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Blackburn Beverly

Plastic_parts

By Plastic_parts
in Aircraft Cold War

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Plastic_parts New Member

Plastic_parts

Posted
Posted

Hi guys. I got a head scratcher for you all ( or perhaps not) 

I have a couple of 1/72 Blackburn Beverly kits in the stash,  the magna resin kit and an ancient vac for kit who’s manufacturer escapes me now. Both kits are huge and would be a real eye catcher. Many years ago I saw a colour profile of one particular airframe and I have wanted to build this aircraft ever since but despite extensive searching on the intertube I have been unable to find any reference to the real life aircraft.

The airframe I’m referring to is XM103 belonging to 84 squadron and was camouflaged dark earth/mid stone with black undersides. Along with the scorpion squadron motif the aircraft had some extra artwork applied for its return to the UK consisting of a vase of flowers below the port cockpit window and “Uk and or bust” again applied to the part fuselage side just after the access door. There was also some further text forward of this door but I am unable to make out what this says. So my long winded question is does anyone have any information regarding this aircraft particularly the unusual artwork and ideally any close up photos?

Cheers in advance guys and fingers crossed,

Mike

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AMB Obsessed Member

AMB

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, Plastic_parts said:

Hi guys. I got a head scratcher for you all ( or perhaps not) 

I have a couple of 1/72 Blackburn Beverly kits in the stash,  the magna resin kit and an ancient vac for kit who’s manufacturer escapes me now. Both kits are huge and would be a real eye catcher. Many years ago I saw a colour profile of one particular airframe and I have wanted to build this aircraft ever since but despite extensive searching on the intertube I have been unable to find any reference to the real life aircraft.

The airframe I’m referring to is XM103 belonging to 84 squadron and was camouflaged dark earth/mid stone with black undersides. Along with the scorpion squadron motif the aircraft had some extra artwork applied for its return to the UK consisting of a vase of flowers below the port cockpit window and “Uk and or bust” again applied to the part fuselage side just after the access door. There was also some further text forward of this door but I am unable to make out what this says. So my long winded question is does anyone have any information regarding this aircraft particularly the unusual artwork and ideally any close up photos?

Cheers in advance guys and fingers crossed,

Mike

Message me with your e.mail address - I took colour slides of this aircraft at Bicester when it was retired before it got scrapped. 

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bentwaters81tfw Blabber Mouth

bentwaters81tfw

Posted
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2 hours ago, Lord Riot said:


Rugby badges! 
Thistle - Scotland

Rose - England

Clover - Ireland

 

Dragon - Wales

Er.....No. all the countries are represented on the airframe by their flora emblem, not fauna, so Wales is represented by the Leek (or in some instances, a daffodil)

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  • 3 weeks later...
OneDay Newbie

OneDay

Posted
Posted (edited)

I tried to make something of the Contrail Beverley a long while ago. Most of my work was on the fuselage. The nose is short and bulbous or rounded, the cockpit "blister" needed reshaping, the rear fuselage needed building up and re-shaping around the doors. The fuselage ended up quite solid because of all the Milliput.

 

The tail boom was very thinly drawn around the "chines". I think I lined it with Milliput.

 

I replaced the tailplanes with outer wings from an Airfix B-17, filed down a lot to get the shape right. The find and differs were OK!

 

the wings were OK in shape and planform but horribly flimsy. Very flexible even after I built them around a wooden spar.

 

I intended to try to use the kit engines, some Aeroclub wheels and (I hope) propellors.

 

The model died when I tried to use spray foam (that you use to fill around door or window frames) to stiffen the wings, and the stuff carried on expanding, giving a really odd, bulged, head-on appearance.

 

I found reference all over the place, the odd photo here and there, drawings from Aviation News. I never found out about Bill Overton's book, and Geoff Gladstone's had not been published. 

 

A fellow member of IPMS Avon gave me another Contrail kit after hearing of all the troubled I had had with the model and how much I hated it. it is still on the shelf. I did, however, get hold of a Magna resin kit, I confess I have yet to try and evaluate it for size and shape. It is certainly going to be big!

 

To conclude, rather than rework a Contrail, I would scratchbuild. But, maybe, Magna is the way to go ... If you can find one.

Edited by OneDay
Spelling and typos.
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Paul Thompson Very Obsessed Member

Paul Thompson

Posted
Posted (edited)
8 hours ago, OneDay said:

I tried to make something of the Contrail Beverley a long while ago. Most of my work was on the fuselage. The nose is short and bulbous or rounded, the cockpit "blister" needed reshaping, the rear fuselage needed building up and re-shaping around the doors. The fuselage ended up quite solid because of all the Milliput.

 

(etc)

 Agreed on all points, except mine is still at the stage of fettling everything to fit. This is one of those kits where the Milliput doesn't want to adhere to the plastic, even wedged into internal crevices, and that plastic is horribly overdrawn, to the extent of having split along all the tail pieces.

 

I have built the Magna kit. It went together easily enough but the lottery element is in the resin used on the particular day your example was cast. Mine was the whiteish, chalky stuff, more pinhole than solid resin, porous like an Aero bar and crunchy in places. That made drilling and installing a brass tube through each wing miserably tedious  very exiting, but I must say that I built it 15 years ago and it's one of the few models I have where the resin has not warped. Quite robust too, surviving moving house from Arnhem to Scotland. Anyway, more accurate than the Contrail kit, and much easier to build.

 

 

Paul.

 

Hellfire! The Magna kit was the Argosy, and I'm half asleep, so while the comments on the resin probably also apply to the Beverley I've really no idea about that one.

Edited by Paul Thompson
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Admiral Puff Completely Obsessed Member

Admiral Puff

Posted
Posted

In a (possibly vain) attempt to return to sanity ...

 

I was given a MikrMir 1:144 Beverley for my birthday a month ago - looks like a lovely little kit, and so far going together quite well. Whether or not its shape is accurate I can't say - Beverleys are a bit thin on the ground in this part of the planet - but it certainly looks like a Beverley. Bee nice to have a decent one in 1:72!

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Plastic_parts New Member

Plastic_parts

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I’ve got the magna kit and the old contrail kit and they’re both pretty impressive. The magna kit weighs a ton and I’m betting it’s going to meet a lot of support in the wings to stop them from sagging and I’m not entirely convinced the undercarriage as it is would be anywhere near strong enough to take the weight.

 

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