Heather Kay Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Fairey Battle MkI T70, 5/III/3Aé, Belgische Luchtmacht/Force aérienne belge, stationed at Evere, Belgium. Shot down on 11 May 1940 at Vlijtingen while attacking Vroenhoven bridge. Rather than give a history of the type's genesis and service record here, the Wikipedia entry on the Fairey Battle is pretty comprehensive, and has some good archive photos. The Airfix kit for the Fairey Battle light bomber appeared in 1968, and it was soon noted by many to be horribly inaccurate on several counts. The story goes Airfix asked for drawings, and were sent copies of what were probably early proposals for the design and not those used for production machines. Nose, tail, wings, all were way off in many directions. Anyway, until MPM produced a kit, now sadly out of production and like the proverbial rocking horse poop, the Airfix kit was the only show in town. If you want to know how much effort might be needed to make a decent Fairey Battle from the kit, you can do worse than pop over to this thread: If you want to know how to make it nearly right, but in an advanced bodgery kind of way, check out my Work In Progress thread below. My original intention was to build the kit warts and all from the box, but you know how it goes. A tweak here, a change there, and before you know it you're doing a full-blown conversion! A summary of the work I did would be as follows: Extend the nose by 2.5mm Reshape the nose to better suit the real aircraft Adjust the propellor to a smaller radius and add some details Add an extended radiator donated from a Fairey Fulmar kit Add some cockpit details, with donations from the Fulmar here and there Rework the tail completely Scribe and sand the wings, but otherwise accept they're the wrong shape So much for out of the box! The finished model looks more like a Battle now than when I started, so that's something. The model was brush painted using Humbrol and Revell acrylics. The original 1970s boxing transfers for T70 worked without a hitch. WIP thread starts here: 54 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LorenSharp Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Excellent job on the Battle Heather. I wouldn't have recognized this as the same bits of plastic you started with. As I've said I think our DNA has been altered from all the glue and paint fumes. Building OOB just doesn't seem "Natural" 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heather Kay Posted May 5, 2020 Author Share Posted May 5, 2020 Just now, LorenSharp said: Building OOB just doesn't seem "Natural" Ha! I know what you mean. I just can't leave things alone! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandy Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 (edited) Lovely job Heather, definitely more Battle-like than the base kit. I can't say I've seen another Belgian machine with the correct radiator shroud length either. Ian I suppose I'll have to get on with mine now too! Edited May 5, 2020 by limeypilot 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LorenSharp Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 2 minutes ago, Heather Kay said: Ha! I know what you mean. I just can't leave things alone! Yes we're Like Engineers.... We LOVE to change things😎 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heather Kay Posted May 5, 2020 Author Share Posted May 5, 2020 Thanks Ian. I said in the WIP it's not my best work, but considering where it started it's not turned out too badly. Lessons learned, and perhaps I can do the Bomber Command version with a bit more skill. Between us, I think we should have propitiated the relevant Styrene Deities sufficiently to grace us with a state of the art kit of the Battle now. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F-32 Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Nice work, looks good in that scheme Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cookenbacher Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Wonderful result Heather. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatalbert Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Brillant work,am looking forward to seeing your next project 🙂 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trickydicky210 Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Nice Battle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogsbody Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Nicely done, Heather! Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbadbadge Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Looking Lovely Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyot Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Nicely done Heather,..... I think we are overdue a replacement kit from Airfix,..... all singing, all dancing eh? We can but hope. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheyJammedKenny! Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Nice Battle, and excellent job turning the Airfix kit into something that looks the part. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ForestFan Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Lovely job. I do hope Airfix find it in themselves to give us a new tooled version sooner rather than later Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMCS Posted May 5, 2020 Share Posted May 5, 2020 Superb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kapam Posted May 6, 2020 Share Posted May 6, 2020 Very nice! Hard to believe you started with the very old Airfix kit to come up with that. 👏 I imagine the early obsolescence of the real plane probably accounts for the lack of love by kit producers. Your hard work really paid off though. 👍 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CedB Posted May 6, 2020 Share Posted May 6, 2020 Very nice Heather - an interesting WiP and a great result Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heather Kay Posted May 6, 2020 Author Share Posted May 6, 2020 Thanks for the kind comments everyone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevej60 Posted May 6, 2020 Share Posted May 6, 2020 Excellent work Heather on a long favourite aircraft of mine,surely a contender for an Airfix new tool in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnticlockwisePropeller Posted May 7, 2020 Share Posted May 7, 2020 Super work, Heather! Another splendid addition to your collection! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JWM Posted May 7, 2020 Share Posted May 7, 2020 Great effort and nice result! Some perhaps 20 years ago I did also work on reshaping Battle (including wings chord at the ends) but I accepted the wrong tailplane - i have not noticed their small inaccuracy. But I corrected also nose and fin, of course... So your build recalls warm feelings of the past works.... BTW - inspired by your splendid build of Do-17 P I am pleased to tell you, that I decided to extend my collection of Do-17s variants (17E from SCW and nd 215 night fighter from western front 1941 plus still remaining in stash planned to do the 17Z from BOB and 17K from Yugoslavia or Croatia) with the "P" variant, the RS model of it bought on kind of e-buy arrived today! Regards J-W 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vaastav Posted May 8, 2020 Share Posted May 8, 2020 Nice bird. Great work.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PattheCat Posted May 14, 2020 Share Posted May 14, 2020 Great result, especially knowing the surgery it has undergone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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