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363P - Handley Page Dart Herald


zebra

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Just a placeholder for now but once I've progressed my builds in another two GBs a bit further I'm going to start on this - the Handley Page Dart Herald. I have a Novo boxing of this kit with BIA decals, which I won't be using. This will (probably) be Air UK, using decals intended for an F-27 (if they fit ok - if not I have BIA decals as a back-up). This is a bit of nostalgia for me as I remember a couple of flights in Air UK Heralds 38 or 39 years ago. When I was growing up we used to fly from Manchester to the Isle of Man two or three times a year to see my grandparents - until about 1980 this was with BA on Viscounts, when BA pulled out they were replaced by Air UK, initially with Heralds but pretty soon after with Friendships. Heralds can't have lasted long on the route as I only flew one return trip on them - no idea which particular airframes but one of them was still in BIA colours and the other was in full Air UK colours. As a 7- or 8-year old I loved watching the undercarriage retract! So this is one I've been wanting to build for a while.

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Welcome aboard Zebra.. so good to see one of these kits making an appearance. We will all watch on with immense interest. 

Cheers.. Dave 

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Not started yet (hopefully tomorrow) but here's the box top and parts:

 

Novo Herald

 

First impression is of lots of hard white plastic, quite a lot of flash, and one warped wing half, and quite fine raised detail. Can't see the decal sheet being any good at all, but then I'm not going to be using it. Might put it in water just to see what happens. I think this is going to be an OOB build, I might rescribe it though.

 

 

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7 hours ago, JOCKNEY said:

Hi Zebra

I don't think I've ever seen even the box for this kit let alone a finished one !

Good luck with the build

Cheers Pat

I don't think I even knew this kit existed until Novo resurrected the mould. I assume FROG didn't keep it on the market for long? 

Watching with great interest. 

 

John 

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Hi Zebra

 

Nice, I have one of these which is the Maquette boxing.  The kit is very nice and mine is being built as the Channel Freight machine .  There is one issue so far which are the windows for the freighter they need to be flush as they are painted and decalled over however they sit around 0.5 mm in from the outisde of the fuselage .  I forgot about this one and if I finish the Shark in time may look at resurrecting the Herald if within the rules. 

Good luck with your build and if you have an issue with the well renowned exploding on impact with water Novo decals  I have some spare decals from the Kit which may help.  PM me and I will be happy to dig them out and send you them.  From what I recall I think the second option decals are for a BIA aircraft.

 

All the best
Chris

Edited by bigbadbadge
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1 hour ago, bigbadbadge said:

Hi Zebra

 

Nice, I have one of these which is the Maquette boxing.  The kit is very nice and mine is being built as the Channel Freight machine .  There is one issue so far which are the windows for the freighter they need to be flush as they are painted and decalled over however they sit around 0.5 mm in from the outisde of the fuselage .  I forgot about this one and if I finish the Shark in time may look at resurrecting the Herald if within the rules. 

Good luck with your build and if you have an issue with the well renowned exploding on impact with water Novo decals  I have some spare decals from the Kit which may help.  PM me and I will be happy to dig them out and send you them.  From what I recall I think the second option decals are for a BIA aircraft.

 

All the best
Chris

Thanks Chris, won't need your decals though as I'm going to be doing a different colour scheme - Air UK, using aftermarket decals (intended for an F-27).

 

cheers

Julian

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2 hours ago, John said:

I don't think I even knew this kit existed until Novo resurrected the mould. I assume FROG didn't keep it on the market for long? 

Watching with great interest. 

 

John 

It was released at the end of 1962 (your choice of big aircraft kit for Christmas that year would have been an Airfix B-17G, a Revell B-17F or the FROG Herald) and stayed in the FROG catalogue until 1967.

 

It was then issued for a couple of years as a bagged kit in Malaysian military markings without FROG's name on the header, but wasn't seen again until Novo. It was apparently the first FROG kit to have crew figures, in the cockpit and as cabin crew.

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On 6/3/2019 at 3:08 AM, zebra said:

Just a placeholder for now but once I've progressed my builds in another two GBs a bit further I'm going to start on this - the Handley Page Dart Herald. I have a Novo boxing of this kit with BIA decals, which I won't be using. This will (probably) be Air UK, using decals intended for an F-27 (if they fit ok - if not I have BIA decals as a back-up). This is a bit of nostalgia for me as I remember a couple of flights in Air UK Heralds 38 or 39 years ago. When I was growing up we used to fly from Manchester to the Isle of Man two or three times a year to see my grandparents - until about 1980 this was with BA on Viscounts, when BA pulled out they were replaced by Air UK, initially with Heralds but pretty soon after with Friendships. Heralds can't have lasted long on the route as I only flew one return trip on them - no idea which particular airframes but one of them was still in BIA colours and the other was in full Air UK colours. As a 7- or 8-year old I loved watching the undercarriage retract! So this is one I've been wanting to build for a while.

Hi,

 

Brings back memories for me too as my wife and I flew to Jersey from Manchester and back on Heralds for our honeymoon in 1978 - typically the Channel Islands were fogged in so we arrived a day late and the ruddy complimentary champagne was shot, having been left out for 24 hours. I will watch this build with interest, Incidentally I too flew to the Isle of Mann several times - first on a Silver City DC3, then an Aer Lingus DC3 they had hired, and last of all on a BEA (or was it BA by then - 1971 I think) Viscount which was much better.

 

Good luck

 

Pete

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  • 3 weeks later...

