then used some florist wire through two of the tubes and then bent to rest in holes drilled in my spray board to act as a stand for when I sprayed the plane. I used rattle cans, white primer then gloss white, then removed the tubes, masked up the white paint with tape and greetings card cellophane wrapping and used Tamiya for the silver and the grey for the wings. I masked off for the black de-icing boots and anti-glare panel. Decals were pretty good, but I did find that the cutouts for the windows did not align with the windows themselves so a little retouching on the paintwork was needed. Once all the transfers were on and sealed with satin varnish, I filled the cabin window voids with Clearfix, that dried crystal clear but I did find it awkward as the Clearfix 'strung' badly and often flopped back onto the fuselage but cleaned up with water and a cotton bud. The wings, fuselage and props went on next and the plane was done. The props! Five paints and 16 transfers in total for the two of them. Thankfully I had put enough weight into the nose (aquatic plant weights - really soft malleable stuff but great for this), but it was the nose that caused the most problems. It took a lot of filling to get it remotely respectable as it does not follow the contours of the main body.

 

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The transfers were nicely gloss and settled well over the panel lines, and seemed quite opaque. They were reluctant to release from the backing paper even with boiling water - they needed to soak for about five minutes each. It is possible that I stretched them while trying to remove them but I don't think so. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed building this. Afterwards I found on the internet all sorts of ways of improving the model, the most noticeable being the fin fillet, cutting out the missing cabin windows, detailing the undercarriage and opening up the exhausts. Never mind, this is now officially an out of the box build, except the belts!

 

I still have two of the three options on the transfer sheet available, Turk Hava Yollari (Turkish Airlines) and  Nederlandse Luchtvaart Maatschappij (Fokker Heritage Flight).

 

Thanks for looking,

 

Ray

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Oh!

Do i remember these (not in those colours) at Ringway way back in the 1960's?

Nice model of a nice aeroplane.

A Dart Herald next eh?

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Excellent build.

Having now completed two of these (since the re-release in the late 2000-tens IIRC) I must concur with you about the work to get the nose right.

I still have more F-27's I want to build, but I need another re-release by Airfix to happen. :waiting:

:goodjob: 

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Nice job Ray, I have one of these yet to finish.

 

I took a lot of material off the nose cove to get the lines right. Fortunately, Airfix moulded the updated nose part with a lot of material on the inside to allow so much to be removed.

 

I still have another 2 of these in the stash and one might end up in these colours. Yours look Beaut! :thumbsup:

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8 hours ago, FatFlyHalf said:

Oh!

Do i remember these (not in those colours) at Ringway way back in the 1960's?

Nice model of a nice aeroplane.

A Dart Herald next eh?

Probably Aer Lingus back in those days.

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Thanks for all the comments about this plane!

 

The Dart Herald sounds quite good,. I will try and find something, it too has been a favourite of mine, along with the Hastings, Viscount, Brittannia, Twin Otter, Vanguard, ATR72...

 

All the best,

 

Ray

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Hello Ray,

Always makes me feel good, when I see a good Dutch product. Very nicely painted. It looks like the F-27.

Still flying around while the first flight was 63 years ago. (1955)

Regards, Orion / The Netherlands. 

 

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Ray,

Very, very nice build! The F27 has always been one of my favorite propliners, and you have done her justice! I never got the Airfix kit, but did build the old boxscale Revell kit when I was  a young lad. Your finish looks like the real thing, not a plastic toy, as so many airliner models do. I am jealous!

Mike

 

Didn't Esci do an F27 in 1/72, or am I thinking of something else?

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That's lovely, Ray

 

I remember this old Airfix kit as a kid back in the 70s - yours is the professional result though!

 

Regards

 

Dave

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A nice build of a vintage Airfix kit. I must have built one when i was about 11 or 12. I remember camouflaging it dark green and dark earth  at one stage.

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That is a lovely build of an old Airfix classic Ray.

 

Many years ago I built the 1970s Airfix reissue which was sold as a military Troopship. It was still the old airliner version but with decals for two Dutch Air Force Troopships, one of them camouflaged.

I built it as a Troopship at first and then later I repainted it in Braathens airline colours as It was issued by Airfix in the late sixties.

 

It was a lovely model.

 

Did Airfix extend the nose to make it a later version ?

 

kind regards,  adey

 

 

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On 27/04/2018 at 18:10, 72modeler said:

Ray,

Very, very nice build! The F27 has always been one of my favorite propliners, and you have done her justice! I never got the Airfix kit, but did build the old boxscale Revell kit when I was  a young lad. Your finish looks like the real thing, not a plastic toy, as so many airliner models do. I am jealous!

Mike

 

Didn't Esci do an F27 in 1/72, or am I thinking of something else?

Hi Mike,  you are correct, ESCI did do the F27.

 

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Here we have an ESCI Maritime F27 built by one of our club members displayed with my Airfix F27 Friendship many years ago.

 

adey

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16 hours ago, adey m said:

That is a lovely build of an old Airfix classic Ray.

 

Many years ago I built the 1970s Airfix reissue which was sold as a military Troopship. It was still the old airliner version but with decals for two Dutch Air Force Troopships, one of them camouflaged.

I built it as a Troopship at first and then later I repainted it in Braathens airline colours as It was issued by Airfix in the late sixties.

 

It was a lovely model.

 

Did Airfix extend the nose to make it a later version ?

 

kind regards,  adey

 

 

 

Hello Adey, 

 

Airfix did modify the kit, they took the nose off the original mould, then put two alternatives into the kit, long and short along with appropriate nose gear bay doors, and they added alternative props so you have rounded and square tipped. I found the contours of the nose needed a lot of work to get remotely neat, and if you see this in the plastic, so to speak, you can see I failed somewhat!

 

All the best, 

 

Ray

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This is the actual box that my F27 came in back in 1979...

 

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I originally built it as the uncamouflaged Dutch airforce option with the dayglo panels as visible on the side of the box below

 

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Later I decided to repaint it as a Braathens examples

 

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This is the only decent photo I took of my Airfix Friendship in Braathens colours. As I had no original decals I had to resort to hand painting everything except for the Letraset lettering.

 

adey

Edited by adey m
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