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Dreaming Spires - a Pavla Airspeed Oxford


Heather Kay

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Before we know where we are, the Trainers GB is upon us. It seems a lot of us are keen to get started, and have spread their towels on the beach chairs, ready for the off in a week! Who am I to argue?

 

Scanning my 1940 stash I noted several trainer aircraft waiting their turn on the bench. There's a couple of Miles Masters, a De Havilland DH89a Tiger Moth, an Avro Tutor and, the subject of this build, an Airspeed Oxford. Quite whether I'll be able to tackle more than one remains to be seen. My last GB entry, the Airfix Classics one, turned out several builds, so you never know!

 

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Like a lot of us with obsessions fair interest in various subjects, I scan the second hand kit web sites for likely models. For a long time, I had been after the Pavla Miles Master, and I was chuffed to notice their Oxford available from the same site. Into the basket they went and, in due course, they took up residence in the stash. The box had been somewhat squashed, but brief inspection showed the contents appeared to be more or less intact.

 

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Everything was still in the sealed poly bag. The kit dates from the early 2000s, and being of the limited run variety, I expect a little effort will be required to assemble. I also expect to replace some of the delicate details, such as antennae and so on, with something more robust.

 

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Various schemes are covered in the kit, but I would like to do this one. An air gunnery school example from 1940 fits my specific interest bubble nicely.

 

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My final version selection may be decided by the decals. The kit ones are showing signs of cracking, so I think I will need to source something from the aftermarket bods. That may well have a bearing on the exact example I'm able to reproduce, so we'll see what research turns up.

 

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Fairly standard stuff for limited run kits. It all looks fairly clean and well moulded. I am a little surprised by fine raised panel lines, but I'm not going to fret over those. In fact, on closer inspection, they are actually engraved lines. Trick of the light, and that's my excuse.

 

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Some of the smaller details might need replacing. This weapon, for example, seems a bit vague. I'm sure a Vickers gun is a bit beefier than that.

 

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No cabin details, but the instrument panel looks nicely busy. I don't plan on going overboard on the interior details. 

 

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Vacuum-formed canopy and turret cupola. The latter show signs of being crushed, so that might need some thinking about. Perhaps it's time I learned how to plunge mould. :tmi: There appear to be resin parts for the undercarriage. I rather think they might be better rendered with brass rod and tube for strength and durability. Is that a resin tailwheel stirrup? Hmm. 

 

So, all in all, it looks like a relatively straightforward build. (Famous last words!) I'll do some rummaging about to dig up references, but I don't expect to be doing overly much upgrading beyond the bits already noted. Something that ends up looking like an Oxford at the end of the process will make me very happy indeed.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Heather Kay
Technical error.
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I will be following along with this one if that’s ok Heather?

 

I love this series of aircraft. I have an RS Models Airspeed Envoy; I think the precursor the Envoy?  Your kit looks like quite different in terms of how the parts will go together..

 

I love the mid 1930’s style elegant design of these. Your kit looks great, a lot of really nice details. Resin and vac form in the box too!

 

If you need a replacement vac form canopy and/or dome, this may help;

 

http://www.jaysmodelkits.com/jaysmk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=102_103&products_id=802

 

Good luck with the build, I’m looking forward to it 😊👍

 

Best regards

TonyT

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2 hours ago, TonyTiger66 said:

Good luck with the build, I’m looking forward to it 😊👍

Thanks Tony. So am I!

 

Thanks for the link. I’ll check that out. I tried to locate some aftermarket decals, but nothing turned up for the right period I’m after. I may have to try and rescue the sheet I have, and replace the main national markings from other sheets.

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What a lovely subject choice Heather. The Oxford was such a pleasant looking aircraft. Alas that's more than can be said for those decals :( Best of luck resurrecting them. The gun also looks a bit like the toy 'Tommy' gun my dad made for me out of some scrap wood when I was a kid :D 

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Before I started prepping and assembling things, I thought it might be worth actually doing some research into the Oxford. This goes against my usual attitude to builds which assumes the bits in the box are more or less correct!

