1/72 Nieuport-Delage NiD 42S Frankenheller

[2996 Victor]

Hi All,

 

I hope the Hosts won't mind me throwing another chapeau into the ring while I've already got one build in progress in this GB? I'm not sure whether this one will make across the line, but we'll see how it goes.

 

What, you may ask, is a Nieuport-Delage NiD 42S? To be honest, until a couple of days ago I had no idea either!

 

Two were built to compete in air races with one, flown by Joseph Sadi-Lecointe, winning the 1924 Coupe Beaumont. Nieuport's designer, Gustave Delage, drew heavily on the company's concurrent fighter designs - they were very much "developers" rather than "innovators" - for the NiD 42S, and thus the fuselage is virtually identical to the NiD 42C.1 parasol-wing fighter (hence also the NiD 622 - see where I'm going here?), but with the wings mounted at shoulder height. The engine used was a variant of the fighter's unit, a Hispano-Suiza 12Hb developing 600hp. The radiators were incorporated into the upper surfaces of the wings. Nieuport-Delage also incorporated an aerofoil on the undercarriage axle, and referred to the aircraft as a "sesquiplan"!

 

The NiD 42S' cockpit was positioned slightly further aft than that of the 42C.1, which was possible due to the method of manufacture where a hollow plywood fuselage was built in two halves around formers, joined, and an 'ole for the driver's head was cut out. The completed fuselage was then covered in doped fabric et Robert est le frère de ta mère.

 

There are a few leads on t'interweb, but finding a drawing has been quite difficult. A couple turn up in other articles, and are in any case relatively small. However, they can be enlarged and printed, and their scale determined using known dimensions. Here are some links in case anyone is interested:

Wikipedia

AviaFrance

Les Ailes 19 Juin 1924

The Last Racer Produced by Nieuport

 

There is also a similar build here on Modelling Madness, which in part inspired the one I'm planning, although the builder does confuse the designations a bit and what he actually built is a 1921 Coupe Deutch de Meurthe racer, not a NiD 42S.

 

There seem to be very few photographs which show the upper surfaces of the wings, so some guesswork and cross-pollination from other similarly-equipped aircraft will probably be needed. Interior? Who knows; probably very sparse! Colour scheme? I would imagine a rather fetching shade of Bleu Français and aluminium dope/polished aluminium.

 

For the basis of this kitbash, I'm using Heller's venerable Nieuport-Delage NiD 622. Obligatory box and sprue shots:

http://

http://

http://

http://

http://

http://

http://

 

There we are, then. Should be an interesting little project without being too taxing

 

Cheers for now,

Mark

[Old Man]

Great project, Sir. Bonne chance!

 

You might want to a take a look at the nose of the Heller kit, my recollection is the exhausts and such are squashed a bit closer than they ought to be, but it has been a while.

[2996 Victor]

4 minutes ago, Old Man said:

Great project, Sir. Bonne chance!

 

You might want to a take a look at the nose of the Heller kit, my recollection is the exhausts and such are squashed a bit closer than they ought to be, but it has been a while.

Thanks, OM, I will! To be honest I hadn't got as far as checking aspects like that - the nose area will need a fair bit of re-working, so if the exhausts are a bit "out", it shouldn't be too taxing to improve  (he said hopefully!).

 

Cheers,

Mark

[2996 Victor]

Breach of procedure warning: please read no further if you are offended by inaccuracy!!!

 

The tale I'm about unfold to you, dear reader, will have you weeping into your beer.

 

Having already garnered three unscaled drawings of this beast from the internet, I've spent twenty minutes or so printing them out at various percentage scales. I've then compared the prints to the Heller kit's fuselage halves to see which size is closest. By this means, I have three drawings giving me as near as dammit the positions and sizes of the various components of this aircraft. I told you you wouldn't like it, didn't I?  Basically, its the complete opposite of, "I checked the parts against a drawing to see if they're right!" Amazingly, all three drawings appear to agree with each other.

 

Seriously, though, without a dimensioned drawing to scale from which to work, this is never going to be 100% accurate. I can live with that, and I'm positive that the finished model will be as close as I can get it  The overall dimensions of the NiD 42S are known, so as mentioned earlier I can calculate the actual scale of the drawings and hence measure dimensions I need.

