Harbour Air DHC-3T Vazar Otter (Single)

[hendie]

I wonder if I can still find my way around in here. It's been so long since I was last in here building something that when I search to see what I last built, nothing shows up. I could've sworn I'd built an aircraft before. Never mind. Here we go again...

 

I started this one by accident. Honest. I was swithering between a Merlin and this, and before I knew it, I was cutting bits off here there and everywhere and plans were forming in my head. First though, a bit of background wouldn't go amiss - I find it hard to commit to building anything unless there is some sort of personal connection. I don't know why - it just is.

Anyways, last year SWMBO and I had to travel up to BC in Canada for a few weeks to visit some relatives and take care of some personal business. While we were there we took the opportunity to go for a nice little tour of Victoria and the surrounding area in one of these.

 

 

A Harbour Air DHC-3T Vazar Otter. 

There! Connection established so I can go ahead and build one now. (I need to check but I think it was 306 C-FIUZ that we flew in).

 

There is one slight teensy problem though - there's no kit of a Vazar Turbo. There is a conversion in 1/72 but that is not my chosen scale. I'm a 1/48 man through and through. So, no kit, or conversion.

However, a trawl of t'interweb informed me that there was a 1/48 Single Otter by Hobbycraft available, and by "available", I mean long out of production and being hawked on the bay for ridiculous prices.  Several months of watching eventually led me to purchase an Otter at a reasonable price.

 

 

Then the kit arrived and I had a good look at it. Oh dear.  I guess I had been prewarned by reading through a bunch of threads online and knew that it came with several numerous built in flaws, but hey! that's what modeling is all about isn't it?

For a 1/48 kit, to say it's basic is a bit of an understatement. Here's the full, incredible complex instructions. There might be some more on the other side relating to the floats, but you get the gist. 

 

 

Decals?  Well of course I'm doing the Harbour Air Version so that will undoubtedly land me in hot water (no pun intended) later. There are some Harbour Air decals available but they are only in 1/72 and they're for the old scheme. I believe someone is considering doing the new scheme in 1/48, but how long is a piece of string?  I'll cross that bridge and crumble the cookies when I come to it.

 

As well as being a bit basic, the kit also has a few other issues to contend with. Not least of which is this little warp.

 

 

and when clamped together does a fine impression of a grey banana. Hey ho.

 

 

After considering a number of options, including printing new wings, the brain finally kicked into gear and arrived at a simple solution. I had some brass square tube in the stash and between that, some epoxy glue and a bunch of decrepit clamps, I managed to get it back on the straight and narrow.

 

 

That's one problem dealt with - or will be when the epoxy cures.

 

Next issue - the Rudder. Apparently the rudder has some shape issues. So, off with it's head, tail, ehhrrr... rudder

 

 

Next issue. The floor.

 

 

I have no idea what's going on with the kit here.  There are three (count 'em) location thingies on the fuselage wall, but that kit floor does not line up with them. I can get it to line up with two, but depending upon whether I have the floor above or below the thingies, the cockpit floor sits halfway up the door opening, or alternatively, I can't get the fuselage closed. Plus, I don't remember having to climb up a humungous step when entering the aircraft to get to the seating area. I shall ponder this while I destruct something.

 

Destruction Part n+1

I'm building a Vazar Turbo Otter, not a standard DHC-3 Otter. Therefore, something has got to give.

Like these bits... to the left of the pencil lines.

 

 

There! That was easy.

 

 

So easy in fact, I did it twice.  The vertical cut at the bottom isn't (yet) the same on both halves.  I just wanted to get the engine cowling panel lines at this point - I can even up the bottom (calling @CedB!) later.

 

 

Then before I knew it, the saw went crazy and lopped off a few more bits.

Aside from panel lines being incorrect, the Vazar has different windows, panoramic ones no less. Then the rear door is wrong, there's more windows to add, and I'm opening up a real can of worms here.

 

 

Back to the floor though - remember the floor? Well, I opted to make my own. Then when it all goes wrong, I've only myself to blame.

The top one was just a rough cut to get me close and figure out the finer points of the inside shape (i.e. wonky). Then the lower one is the final (for now) attempt at a new floor.

 

 

Which fits if I press and squeeze hard enough   Yes, there is actually a step up into the cockpit from the seating area - just a small one though.

 

 

But now to the elephant in the room. The Vazar nose. 

Now, I could go old school here and scratch one from whatever I have lying around, however, there's a fair bit of detail on the Vazar nose and I think this is prime time for 3D printing - but how to get the shapes that I need to start with?

Well, I superglued some scrap styrene to the front end, and hit it with @perdu's favorite - the SIHRSC or thereabouts. I used that to get rid of the gross excess white styrene.

 

 

Then I switched to the standard modelers files and eventually got this.

 

 

The process was repeated for the lower fuselage section, then when done, the styrene was snapped off, cleaned up, and the edges hit with a black sharpie.