 

 

This video turned up. It is very much of its time, particularly the voice narration. It does, however, include some useful closeup interior and exterior shots of Oxfords of both Mks I and II. The continuity is a bit of a hoot, too, with a right old mixture of camouflaged planes with yellow undersides, and aluminium doped aircraft, swapping randomly on the same training mission.

 

Right, back to digging up references. Then I’ll have a closer look at what’s in the box and see what it’ll build into.

 

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I’ve found some useful period photos on the interwebs, plus a walk around of a Belgian example in a museum. I’ve also read around on the development and service life of the Oxford, and what an interesting and versatile plane it was. Almost 8,500 of them were built during the Second World War, and they lasted in RAF service until 1954. Not quite as faithful as the Anson, but still, a fine record.

 

I am still fretting over decals. As mentioned at the top, the original kit ones are looking their age. Most of the National markings I can replace, but the aircraft specific ones might prove troublesome. I’ve looked around for alternative planes that I may be able to cobble together from stock decals, just in case the kit ones don’t work. More on that, no doubt, in due course.

 

The other thing that was bothering me was the turret. Now, there were two kinds of Oxford in the period I’m interested in: the MkI, with the Armstrong Whitworth turret and Vickers K gun, and the MkII, which was without the turret. I’ve found a serial for a MkII, and the kit does provide alternative parts to build such a beast. That, then, is my standby if I’m unhappy with the turret.

 

So, what's wrong with the turret? Well, the vac-form transparencies had been crushed at some point.

 

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You can just make out the apex of the turrets are a bit squished. However, the real thing was literally open to the skies right through the damaged area, so perhaps they can be used after all. What about inside?

 

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This is what Pavla reckon goes on in the turret. I don’t think the designers had come across a real AW dorsal turret, and I felt there must be something better out there. More internet rummaging ensued. 

 

3460655563_d5d22a1b02_b.jpgArmstrong Whitworth AW38 Gun Turret by ruffleader, on Flickr

 

Here's a real one, albeit I believe from an RAF rescue launch. You can just make out a fair bit of framing going on inside, supporting the air gunner and his weapon. Further digging turned up some more useful images.

 

Meanwhile, a dim lightbulb had lit up in the back of mind. The same type of turret was fitted to the Avro Anson. I have the Special Hobby kit in the stash. I wonder what they did for the turret?

 

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As it turns out, a darned sight more than Pavla attempted. It's polyurethane, though. Still, with the aid of photos and a drawing, I reckon I could do a @TheBaron and concoct something better from brass. Even if I make a horlicks of it, it’ll still be better than the original parts. 

 

That just left the weaponry. 

 

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Never throw anything away. My Bits Box turned up a spare Vickers from an Airfix Blenheim kit. That’ll do nicely, and definitely makes a better fist of it than the crude spud gun from Pavla.

 

Now, I don’t want you to think I’m having a downer on Pavla. Far from it. I just think I can make a nicer model with some parts that actually look right. Anyway, enough research. Time to check out the instructions and perhaps even - *gasp!* - glue some parts together!

 

Edited by Heather Kay
Armament corrections
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7 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

Don't now if this is of any help with the Turret's Syndrome Heather?

Turret's Syndrome! 🤣 I can’t beat that.

 

Seriously, handy info is always handy. Thank you.

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With a Mk.II kit in the stash to do one of the machines operated out of local bases along the Moray coast I'll looking to pick up plenty tips and information from your progress Heather :)

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2 hours ago, Col. said:

I'll looking to pick up plenty tips and information from your progress Heather :)

I had better watch my step, then! On with the styrene wrangling!

