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Expomodel Avro 504N


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I've been pontificating on this site a lot of late, and some folk may think that a bit inappropriate since I've only ever posted a couple of model photos here (since my old host Picturetrail decided that photo hosting wasn't really for them and pulled the plug). Seems an opportune time to post my last completion for this year, a 1/72nd Avro 504 N. This is a very nice kit whose components were beginning to age badly, so a week ago I thought 'now or never'.  As a model it isn't brilliant, and that's all due to me. The rigging is just tolerable in real life, but too thick and scrappy in the photo. Still, it illustrates what happens when you go the quick and easy route instead of doing it properly with monofilament. It's rolled copper armature wire, quite prone to kinking if not handled carefully, but easy to cut and  self-coloured steel grey by oxidation over the decades I've had the spool. You can see two wires have pulled loose and are resting against the top of the inner front port interplane strut. That only showed up in the photo and will take 30 seconds to fix, but I left it here because 1) I'm lazy and 2) it shows what can happen when you use wood (white) glue instead of superglue. Had I bothered to secure the wires into holes then the wood glue would have been sufficient. The wire is around 0.2 mm diameter. Anyway..........

 

For the record, the kit was produced in aid of Southern Expo some 30 years ago. Vac plastic by Joe Chubbock/Phoenix, PE fret by Akita, decals by Blue Rider, and extruded strut material from Contrail, who also may have done the white metal engine, collector ring, prop and wheels. The casting was quite rough but useable, except the wheels which had some odd defects that were too much effort to fix, so I used a slightly larger set by Aeroclub that look more like the real thing anyway.

 

The deteriorating bit was the decal sheet. Decals took more than 10 minutes to soak free in warm water, wouldn't stick, curled up and then fragmented a bit as they dried. However, 3 very liberal applications of MicroSol saved them and now they look okay.

 

Overal very enjoyable to build. Only two slight downsides apart from the decals (which BTW are only the second lot I've had from Blue Rider that were like this, the old sheets normally being okay, so maybe down to storage history?): for an early machine you need to trim the ailerons down to the tapered version, a bit tedious to get all four to match, but not difficult. And unavoidably the lower wing to fuselage joint is very fragile. Usually you can just about drill a fine hole to reinforce the joint with a bit of wire, or rod if you're lucky, but here I couldn't do it. The wing plastic is less than 1mm thick and my hands shake too much. The joining area is but 1 cm long, using Tamiya extra thin cement reinforced with a later application both sides of thin CA. Does the job just about but it's marginal.

 Oh, I was just about to wrap this up and post it when I noticed I'd forgotten to add a pitot tube. Oh well, you'll just have to imagine that for yourselves.................

 Been a while since I did this photo thing with Flickr so there may be some unwanted text stuck to them, which I'll fix later if I can remember how.

 
Paul.

Edited by Paul Thompson
Formatting horror
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Okay, I've tried this several times now and can't get rid of the underscoring. It wasn't there until I edited the post to remove the file names from the photos, and won't go away using the editor tools, so I'm stuck with it unless some kind soul knows what I did wrong.

 

Paul.

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The underscoring is the result of your text being linked to photos.

Try selecting a section then go to the little chain icon - yoiu might be able to unlink the pics and lose the underscore.

Nice 504 btw.

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Great job Paul, the trailing edges are lovely and thin, was a bit of sanding involved? The rigging looks fine to me, I would not have thought it over scale thickness if you hadn't mentioned it. I might try copper wire rigging when I get round to my Joystick Albatros ,many thanks for the recommendation btw. It's so great to see an Avro 504 modelled, 

 

Richie

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4 minutes ago, echen said:

The underscoring is the result of your text being linked to photos.

Try selecting a section then go to the little chain icon - yoiu might be able to unlink the pics and lose the underscore.

Nice 504 btw.

Thanks - but which one is the chain? I don't see it. I'd tried selecting the text and hitting the underscore icon (3rd from left) but that does nothing in this case.

 

Paul.

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10 minutes ago, RichieW said:

Great job Paul, the trailing edges are lovely and thin, was a bit of sanding involved? The rigging looks fine to me, I would not have thought it over scale thickness if you hadn't mentioned it. I might try copper wire rigging when I get round to my Joystick Albatros ,many thanks for the recommendation btw. It's so great to see an Avro 504 modelled, 

 

Richie

Glad you like it. Trailing edges are mostly knife work with sanding sticks used to smooth it all out after the dirty work is done, much faster than just sanding.

 

The copper stuff is only worth the effort if you have a really old roll that has already oxidised, otherwise you'll have to paint it, which makes it thicker. What with also having to straighten it either by rolling on a flat surface with a metal ruler or carefully tugging with a pair of tweezers then you may just as well use Albion Alloys stuff (which I've used here for the control wires, 0.1mm diameter).

 

Paul.

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Click to edit. The link icon is the one to the right of the smiley face. Hopefully this will sort the problem if I recall correctly theres a "Remove Link" command there.

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9 minutes ago, echen said:

Click to edit. The link icon is the one to the right of the smiley face. Hopefully this will sort the problem if I recall correctly theres a "Remove Link" command there.

Thanks again. On my screen the link icon is a couple of icons to the left of the smiley, and would only give me the opportunity to insert a new link. But I seem to have solved it by cutting and pasting the text into Notepad (this being a Windows 10 PC), which displays it unlinked, then cutting and pasting that back in the site post editor. I suppose I entered the original text too close to one of the images....... 

 

Cheers,    Paul.

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1 minute ago, Paul Thompson said:

On my screen the link icon is a couple of icons to the left of the smiley, and would only give me the opportunity to insert a new link.

It is on my PC too - I was replying from my phone...................

Great you got there in the end. Wonders of Windoze!

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