 

Incidentally, following @Old Man's caution about the exhaust pipes, or even les tuyaux d'échappement, I had a quick look and they are indeed squidged up compared to the real thing. The aftermost stub is about right, but the foremost stub is further back along the nose than it should be, presumably as a result of Heller's use of a separate cowling front. I'll be drilling new 'oles anyways.

 

I'm off to look for interior details, now. Thanks for looking in!

 

Cheers,

Mark

[JOCKNEY]

7 hours ago, 2996 Victor said:

Should be an interesting little project without being too taxing

 

Cheers for now,

Mark

 

Well if that isn't poking the modelling gods in the eye with a sharp stick and asking for trouble I don't know what is ! 

 

Good luck Mark 

 

Cheers Pat

[2996 Victor]

16 minutes ago, JOCKNEY said:

 

Well if that isn't poking the modelling gods in the eye with a sharp stick and asking for trouble I don't know what is ! 

 

Good luck Mark 

 

Cheers Pat

Ah.....I hadn't thought of that, Pat! Perhaps I should think about a suitable sacrifice in the hope of pacifying them.....

 

Cheers,

Mark

 

[VG 33]

2 hours ago, 2996 Victor said:

 

 

Incidentally, following @Old Man's caution about the exhaust pipes, or even les tuyaux d'échappement, I had a quick look and they are indeed squidged up compared to the real thing. The aftermost stub is about right, but the foremost stub is further back along the nose than it should be, presumably as a result of Heller's use of a separate cowling front. I'll be drilling new 'oles anyways.

 

I'm off to look for interior details, now. Thanks for looking in!

 

Cheers,

Mark

 

I have built the Heller kit more than 25 years ago and I did not remember what you are talking about the exhaust pipes. Obviously drilling twelve new holes will be better but not so easy as these are not circular as you can see on this picture : Here

Since then I have built an Azur Spanish NiD-52 which is a nicer kit.

 

Patrick

[2996 Victor]

28 minutes ago, VG 33 said:

 

I have built the Heller kit more than 25 years ago and I did not remember what you are talking about the exhaust pipes. Obviously drilling twelve new holes will be better but not so easy as these are not circular as you can see on this picture : Here

Since then I have built an Azur Spanish NiD-52 which is a nicer kit.

 

Patrick

Thanks, Patrick, it looks like the exhausts are squashed up to avoid a join between parts. I think I'll be okay with drilling the new holes as they are circular on the NiD 42S racer - have a look at the AviaFrance link in the first post.

 

I had a look for the Azur kit, but it seems like it's long out of production.

 

Cheers,

Mark

[VG 33]

46 minutes ago, 2996 Victor said:

 

I had a look for the Azur kit, but it seems like it's long out of production.

 

Cheers,

Mark

 

Ok on the other side of our planet but available Here

 

Patrick

[2996 Victor]

10 hours ago, VG 33 said:

 

Ok on the other side of our planet but available Here

 

Patrick

Hi Patrick,

 

thanks for the link, that's good to know - I think I'd quite like one of those as well (but unfortunately not this month!). I've ordered from Japan before (not Hobby Link, though) and if you order enough the overall shipping cost is bearable - Tamiya, Hasegawa and Fine Molds kits cost peanuts compared to prices over here!

 

Cheers,

Mark

[2996 Victor]

Minuscule progress with this little project because, as related elsewhere, I've been decorating today

 

The somewhat limited interior details have been sanded off. Because the cockpit on the NiD 42S is set slightly farther aft than on the NiD 622, the cockpit opening in each fuselage half has been filled with a semi-circular piece of 20thou styrene. These have been liberally daubed with Mr Dissolved Putty and set aside to harden.

 

The plan is to sand the fuselage interior smooth before I cobble up a suitably sparse cockpit as befits a racer.

 

That'll be all for a while, I'm afraid, and thanks for looking in.