 

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As is traditional, we start with the cockpit. Well, in this case, we start with the interior. I’m heading for a MkI, with the turret, which usually carried a crew of three. Although Oxfords were fitted with dual controls, air gunnery training school planes generally had the co-pilot seat and controls removed. When I say removed, the seat was actually folded up out of the way. Pavla provide three seats, and expect two of them to fill the flight deck. I have left one out, along with the requisite control column. I may yet decide to carve out the bump the seat sits on. Meanwhile, further back we find the navigator/wireless operator's seat - and not a lot else. I rather think I ought to give sparks something to look at, if not actually operate. I’m doing a little research into that. It doesn’t need to be extremely detailed, as it’s hidden inside the fuselage, but there ought to be something there, as the interior is effectively wide open until you hit the bulkhead to the rear of the turret. Shapes need to be visible if you peer through the front of the canopy, I think.

 

I left the instrument panel out for the time being. Like many limited run kits from the former Eastern Bloc countries, instructions tend to be a little vague in places. Add into that mix a lack of positive location marks, it can be a little tedious dry-fitting, sanding, fitting again and so on. I don’t think I’ve got the wireless op seat in quite the right location, perched on the wing spar bump as it is, but there you go.

 

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With the big greenhouse up front, and the bomb aimer's panel under the nose, I really felt I ought to add something to the interior walls. I sketched out, with the aid of a cutaway of a MkII I discovered online, where the main frames went. The plane was mostly made of plywood fitted to the framework. I’ve probably added more than will ever be seen, but isn’t that what we do?

 

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A while later, after some mild styrene strip abuse, the fuselage sides had some detail.

 

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Finally, for this session, I propped the floor assembly in the fuselage half. One feature of the real plane, and visible in the video I linked to earlier, was a reinforced bulkhead affair at the back of the flight deck. This was designed to prevent the cockpit being crushed in the event of a novice pilot overturning the plane on landing or takeoff. Once I’ve attached the floor to one fuselage half, I will fit some styrene rod and bits and bobs to represent this reinforcing loop. Some of it may have to wait until the fuselage has been closed up. There’s also a matter of some structure under the flight deck that might be visible through the clear panel underneath the nose. Another thing I need to consider whether it’s worth the extra effort to create.

 

Right, time to go and see if I can knock something together that looks like WO and navigation station.

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I wanted to check the fit of the wings, and I thought it might be instructive to see some of the issues the limited run stuff throws up for the modeller.

 

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Large and sometimes obtrusive feed gates need some little care when removing the parts from the trees. I opted to cut further away from the part, and then clean back carefully.

 

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As well as thick feed gates, massive ejector pin marks seem to be de rigeur. Some can be ignored, but these in the wings will need to be carved and sanded away.

 

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More lumpectomy required for the upper wing halves.

 

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Apart from some careful filing around the fuselage, which had quite a lot of excess plastic - not flash - in the cabin windows, around the cockpit canopy area, and on the wing roots, the main lower wing part fits quite well. This area is often a problem, but Pavla have done well here. Praise where praise is due.

 

And there Flickr decided to throw its toys out of the pram. I’ll share the other image later. :penguin:

 

Right, where were we? Ah, yes.

 

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The shape of things to come.

 

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Finally, why I’m doing some extra work on the interior. You can see all the way through to the rear bulkhead. Even with transparencies in place, something will be visible.

Edited by Heather Kay
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17 hours ago, Col. said:

Great work there Heather

Thanks! If this kit was a current product, I suspect a lot of the interior would be moulded for us.

 

I spent a few minutes last night building a quick wireless position, and painted everything inside interior green. I didn’t take any photos, but I hope to do some further work and document things this evening.

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A brief update. I’ve been through the mill with the day job this past few days, working on some fiddly details that need about eight hands. Where’s @Martian Hale when you need him? 

 

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The interior has been painted green, and the IP and seats have had a quick spot of suitable paint. I’ve also run a dilute matt black enamel wash over things.

