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Postman’s Porter - Finished


Andwil

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Place holder for my Pilatus Porter entry.

 

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This will be my first Dora Wings kit and I’m quite impressed with what I’ve seen of it so far.

 

Sprues:

 

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Four sprues of crisp grey plastic, nicely detailed with engraved panel lines, resin wheels and exhausts (choice of two exhaust styles).

 

Two frets of PE and masks for windows and wheels:

 

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I won’t be using the right hand PE as it is a ski attachment for the Japanese Antarctic plane which I am not building.

 

Instruction book:

 

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One oddity I have noticed is that the instructions show six passenger seats whereas the sprues contain four seats and six seat backs!

 

The decals I will be using will be from a local producer here in Adelaide:

 

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I intend to do the second scheme with the hand painted legend on the fuselage, operated by the Australian Army in Vietnam.

 

Work on the build will commence when I finish organising my new study.

 

AW

Edited by Andwil
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7 hours ago, stevehnz said:

I'm keen to see this one built, I've long wanted to do one in the Mt Cook colours that I flew in several times back in the 80s.

https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/8618452

Steve.

The Mt Cook one looks like a beauty, not sure I’d be too keen on the kind of steep take offs and landings that Porters are capable of!

 

AW

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4 hours ago, Andwil said:

The Mt Cook one looks like a beauty, not sure I’d be too keen on the kind of steep take offs and landings that Porters are capable of!

 

AW

They were/are used for ski landings on the Tasman Glacier below Mt Cook, it was a fantastic experience, I was driving tour coaches at the time & would get a ride if there was a spare seat. Never got sick of it. :)

Steve.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Work on the Porter was delayed by the arrival of our first Grandchild on Friday, a  gorgeous girl so time was spent in Hospital visits and cuddles.

 

Today though I made a start cleaning up some of the parts.  Despite the nice crisp mouldings there is a quantity of flash that is quite hard and needs to be carved away and sanded from the parts.

 

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The kit provides a choice of three of four bladed props, both have these sink marks on the spinner

 

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which have been filled with Vallejo filler.

 

I also found the two “missing” seats, which were on a seperate sprue and not with the other seat parts!  Actually finding parts is going to be a bit of a chore as they are not numbered on the sprue so constant referral to the parts map is required, in addition, it looks like each section of the build uses parts from two or three different sprues.

 

AW

 

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I was wondering if you'll be a Grandpa, or Grand Dad but then it dawned, you'll have absolutely no say in the matter. :D Congratulations on the new arrival all the same, to you & your family. :) 

Those sink marks :( Not so good, the rest doesn't look too bad though.

Steve.

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12 minutes ago, stevehnz said:

I was wondering if you'll be a Grandpa, or Grand Dad but then it dawned, you'll have absolutely no say in the matter. :D Congratulations on the new arrival all the same, to you & your family. :) 

Those sink marks :( Not so good, the rest doesn't look too bad though.

Steve.

Thanks Steve.  Actually my daughter asked me in the middle stages of her pregnancy what I would like to be called, I chose Grandpa, mainly out of memory of my own much loved Grandpa.

 

The flash is quite strange, although there’s not a lot, what there is is quite thick and takes a lot of careful scraping to eliminate.  Flash aside, the mouldings are very nice.

 

AW

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Started some assembly of the cabin.  I am only going to fit the rear pair of passenger seats, leaving the rest of the interior free for cargo:

 

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and some work on the sides.  The doors are moulded in clear plastic and masks are provided for the windows.  Unfortunately only one mask per window is included, so in order to mask the insides as well I used the backing sheet as a template to cut additional masks from a Tamiya tape:

 

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my plan is to pose the starboard, sliding door open with port, hinged doors closed.

 

sink holes on the spinner filled:

 

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a bit more sanding required.

 

I also assembled the nose:

 

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Thanks for looking.

 

AW

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It's nice to see this one under way.

I'd never noticed the shape of the Porter's cabin doors/windows before.  Based on your third photo, they wouldn't look out of place on a VW Beetle :winkgrin:.

 

Cheers

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On 8/18/2021 at 2:48 PM, Hewy said:

Nice looking little kit 👍

It is nice looking.  Dry fitting shows there will be some sanding in my future, fit is quite tight, especially the wing to fuselage joint.

 

On 8/18/2021 at 3:38 PM, CliffB said:

It's nice to see this one under way.

I'd never noticed the shape of the Porter's cabin doors/windows before.  Based on your third photo, they wouldn't look out of place on a VW Beetle :winkgrin:.

 

Cheers

 

The doors are strange, the port side doors are split down the centre and hinge outward whereas the starboard side has one large sliding door.

 

I’ve been modifying the kits pilot seats to more closely resemble the seats fitted to the Australian Army Porters.  Essentially these involved making up the box like head rests from plastic card, filing the front face to a concave shape and are aching the lot to the kit seats.  I have made up harnesses from Tamiya Tape.

 

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Cockpit and cabin components are now ready for paint.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

AW

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I have been working off and on painting the parts for the cockpit and rear cabin, but not anything worth posting.  Today I completed the painting and assembled the interior, should be able to close up tomorrow if all goes well.  The interior construction is very fiddly and fragile, hopefully I can get the fuselage together without breaking anything.

 

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(photo taken before I tidied up those door windows)

 

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Thanks for looking.

 

AW

 

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I wrangled the cabin and instrument panel into one fuselage side without breaking anything, remembering to install the side windows first:

 

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then with the assistance of some plastic card tabs

 

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closed up the fuselage and attached the nose:

 

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Some filler and sanding will be required to clean up the joints.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

AW

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11 hours ago, Toryu said:

Great progress! Are all your fledglings sitting on the pot?

Ha ha, yes.  I find the little pots useful for keeping the small parts in after they have been removed from the sprue and they are also handy little stands for smaller models during construction.

 

AW

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Today I finished sanding and polishing the fuselage seams and added some tiny PE triangles to the rear of the empennage:

 

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and made a start on assembling the wings, tailplanes and fin:

 

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I couldn’t resist a dry fit:

 

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Thanks for looking.

 

AW

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