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Fairey Battle 1/72 MPM


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Hi

I'm planning to start a Battle light bomber kit made by MPM. Battle is most misjudged RAF bomber, in history.  Mainly used in France 1940. It took heavy losses, because RAF at the time don't had any conception  how to use light bombers.  Plan was simple to send Battle on missions in enemy territory  with out any fighter protection, count on its speed and maneuverability, as we all know it wasn't enough. Moreover,   Battle wasn't equipped with self sealing fuel tanks and protection armor, made it very vulnerable even for infantry bullets.  After French campaign Battle was turned in to night bomber. 

I will build Battle used by  300 (Polish) Squadron in late 1940. This squadron took part in early bombing rides over the France. Battle was used until beginning of 1941, then Sq 300 was reequipped with Wellingtons.

MPM kit contains resin cabin interiors and some resin parts also. The rest is made from plastic, as a short run  kit I didn't expect high quality.  I will require a lot of work and putty, so I recommend it for a little advanced model builders.  

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Edited by Franz75
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This will be helpful. I was about to carry on with mine I have had on the shelf of doom for ages, Will look forward to seeing progress and see where I have gone wrong and where to make it right.  Incidentally my kit is the target tug variant.

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I searched for one of these kids before finally accepting that I'd have to settle for improving the old Airfix one. I can see from your sprue shots that the wing trailing edge is wrong. It should be straight all along, not angled at the fuselage end to be perpendicular with the fuselage. I'll be following along with a beer in hand!

 

Ian

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1 hour ago, limeypilot said:

I can see from your sprue shots that the wing trailing edge is wrong. It should be straight all along, not angled at the fuselage end to be perpendicular with the fuselage

The MPM kit has it's faults, but this isn't one of them. The detachable outboard wing sections have a straight trailing edge, the inboard stub wing section trailing edge is perpendicular to the C/L as can be seen here. There's a distinct kink in the trailing edge at the wing break and a short section of trailing edge perpendicular to the C/L before the wing fairing joins. Granger and Merrick get this right in their drawings, Caruana (unsurprisingly) and the Airfix kit don't.

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That is incorrect. At no stage is the trailing edge perpendicular to the fuselage. This is a very common mistake, and repeated again and again. If looked at from certain angles it appears to be so, but that is only because the dihedral changed slightly. Ian Huntley's book has plenty of photos which prove this. I will post one for you when I get a chance.

Granger and Merrick are wrong on this!

 

Ian

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14 hours ago, paul bardell said:

I'm in a well

  Reveal hidden contents

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

🍿

 

That's unfortunate, did you fall down the well? :)

Max (whose father used to fly Battles!) 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello 

Regarding the wing, please check a blue print bellow. As you can find the trailing edge is not perpendicular to fuselage. This is from a book "Aviation Guide  Fairey Battle".  MPM's kit  looks for me pretty accurate. 

 

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Resin interior cabin  parts has been painted, they are done nicely but slightly of the scale.

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But real challenge was to glue it together, super glue seems to be not good enough for this task. The bond was to week, I used sand paper to rough parts edges. It helps a little. This resin seems to be glue resistant, i never had such a problem before. To help  hold it together I added masking tape soaked in super glue. 

 

ucJoluv.jpg

 

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  • 1 year later...

Hello everyone, after a long time, I had started reworking on this nightmare kit. Resin parts are off the scale and plastic parts don't fit properly. Canopy is made from low-Quality plastic.  Nevertheless, I will try to finish it.     

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello everyone,
On plane's pictures in a reference book, the longerons are quite visible inside wheel bays.   Therefore I had to add plastruct profiles to make it more realistic.  The fuselage was sanded and remodeled. Like I had mentioned it before parts fitting was terrible. The top part has to be sand a quite of bit to make it fit into the main fuselage, it was sticking out about 2mm outside and the gap on one site was about 1mm. It was off in every direction. 
 I don't have a clue how to fix the canopy, but the project going slowly forward.  

 

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