 

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The office. I’ll do a subtle dry brush on the instrument panel, and pick out various knobs for the "binnacle", but most of it is lost under the top of the nose. I’m guessing the seats have simple lap belts, so I’ll add those from masking tape later.

 

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Finally, my interpretation of the wireless installation. I’ll attempt to paint some dials on it later. 

 

I think the next next job will be to make glazing for the fuselage windows. This is marked out in the instructions as things to be scratch built, so that’ll be fun. 

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7 minutes ago, Heather Kay said:

A brief update. I’ve been through the mill with the day job this past few days, working on some fiddly details that need about eight hands. Where’s @Martian Hale when you need him? 

Working on fiddly details that need eight hands on one of my builds? Nice detail work Heather, keep it up!

 

Martian 👽

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Things appear to have slowed to a crawl here. I blame that life thing people keep talking about.

 

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With all the fun of internal framing, I neglected to allow for some bits that go inside, like the turret ring. So, out with sharp things to excise portions of the framing. The fuselage door is moulded as a separate item. Presumably, it’s intended that it might be posed open, although it’s about as thick as a decent bank vault door! It is also necessary to carefully cut out the window in it. I did - briefly - consider the option of making a new one from thinner styrene sheet, but since I intend to keep it firmly shut I fettled the door and opening gently until both were a good fit. The window is marked by a fine moulded line, and I drilled a series of small holes around it to eventually let me remove the centre. Some careful filing followed to open the panel to the correct size. I’ve still to make the glazing for it.

 

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Speaking of glazing, I made and fitted the fuselage windows. The instructions tell me I had to make these from scratch. I could have used one of the various glazing concoctions available out there, but I felt the openings were a bit too large for that kind of thing. Instead, I took some clear styrene sheet (I assume it’s a kind of styrene as it’s affected by the same kinds of glues as the normal stuff), trimmed a rectangle way oversized for each aperture, and then, holding it by finger pressure against the outside of the fuselage, I used a sewing needle in a pin vice to carefully scratch the shape of the aperture onto the material. I then trimmed back to the scratched line, initially with nail scissors, and finally with a fine needle file, until the panel fitted neatly into the aperture. Some careful positioning, followed by careful application of liquid cement to the extreme edges, fixed the glazing in place. Nice and flush, like the real thing. I suspect I’ll have to daub Maskol on them before painting begins.

 

And that’s where I’ve stalled for a while. I might find the energy to glaze the door and install that in the fuselage. Then I can join the thing together and feel like it’s going to get finished eventually!

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Happy with the interior, basic as it is and after adding a third seat for the navigator/bomb aimer trainee to perch on, I decided it was time to attempt to join the fuselage halves. This is limited run territory, let’s not forget: I expected issues.

 

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In spite of lots of dry-fitting, it was obvious there were going to be mismatches somewhere. The question was, where was the best place to minimise their effects. I decided to begin with the fin and try to work forwards as best I could. Several gaps are evident along the upper fuselage join. The fin itself is not exactly a good fit. 

 

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Under the tail, and it does look like the moulded tailwheel hole will have to go. I suspect there will be quite a bit of styrene dust in my future.

 

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Meanwhile, up at the sharp end, things aren’t too bad. My idea here was to attempt to get the cockpit aperture and nose cone aligned as best as I could, flood things with liquid cement, and let it harden. Which is where things are. Once the joins are nice and solid, I’ll review things and work out what needs doing to make it look nice.

 

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Isn't that always the way with limited run? It's never going to go together properly everywhere, so minimise the areas that will need attention as much as possible and make it fit in the important/difficult to reach areas. Nicely done!

 

Ian

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Right, where was I? Ah, yes.

