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Potez 651, Romania 1943-44, scratch conversion from Heller Potez 540, 1/72


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Hi

In a triple conversion from Heller kits the last one - Potez 651.

The build thread is here

 

 

Accordingly to typical French nomenclature for Interwar airplanes the "651" is a variant of Potez 65. But the story is a bit more difficult. The well known bomber Potez 540 has variants 541, 542 and 543. The last one was build for Romania and was equipped with radial Gnome Rhone engines. On the other hand the civilian (passenger) machine Potez 62 was constructed basing on that bomber. She had completely new, wider by 30 cm fuselage (what made also bigger wingspan by the same 30 cm) and engines, tail and wings taken from "540". The civilian machine was back militarized into a transport variant named Potez 65. And Romania, who used radial engine driven "543" ordered modified "65" with the same radial engines and moreover - with provision to be used as bomber. So in fact the "651" was not just a transport machine but it was transport-bomber one. The additional window in floor was installed with bombardier position behind it and (most likely - this is not confirmed unfortunately) with machine gun defence position on top of fuselage. Only four were delivered to Romania and and used along one militarized in Romania "62" as paratroopers transport or ambulance.

 

Here she is:

50226446907_8ced05b150_b.jpg

50225579928_3aa5ac8edf_b.jpg

50226219261_1e9473c2b4_b.jpg50226447592_64b23db176_b.jpg50226447742_2436e83383_b.jpg50225580628_6173c484c9_b.jpg50226448197_ccb6c2d3a6_b.jpg

50225581178_df942e015c_b.jpg

 

Comments welcome

Regards

Jerzy-Wojtek

 

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Loving these French birds on Britmodeller at the moment although this is wearing different clothes. Excellent build as usual, I'm always amazed by your ability to hack and fill to create things that look like they came straight out of the box. I've just gone back over your WIP, rally impressive. That canopy is a piece of art in itself, each piece individually fitted :)

 

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Not so-totally scratch-built as the Bloch 220, but nevertheless a huge amount of work was necessary.

And the result is (for me at least) more interesting than the MB220.

Those French twins from the 30s are so ugly as to be cute.

Cheers

Michael

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On 8/14/2020 at 9:06 PM, bigbadbadge said:

Oh wow that's a fantastic model , great scratcbuilding work .  This is quite an unusual  and nice looking French Machine.

Great background too.

All the best 

Chris

Many thanks! The scratchbuilding is the essence of modelling... :)

 

 

 

Joachim, Chris, Steve, Patrick. Martin, Wez, Old Man, Stevehed, Woody37 - Many thanks! I appreciate your comments.

 

4 hours ago, KRK4m said:

Not so-totally scratch-built as the Bloch 220, but nevertheless a huge amount of work was necessary.

And the result is (for me at least) more interesting than the MB220.

Those French twins from the 30s are so ugly as to be cute.

Cheers

Michael

Thanks but in fact the build of Potez was a bit more difficult then that of MB - due to reshaping of engine gondolas and whole not simple geometry of airplane as well as the structure on surface of fuselage. 

 

3 hours ago, Vinnie said:

What a nice build and unusual scheme. Well done, Jerzy. I have a Potez next up from under the bench. I need to research it a little to see if I can find a less run of the mill scheme for it.

Thank yoy!  If you are talking on Potez 54x there are several schemes from Spanish Civil War, also the Romanian 543 (although with the redial engines and reshaped engine gondolas)  as well as transport schemes for both Vichy and FFAF.

Here is mine:

But this Vichy from Indochina is perhaps the most attracting:

8oghUu-1gp9mkk9HGpZyYtzWNRWqJ0dDEEgnCkVG

or such FFAF:

bokorys1-768x542.jpg&key=0d611304f33ae9a

Romanian 543

Xw5O2B9CyWZ_t5X30bqpI8b7dqwzJjIenS2UlMKw

 

Best regards

J-W

 

 

Edited by JWM
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Wow, another one of your great conversions :worthy: I'm always glued to your scratch builds as you always do subjects off the beaten path (which I'm a big fan of) and your Potez 651 came our really nice!

 

Cheers

Markus

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On 8/16/2020 at 8:51 PM, Shorty84 said:

Wow, another one of your great conversions :worthy: I'm always glued to your scratch builds as you always do subjects off the beaten path (which I'm a big fan of) and your Potez 651 came our really nice!

 

Cheers

Markus

Markus  - many thanks! The number of possible scratch builds  is diminishing with new released models and already completed... One of next challenging conversion which  I just realized is build of  Ju 90 from Revell Ju-290. There is completly different wing, but I have to look more carefully on it... ;)

Regards

J-W

 

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9 minutes ago, JWM said:

One of next challenging conversion which  I just realized is build of  Ju 90 from Revell Ju-290. There is completly different wing, but I have to look more carefully on it...

Well, if you want to build a Ju 90 (with the wings coming from the Ju 89) I may suggest the following build of a Ju 89 from a Ju 290 on a German forum, maybe you can draw some ideas from there: https://www.modellboard.net/index.php?topic=63635.0

 

Cheers

Markus

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5 minutes ago, Shorty84 said:

Well, if you want to build a Ju 90 (with the wings coming from the Ju 89) I may suggest the following build of a Ju 89 from a Ju 290 on a German forum, maybe you can draw some ideas from there: https://www.modellboard.net/index.php?topic=63635.0

 

Cheers

Markus

Very interesting link! Thank you.

Best regards

J-W

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Your builds sometimes look like a battlefield (no wonder with so much ingenious scratch building involved)
But the results are simply fantastic especially this one !!!

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I must admit I didn't read your WiP so I just googled Heller Potez 540 to remind myself and that was enough to appreciate what an epic journey this has been from the original kit - bravo!

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Gents, many thanks for comments! Appreciated.

 

On 8/18/2020 at 12:11 PM, occa said:

Your builds sometimes look like a battlefield (no wonder with so much ingenious scratch building involved)
But the results are simply fantastic especially this one !!!

Martin, indeed sometimes I think that I should be more tide on intermediate states, especially I should think how it looks when photographed... 

Due to COVID my trip to Vienna is postponed if not cancelled.. But I still belive to have a beer one day with you.

regards

J-W

.

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