 

 

I can now scan those parts and trace them in SolidWorks, which will give me a good starting point for a Vazar nose (he says hopefully!)

 

There will be more printing and more scratching - the kit has zero interior apart from a VERY basic cockpit. Absolutely nothing in the seating area. Then, there's also a small issue of a missing 3mm between the wing leading edge and the rear of the cockpit door. 

More destruction to follow, provided the mojo hangs around for a while

 

 

 

 

[Terry1954]

First in! (I think).

 

Great subject, and great start.

 

I've been looking forward to this one Alan!

 

Go ahead.

 

T.

[Billos]

@hendie  and once you've sorted out the Otter's nose how about this: Harbour Air's electric beaver. Anyone up for this?!

[Whofan]

Gosh, Hendie's building destroying  scratching an aeroplane kit!!

 

This is one of those threads that you don't want to miss any of. Up and at 'em Hendie!!

Edited April 10 by Whofan

[CedB]

An Otter with major surgery starting with cutting off the bottom (fnaar!)

 

I”m in  

[TheyJammedKenny!]

Wow!  Easy on that razor saw, now!  You're missing a chunk of it already!  Lots of curious surgery going on here.

[Marklo]

Despite this not being my kind of subject I’m loving the build so far. Looks like it’s going be a wonderful mix of old school and cutting edge…

[giemme]

Look at that, @hendie is back to wingy things! 

 

 

Ciao 

[Hamden]

 

I'll squeeze in at the back and watch quietly, can't miss a hendie build!

 

          Roger

[perdu]

OGODGODOGODGODOGODGOD...........

 

 

 

 

Like Terry I vaguely remember your ride round the lakes a while back Alan, this is going to be a wonderful ride for us.

 

Already de-recalcitranting a Hobby-craft wonder too, on board amigo I'm buckling in.

 

But a problem already, no not for you, me.

 

Billos why did you?

 

Look what I got?

 

But I will now have to operate my searching bots to find more images if it's to happen in a different place.

 

I'm here to observe and learn.

[heloman1]

Oh Alan, what were you thinking, Hobbycraft, Italeri with issues! You might ed up with less fuselage than you intened. I'm liking your thinkin gand your method.

Seat pulled up and popcorn on the hob!

 

Colin

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Got my attention.  

1. It’s a Hendie build, & they’re always epic.  
 

2. Electric Beavers!  Snort, fnarr, etc.

[perdu]

I just knowed...

[81-er]

This one's going to be a great one to follow  

 

James

[Tomoshenko]

I likes it. I likes it a lot.

 

I also like this.

 

[MrB17]

I’m keen to follow this, I see and hear these things flying overhead on an almost daily basis. Harbour Air has some pretty splashy paint jobs in their fleet pardon the pun.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[Brandy]

Ooh, nice! My kind of modelling, beer and peanuts ordered!

Electric Beaver though? What if it short circuits????

 

Ian

[The Spadgent]

Looks fun. Excellent idea getting the shape into digital form too. I’ll snaffle that one away in the memory bank.

 

seat pulled up. Carry on sir. 
 

Johnny

[perdu]

On 10/04/2025 at 14:55, Brandy said:

Ooh, nice! My kind of modelling, beer and peanuts ordered!

Electric Beaver though? What if it short circuits????

 

Ian

"she dies..."

Pterry©️

[hendie]

Well this seems to have captured the imagination of a Lodge of BM'ers dunnit?  

 

I don't know what's goin on in the outside world but I've been swamped with orders for Wessi bits over the last few weeks, which is great in one sense, but it does mean that I spend a lot of time printing/cleaning/packing bits of Wessex for folks, and that takes away some of the available time I have for modeling. I did however still manage to make a stuff up or two in this latest episode.

 

Easy stuff first - I glued the wings together.  🦦 (<= that's supposed to be an Otter btw).  I did the bendy set first and it turned out fine'ish. I did notice the additional weight due to the brass, so to even things up a bit, I also glued some square brass tube on the opposite wing as well.  The warp isn't completely gone but you really have to hold the wing up perpendicular to your line of sight to notice anything, even then it's just a very slight bend towards the outer tip. I think we should be okay.

There was something interesting, well, more annoying than interesting - for whatever reason Hobbycraft decided to mold a raised portion inside the wing (highlighted in pencil color below) which prevented the two halves of the wing playing nicely with each other. Some swearing and scraping soon sorted that out though.

 

 

Ta Da !

 

 

Aside from that amazing leap of progress today was mostly the Waltz of the BM'ers, that is, two steps forward and one step back. Or is it the other way around?

 

I wasn't particularly enamored of the Hobbycraft version of the rear door. Going by reference photos it does angle downwards slightly as it heads aft, but not as much as this. Note I'd also changed the bottom of the door opening to be in line with the panel line, and that exaggerates the taper somewhat.