 

Cheers,

Mark

[2996 Victor]

Hi All,

 

I've ordered a copy of The Speed Seekers by Thomas Foxworth, which I hope will prove interesting and, who knows, may even shed some more light on this shy bird! Its surprisingly difficult to turn up photos of the interiors of aircraft of this era, particularly racing aircraft where the designers would of course aim for the lightest, minimalist aircraft they could achieve. Photos of the Supermarine S6 cockpit and instrument panel are a clue, but that was a more modern machine than the NiD 42S, which I feel would probably owe more to the fighter designs emerging toward the end of WW1.

 

Anyway, I've settled on a wicker basket seat for our intrepid Sadi-Lecointe and ordered these and these, choice to be made in due course, which I think will look the part when draped with a simple lap belt and installed in the suitably spartan cockpit. Incidentally, does anyone know of a source of generic WW1/1920s instrument dials? I think I shall have to look at my decal stock and see what can be chopped up and rearranged to give a reasonable IP.

 

I'll get some photos up when I've actually done something worth photographing  

 

Cheers,

Mark

[2996 Victor]

Just to prove that something is actually happening:

http://

What can I say but, "Wow!"  

 

Cheers,

Mark

[2996 Victor]

Apropos nothing and just for a bit of fun (!) I decided to compare the rivet lines on the fuselage (Rivets? On a wooden monocoque!?) to one of the structure drawings of the NiD 42 fighter that I've found. The degree of assumption alluded to in the first post now comes into play: that the wooden monocoque is the same in both the fighter and racer versions of the NiD 42: there's no real reason to suppose otherwise.

 

For points of reference I've marked two fuselage frames. "X" is immediately behind the cockpit and "Y"is the first frame aft of the tail-plane leading edge. Here on the drawing:

http://

 

These correspond with similarly-positioned rivet lines on the model fuselage:

http://

 

On the drawing, there are four equidistantly spaced frames between "X" and "Y" which I've roughly marked out on one half of the model fuselage in the photo above. On the model, there are five rivet lines between "X" and "Y"  And I was going to use the rivet lines as a guide for the interior structure before sanding them off  

 

Cheers,

Mark

[Andwil]

9 hours ago, 2996 Victor said:

(Rivets? On a wooden monocoque!?)

Nails!

 

AW

[2996 Victor]

7 hours ago, Andwil said:

Nails!

 

AW

Blooming big 'uns, at that!

 

Cheers,

Mark

[2996 Victor]

My copy of The Speed Seekers by Thomas G Foxworth arrived just in time to be a little light reading for our weekend break

 

http://

 

Lo and behold! A chapter dedicated to the Nieuport Delage sesquiplanes, including a good deal of information on the 42S

 

http://

 

A few minor questions are left unanswered, most surprisingly the colour scheme, but overall its very useful and a jolly interesting read to boot! Lots of beautiful (and not so beautiful!) aircraft are described and discussed.

 

The filled fighter cockpit holes were sanded last week and now that I'm armed with more information, hopefully there'll be a bit more progress soon.

 

Cheers,

Mark

[PeterB]

On 9/17/2021 at 8:39 AM, 2996 Victor said:

and if you order enough the overall shipping cost is bearable - Tamiya, Hasegawa and Fine Molds kits cost peanuts compared to prices over here!

 

That reminds me  - 40 years ago I was buying a lot of kits from H.J Walker (Hackney) Ltd and got quite friendly with Tony Walker. He was finding it both difficult and expensive to get Japanese kits and I provided him with some info that perhaps helped him make a large order (200 kits or maybe more) and import them direct in a container - both planes and 1/700 ships. Not the fastest way of getting them but as you say - the savings more than compensated for the shipping costs and I managed to get some kits from him that were not normally available at a decent price as a result!

 

Pete

Edited September 26, 2021 by PeterB

[2996 Victor]

4 hours ago, PeterB said:

That reminds me  - 40 years ago I was buying a lot of kits from H.J Walker (Hackney) Ltd and got quite friendly with Tony Walker. He was finding it both difficult and expensive to get Japanese kits and I provided him with some info that perhaps helped him make a large order (200 kits or maybe more) and import them direct in a container - both planes and 1/700 ships. Not the fastest way of getting them but as you say - the savings more than compensated for the shipping costs and I managed to get some kits from him that were not normally available at a decent price as a result!

