1/72 Airfix RTAF Avro504n

Gallery Article by Chokchai U. on Dec 5 2013

Thailand National Day (H.M. The King's Birthday)

 

 

Sawaddee krab,
This is my tiny biplane Avro504n, the real plane served in Royal Thai air force from 1929 until the end of World War Two. My model was built mainly from Airfix Avro504k kit with forward parts was chopped off and replaced by HR resin model. Both kits have pros and cons so I decided to kit batch them and scratch build some details in the cockpit and the entire under carriage and tail skid as I was not satisfied with parts from both kits. I also threw away the resin kit’s engine and used a modified resin radial engine in my stock instead for a better result. 

Colour of this trainer is still in dispute. The vintage pictures show light tone colour which could, presumably be yellow or doped linen but I decided to paint it yellow as my personal preference. Forward part behind the engine and top of fuselage was black. I tried to use various shade of dark grey to differentiate areas of painted aluminium cowling and fabric surface. 

 

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Decal was from Siam scale as usual for Thai subject. They produced fine quality decal and cover full range of airplane and AFV in Thai service. Final step, which was the most challenging, was the rigging. I used stretched sprue, cut to length then glued by canopy glue for r/c plane. The result was quite acceptable but I still want to have improvement next time I build another biplane. 

This was enjoyable project but I would go for another subject for quite a while before I return to biplanes again. 

Happy modeling for you all.

Chokchai U.

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Photos and text © by Chokchai U.