I had to re-read the post above as I thought @PeterBhad gone on honeymoon in Manchester, which is a very brave move for a new relationship  !

 

Returning to the Herald, have you had a chance to make a start yet, I am really keen to see this one being built.

 

Cheers Pat 

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Time and the need to finish things off in other GBs haven’t been on my side! I’ve started but not got far. Spent most of that time looking at it and thinking about how I’m going to build it! Have started with sticking the doors in and filling some gaps. No photos yet. I’m away for the next week but will get onto the Herald when I get back.

 

 

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On 6/9/2019 at 11:49 AM, zebra said:

Not started yet (hopefully tomorrow) but here's the box top and parts:

 

Novo Herald

 

First impression is of lots of hard white plastic, quite a lot of flash, and one warped wing half, and quite fine raised detail. Can't see the decal sheet being any good at all, but then I'm not going to be using it. Might put it in water just to see what happens. I think this is going to be an OOB build, I might rescribe it though.

 

 

Somewhere in the darkest recess of the stash, I might have the Maquette boxing of this- a kit so bad that the shop-owner would only sell it to me on the insistence that I took a good look at it first- duty of care and all that!!!  It sounds like the wing may not be warped in the usual sense but actually moulded like that because I remember that being one of the things he pointed out to me.

After I've done with sticking needles in my eyes (typo, should read on the Kaitushya) I might go and have a look or it.

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On 09/06/2019 at 23:03, PeterB said:

Brings back memories for me too as my wife and I flew to Jersey from Manchester and back on Heralds for our honeymoon in 1978

My fiancée, now the present Mrs N, had a trip from Manchester to Jersey in 1978 too Peter. We were able to see the Battle of the Flowers whilst we were there and I remember that Sacha Distel led the parade. I have a vivid recollection of returning to Manchester on the Herald, but I can't recall the type flown on the outbound leg, I think it may have been a HS748.

 

@zebra

 

Looking forward to watching this one progress Julian. Good luck with your build.

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Hi John,

 

Both the wife and I caught colds on our honeymoon due to the cold wet weather (well at least most of the time). Coming back into Ringway the pilot let down in rather pronounced "steps" of a few hundred feet and my ears gave me a lot of discomfort. In fact the holiday was so bad that we had a re-run the next year to Italy - much warmer and a lot more to see. Did not see the Battle of Flowers but went to the museum. Figures made up of chicken wire and papier mache (or however you spell it), with faded (paper?) flowers. Must have taken a lot of work and I am sure the floats looked stunning at the time, but sitting fading away in a museum was rather sad I thought.

Edited by PeterB
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@Mjwomack not looking forward to dealing with the wings! Since the dihedral on the Herald is so distinctive getting this right will be crucial. Now be careful with those needles!

 

@PeterB I don’t remember much ear discomfort in the Herald but then maybe that’s because it paled into insignificance compared to the unpressurised Shorts 360s that Manx Airlines was using a few years later and never failed to hurt the ears! But there must have been some on the Herald too - they used to hand out boiled sweets for a reason. Compared with today’s airliners - didn’t notice the pressure changes in the 737-800 I flew in last week - the pressurisation systems must have been pretty primitive.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I can remember getting boiled sweets on an ancient Dak of Aer Lingus going to the IOM - sticks in my mind as the pilot was Captain Blood! After dragging myself up the slope (tail dragger of course) to my seat I noticed that the emergency oxygen supply was a sort of rigid curved pipe you apparently had to suck. At age 11 it seemed real pioneering sort of stuff.

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  • 3 weeks later...

With the F-104J done and the Thud in the paint shop it's time to crack on with this (and resurrect this thread from page 5!). I started by cleaning up the doors - getting rid of the rivets and getting them (more) flush with the fuselage. Then I painted the fuselage around the windows gloss white - this is to make painting the Air UK scheme easier later on - then installed the windows. I've decided to keep this build simple so I'm going to live with the absence of internal detail, and painted the insides of the windows black. Then got the fuselage together - not the greatest fit ever, nor the worst, needed a bit of superglue to do it but it's gone together ok. So here it is with filler along the seams ready to be cleaned up:

 

Herald WIP

 

thanks for looking

Julian

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Made some progress with the Herald. Fuselage seams cleaned up and now have all the major subassemblies together, although some cleanup is needed. I reckon I'll be moving this into the paintshop pretty soon.

 

Herald WIP

 

cheers

Julian

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Pleased to see this Herald updated Julian. Its certainly not a Frog kit that most if not any of us have built so this kit has huge WOW factor potential once finished. Bring it home my friend, we all want to see it in the Gallery. 

 

Cheers.. Dave 

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More progress today - wings on and blended in, tailplanes and rudder on, nacelles fully assembled. Looks like I'll be painting soon.

 

It's a bit of a funny kit. Some of it fits well, some of it doesn't. Wings went on ok but needed some filler, whereas the front part of each nacelle was nowhere near an acceptable fit with the rear part and needed some fettling, sanding and filling to get there. Fine raised panel lines all over, except for the doors which were covered in huge rivets (they aren't any more!). Trailing edges of the wings seem pretty close to 1/1 scale thickness! So a bit of an oddity, but I'm glad I'm building it.

 

Here it is:

 

Herald WIP

 

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Oh yes that's more like it, looking good.  Will have to dig mine out of the stash to get cracking again, I only stopped it because I had to move my work bench upstairs because of building work.  If I can clear some shelf space I might again. Thanks for the inspiration.

Keep up the good work.

All the best

Chris

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