 

Pete

Great stuff, Pete! I ordered some Tamiya kits from Plaza Japan last summer - all items readily available from UK suppliers. By ordering half a dozen, the combined cost including shipping saved me a fiver on each kit over ordering the same kits from the UK, and the delivery time was only a couple of weeks.

 

I see that a lot of Fine Molds kits are due for re-release soon.....

 

Cheers,

Mark

[opus999]

This will be fun!  It's a subject I didn't know anything about until now.  And it's a Heller kit -- these fascinate me because many many modelers really like Heller, and I've only done 2 (one was OK and one was pretty bad) so I'm curious to see how this turns out for you.

[2996 Victor]

On 27/09/2021 at 01:32, opus999 said:

This will be fun!  It's a subject I didn't know anything about until now.  And it's a Heller kit -- these fascinate me because many many modelers really like Heller, and I've only done 2 (one was OK and one was pretty bad) so I'm curious to see how this turns out for you.

I'm hoping it'll be fun! To be honest, I'd never heard of it until I stumbled on the build thread I linked in the first post, a build which, ironically isn't actually a NiD 42S at all! I've been doing a little more prep work to the fuselage halves today, and considering the wing. I was going to modify the kit wing, but I think I may be better off scratch-building the wing from the outset.

 

I only built two Heller kits as a youngster, a Dewoitine D.510 and a Spitfire XVIe and enjoyed them both although they were OOB. Apart from this kitbash, I've got several other Heller builds planned as they're generally nice kits despite their age. The panel lines are raised of course, which would make them ideal subjects for your pencil panel line technique.

 

Cheers,

Mark

[2996 Victor]

I've made some small progress today on this little project: having re-filled around the plugged cockpit opening, this was sanded, after which the cowling details and the moulded stubs for the NiD 622's lower wings were brutally filed off. The resultant holes were filled with CA/talc and sanded back - the first time I've used this technique as I wanted a strong repair for the undercarriage mounting points. The speed with which sanding and filling could be achieved means I'll definitely be using this in future! The inside of the fuselage halves has also been sanded smooth in readiness for some interior detail to be added.

 

Here's where things stand at the moment:

http://

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http://

 

The Barracuda wicker seats have arrived, although I haven't had the chance to have a good look at them yet. And as mentioned above, I'm thinking that I'll scratch-build the wings rather than modify the kit item as there wouldn't be much left of it!

 

Thanks for looking in!

 

Cheers,

Mark

[opus999]

3 hours ago, 2996 Victor said:

I'm hoping it'll be fun! To be honest, I'd never heard of it until I stumbled on the build thread I linked in the first post, a build which, ironically isn't actually a NiD 42S at all! I've been doing a little more prep work to the fuselage halves today, and considering the wing. I was going to modify the kit wing, but I think I may be better off scratch-building the wing from the outset.

 

I only built two Heller kits as a youngster, a Dewoitine D.510 and a Spitfire XVIe and enjoyed them both although they were OOB. Apart from this kitbash, I've got several other Heller builds planned as they're generally nice kits despite their age. The panel lines are raised of course, which would make them ideal subjects for your pencil panel line technique.

 

Cheers,

Mark

 

I did a Heller F-84G 4 or 5 years ago and it was terribly warped, which may not be Heller's fault.  It also had terribly clunky raised panel lines.  I was able to get it together and looking decent enough to join my youngest's ceiling air force.

 

On the other hand, I did a Heller F-86 in High School (and is awaiting a re-build) that was really nice.  That one will be South Korean SEA camo, so the pencil technique will be used again!  

[opus999]

Wow, looking good!  I use CA almost exclusively, but I haven't tried using it with talc added.  I think I ought to give that a try.

[Bertie McBoatface]

On 9/21/2021 at 3:09 PM, 2996 Victor said:

Rivets? On a wooden monocoque!?

 

I researched this briefly and was surprised to find that copper rivets are still used in some wooden boatbuilding. They are often seen on early 20th century boats, as well as cars and aircraft. Most of the ones I've seen have been flush though, so you are correct to be sanding those 'boilerplate rivets' away.