 

 

To make it a bit more palatable, I lessened the taper, and even managed to keep a smooth curve on the radius.

 

 

While studying shots of the rear door it became apparent that Hobbycraft got that wrong too. They had split the door evenly while in reality the forward door is noticeable wider than the rear portion.

More razor saw action in action. I also need to add some plastic to the bottom edge of the door since I've now increased the height of the opening.

 

 

Since I plan to pose this with one of the rear doors open, that means you can see inside (maybe), which also means that there's a fair chance you should be able to see the door on the starboard side too. Obviously, HC didn't bother to add any detail whatsoever to the insides, so I somehow have to transfer the panel lines of the starboard rear door to the inside of the fuselage. 

After some cogitation I had what I thought was a brainwave!  Slapping some tape over the rear door, I was able to cut around the panel line to get the shape of the door.  Now the bright folks among you will notice that there is also a rearwards taper on this door - that means if I just slap that template on the inside, the door will be in reverse.

 

 

My brainwave had that covered - all I needed to do was stick the tape on some scrap styrene, trim that back to the tape, and also cut out the window. Then I could place that template to the inside with the tape facing outward and line up the window aperture. Simples huh? Then all I had to do was scribe around that template to transpose the door outline to the inside. (Well, it made sense to me!)

 

That was all going so well something had to give, and it didn't take long.  Glancing again at my reference photos - why do I always do this after the fact? 

Notice anything here?

 

 

 

It's the wrong flippin shape innit!  Arghhhhhh. Okay, two steps back then.

I fortuitously found a washer the same diameter as the width of the door so that allowed me to scribe the upper section of the door.  Then I used a scribing template to get the curve on the bottom edge. With me so far?

 

 

Then I realized that this is STILL WRONG!

The bottom edge of the door should meet with that horizontal panel line below the current door opening. Not only that but that radius is present on both sides of the door. The 1:1 photo above is a bit misleading as it looks like there's only a radius on one side of the door... then I found another shot.   Clearly a radius on both sides and what looked like a "corner" was in fact the shadow of a rain channel.

 

 

Out with the filler then.

It 'll get dealt with in due course. Honest.

 

Moving on (sheepishly)

I guess a hendie build would not be complete these days without some portion of 3D printing so I might as well get started.

Windows.  I had cut out the panels with the incorrect window configuration last time around.  These are about as basic as it gets, so it was a quick job to knock something up in SolidWorks. - After finding out that the window apertures are different on both sides, and NONE of the kit glass fits any of them.

 

Top left we have the new "panel", and top right we have what I hope to be the buck for forming the panoramic bubble windows. Below that is my quick test to verify that this should work...in theory.

 

 

One quick test print later. Not bad. (ignore the door on the starboard side which is still wrong at this stage).

 

 

I say that because it's only when they are fitted that I noticed that the radius on the panoramic windows needs to be larger. Compare the radius of the panoramic windows to that of the square windows in the 1:1 shot above and you'll see what I mean.  That's an easy fix and will take all of 30 seconds to change.

What about the buck?  Did it fit?

Well...

 

 

It will need a little bit of refinement but size-wise I think it's good, or will be once I alter that corner radius.  The bubble protrusion is just about right I think.

 

 

The real test will be can I actually vacuform the darned windows. I'm fine with standard vacuforming but clear parts are my nemesis, and EVERY window on this damned otter is a bubble window with the exception of the cockpit windows.

 

Aren't otters fun little things?

 

Thought for the day:  If a Twin Otter is referred to as a Twotter, is a Single Otter referred to as a Snotter ?

 

 

 

 

[CedB]

You have me hooked  

 

Great modelling going on here hendie - and great to have you back to winged things.

 

I've been able to vacuum PETG following The Baron's method; not too close to the heat, wait until it sags then BAM!

 

By the way, have you tried Chicken Tarka Masala? It's like Tarla Masala, only Otter.

 

🏃‍♂️

[one72]

I’m tuning in. I see these Harbour Air Otters almost every day. They’re moored here often overnight along with their Beavers. I often stroll down to the docks to have a look and take a few pics. It’s going to be fun to see this come along.

[perdu]

2 hours ago, one72 said:

I’m tuning in. I see these Harbour Air Otters almost every day. They’re moored here often overnight along with their Beavers. I often stroll down to the docks to have a look and take a few pics. It’s going to be fun to see this come along.

Lucky you

[The Spadgent]

Very neat choppin’ and a changin’ there. Looking like you’re onto a winner.  Hmmm do I need a vacformer? 🤔😆

 

J

[perdu]

20 minutes ago, The Spadgent said:

Very neat choppin’ and a changin’ there. Looking like you’re onto a winner.  Hmmm do I need a vacformer? 🤔😆

 

J

I'm sure now, I do.