BIch (Boris Ivanovich Cheranovsky)14, 1/72 scratchbuild Parable wing,

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

These are all old builds, and in retrospect should have been posted at the beginning of these series. They often represent the first, hesitant steps on scratchbuilding.

Here is another from 2006, 13 years ago (original text as posted then):

 

Some times Russians don't make just planes. They make flying poetry. Boris Ivanovich Cheranovsky dreamed about the half-moon gliding on the frozen surface of the lake. And he created a series of planes with a charm that is hard to ignore. The daring design created some stability problems, but most of his planes at least flew, and some times they flew very well.

I just posted my scratchbuilt BICh 7a, a smaller, previously designed plane, for size and type reference:

 

The BICh 14 was a transport (four passenger) version, and both date from the early 30's.

For the construction of the model I used some styrene, wood, metal, invocations, imprecations, a magic wand and some pixie dust.

The interior was provided with five seats, control column, instrument panel and rudder bar, all to be forever forgotten under the dark, impenetrable canopy. The Townend rings were made of two layers of .010 styrene wrapped around the right size of metal tube, and later a half-round styrene rod was added as a lip to the inner front side. Once dry the part was sanded close to shape. The engines were made of scored styrene rod and stretched sprue, and the half-round front covers are heat-and-smash styrene over a rounded dowel end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nikolay Polyakov]

Excellent plane, excellent story! 👍 The real art, @Moa - as always.

 

Cheers! 😎

[Baldy]

Well Moa, that is certainly an interesting aircraft and what an interesting guy Cheranovsky was! I love some of his later designs too like the BICh-20 and 21! I bet they will be in your collection or at least your thoughts. Fascinating stuff - he designed and flew the first practical flying wing aircraft if I am reading correct. The trailing edge flight controls look to have been copied a few times too.

 

All in all, you are right, a thing of classic like beauty.

 

Nice insight into your early thoughts on scratch building too - I am so seriously tempted to give some of this a go - just too many kits of boring nasty planes.

 

Thank you for your continued inspiration and interest.

 

Cheers

 

Malcolm

 

 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

4 minutes ago, Baldy said:

Well Moa, that is certainly an interesting aircraft and what an interesting guy Cheranovsky was! I love some of his later designs too like the BICh-20 and 21! I bet they will be in your collection or at least your thoughts. Fascinating stuff - he designed and flew the first practical flying wing aircraft if I am reading correct. The trailing edge flight controls look to have been copied a few times too.

 

All in all, you are right, a thing of classic like beauty.

 

Nice insight into your early thoughts on scratch building too - I am so seriously tempted to give some of this a go - just too many kits of boring nasty planes.

 

Thank you for your continued inspiration and interest.

 

Cheers

 

Malcolm

 

 

You are exceedingly kind, Malcom.

I am glad these efforts can lead to some inspiration.

 

Cheers

[72modeler]

Ooh- a multi-engined Klingon batliff!

Mike

[pheonix]

Once again your construction photos show how relatively simple these aircraft are to scratch build - provided a little patience is plugged in. However the finished product belies the skills that you have - these all look as though they are kits.

 

A very interesting design - again completely new to me - but then my knowledge of aviation history has increased enormously recently, due to some chap in America posting a series of models he has made over the years....

 

P