 

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I dabbed some white paint on the wireless gear. Enough to represent something, I suppose. It was at this point I remembered I hadn't installed the reinforcing metalwork at the back of the cockpit. The angled struts are included in the kit, but I decided to replace them with some styrene rod. Now all I have to do is work out how to paint them now I've joined the fuselage halves… :doh:

 

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I completely neglected to take any progress shots of the wing assembly. Let's just say it's what you'd expect from a short-run kit, and I spent quite a while sanding things down to thin the aerofoil section as much as I could. It still wasn't enough, but I felt it would do. In this shot you'll see there are large gaps along the wing roots. What you can't see is the starboard side fuselage root is about a millimetre higher than the actual wing. To overcome this, I carefully dragged a fine pencil along the top of the wing to leave a mark on the fuselage. I then scraped and sanded until the line was gone. The gaps were larger than I'd hoped for, but nothing some scrap material and filler wouldn't cope with.

 

The small gaps and misalignments with the fuselage itself were dealt with by stretching some of the kit sprue and sanding. The fuselage went together quite well, which was pleasing.

 

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With the wing halves joined, you can see quite some gaps along the trailing edge. 

 

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The tips were also nasty. I deployed some more stretched sprue along the trailing edges, which worked remarkably well - far better than filler alone would have managed. With the gaps filled, some careful sanding refined the trailing edges nicely. A little more sanding around the wing tips ended up with something I felt I could live with. One other oddity was the port wing cutout for the landing lights. The cutout was misaligned on both halves. I glued in some scrap styrene strip on one end to even the offset up, and cut away the opposite end. The leading edges overall were actually quite good once they had been tidied up with the sanding sticks.

 

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Joining the wings to the fuselage. It didn't really need the clamps, but it helped to smooth out the rear end as it fairs into the underside of the fuselage.

 

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Styrene strip being used to fill up the Grand Canyons of the wing roots. 

 

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On the belly, things aren't very pretty, but on the whole it's not bad for what it is. Some scraps of styrene strip plug the biggest gaps. Once set, expect quite some filler to be deployed. I also expect some careful rescribing might be in order.

 

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After the first go with the filler along the wing roots. Coming along.

 

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More filler underneath. I think it'll work out okay in the end.

 

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You can see the landing light slot correction here, as well as a fair amount of filler in front of the wing roots.

 

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More filler the other side. I'm going to get a witness coat of paint on these areas later so I can see how much more filler and sanding is required to get the best appearance.

 

Having neglected to document the wing assembly, I think I ought to describe it a little. You'll have noticed the engine rear nacelles are moulded into the upper wing halves. A sort of firewall is fitted into the front of the nacelles, which is where the main undercarriage legs will be fitted later. You can see one in the last photo: they are handed, though it's not obvious from the parts or the instructions. Where the wing dihedral takes off, the undercarriage must drop out so it's at the correct angle to the ground, so with the firewall the wrong way round I reckon the gear would be splayed out. We'll see how that works later! It all looks a bit vague at present, considering the various struts and rods to be fitted to the gear.

 

The lower nacelles are separate parts, not fitted yet. They are moulded with the undercarriage doors closed, and for the gear lowered they must be cut out and glued in position. They are very thick, and I suppose I should have considered making scratch ones. In the end, I simply filed away as much as I could to improve the appearance a bit. The fronts of the nacelles, as well as engines and cowlings, are made in several parts, which will become apparent as I work on those bits next.

 

I've also been thinking about the horizontal stabilisers. The kit provides a nice butt joint. I'm thinking I shall add some metal pins for a bit of extra security. 

 

I am taking some time over this build, but it is beginning to take on the definite shape of an Oxford.

 

Edited by Heather Kay
Tidiness.
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This has started out and is continuing as a another fascinating build, Heather - love the historical research as well as the comprehensive modelling skills on display. Enjoying this one. All the best. Mike.

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9 hours ago, Col. said:

Tidy work on this one Heather. Did you get those internal bracing struts painted?

Thanks! I’ve not painted them yet. I might do it when I get home - I’m in Corby at the moment, having been playing toy trains at an exhibition on Saturday. :like:

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