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Avro 707A in black and white (and silver)


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Here for your viewing pleasure is my attempt at the Olimp Avro 707A.

 

After trials in the UK, during which the original straight wing was modified to have a kinked leading edge, WD280 was shipped to Australia to undertake low speed airflow trials. To visualise the airflow, it appears she had her port wing painted black, and then a white coating was applied which would wash off with when a liquid was released at the leading edge.

 

This is my second Olimp 707, the other being the B version. Both kits are quite nice in shape (to my eye) and the fit is not too bad. However, they have an incorrect main undercarriage leg shape which meant I had to fabricate my own, which I did using metal rod/tube. I also partially replaced the nose leg in the same way. To finish, I scratch-built some intake guards to disguise the rather shallow ducting provided.

 

Thanks for looking!

 

Mike

 

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Very good and very interesting. I thinking of starting the same model but with the straight wing LE. I was thinking of doing mine in its original pink scheme but it looks so awful I may go for the red. Is there anything else I should look out for?

After seeing this post I had to look up your Vulcan and Comet prototypes - great work on both.

John

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Always a soft spot for the 707. Used to watch WZ736 out of Martlesham Heath when I wuz a nipper. I must crack on with my 'B'. It needs a little more butchery than the 'A' with that dorsal intake. I'll probably go for the latter style. The 707s used Avro Athena  gear, but they don't make that either.  I found Hunter main gear legs are close enough. If you are going red, I found Halfords Fiat Red Orange as near as dammit.

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Excellent! Great results in both aircraft. The 50s British R&D aircraft are a fascinating subject. Been looking at getting one of these Olimp kits but they're a bit hard to come by....and quite pricey when they do appear on eBay. Whirlykits do one i think? but it's vacform and I'm not brave enough to tackle one of those! 😁

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Thanks for all the comments, very kind!

 

On 8/23/2020 at 5:58 PM, TheyJammedKenny! said:

Superb finish!  I'm envious of your scale ramp, too!

The ramp is a Noy's Miniatures card sheet, very effective isn't it?! This particular one is 72029 (Cold War UK Dispersal). I got it for just this sort of thing!

 

On 8/23/2020 at 6:38 PM, John R said:

Very good and very interesting. I thinking of starting the same model but with the straight wing LE. I was thinking of doing mine in its original pink scheme but it looks so awful I may go for the red. Is there anything else I should look out for?

After seeing this post I had to look up your Vulcan and Comet prototypes - great work on both.

John

Cheers John! I originally fancied doing the red scheme too, but when I found out it only wore that with the straight leading edges I looked for something else as I wanted the kinked wing. It's a pretty nice kit, typical resin I guess in that there's a lot of clean-up of the parts required. One thing I did was to glue the wings to their respective fuselage halves before joining the latter - this made it a lot easier to handle when sanding the fuselage joint flat! The intake boundary layer splitters were a bit short so I replaced them with plasticard. Apart from the undercarriage legs, it was all fairly straight forward otherwise.

 

Thanks for the comments on the Comet and Vulcan, they were real labours of love and still have pride of place on the display shelf!

 

On 8/23/2020 at 10:19 PM, bentwaters81tfw said:

Always a soft spot for the 707. Used to watch WZ736 out of Martlesham Heath when I wuz a nipper. I must crack on with my 'B'. It needs a little more butchery than the 'A' with that dorsal intake. I'll probably go for the latter style. The 707s used Avro Athena  gear, but they don't make that either.  I found Hunter main gear legs are close enough. If you are going red, I found Halfords Fiat Red Orange as near as dammit.

That must've been a great sight! Thanks for the colour tip, I do fancy another to do in red. And the Hunter legs, nice one! I seem to remember the B being not too bad, but some inevitable sanding to get the intake piece to fit in the fuselage slot.

 

On 8/23/2020 at 10:36 PM, binbrook87 said:

Excellent! Great results in both aircraft. The 50s British R&D aircraft are a fascinating subject. Been looking at getting one of these Olimp kits but they're a bit hard to come by....and quite pricey when they do appear on eBay. Whirlykits do one i think? but it's vacform and I'm not brave enough to tackle one of those! 😁

They crop up occasionally, so hopefully you'll get lucky one time. Hopefully the fact they are still listed on Hannants means they'll get some more stock at some point. I keep expecting someone like AZ Model to bring out a range of 707s in plastic...

 

Mike 

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18 minutes ago, Mike N said:

 

 

That must've been a great sight! Thanks for the colour tip, I do fancy another to do in red. And the Hunter legs, nice one! I seem to remember the B being not too bad, but some inevitable sanding to get the intake piece to fit in the fuselage slot.


 

Ah, but bear in mind I'm working in 1/32 scale. There is a little more work involved.

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Thank you for the warning about the u/c legs. I have the Maintrack vacform 707b & 707C kits and their u/c legs look much better. I am tempted to use those legs from instead.

John

 

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Love it! I want the kit of the kinked wing silver one... Never built a resin kit before but I'd happily do it for that model. Shame the real one is all the way in Australia, it's the only surviving example of (almost) the Vulcan B1 kinked wing, albeit at 1/3 scale, in the world.

On 25/08/2020 at 08:12, Mike N said:

 

They crop up occasionally, so hopefully you'll get lucky one time. Hopefully the fact they are still listed on Hannants means they'll get some more stock at some point. I keep expecting someone like AZ Model to bring out a range of 707s in plastic...

 

Mike 

If we get an Avro 707 in plastic of each variant, I don't think I have a choice but to build all 5. 

 

 

I'd love to see those next to the model of VX770

Edited by Adam Poultney
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