Oh, a normal plane!!
The extensive Farman 190 series spawned a prolific progeny, among
them a dedicated ambulance version, the Farman 197S, the S standing for
Sanitaire -Sanitary-.
The 197S had some modifications to better accomplish its task, the
most visible being the door/hatch used to load and unload the patients on the
left side of the fuselage and of course the furnishing of the interior to
accommodate two stretchers and an assistant.
It is most likely that the aft door on the right fuselage side was deleted too
since it would have been useless. It had a Lorraine Mizar engine instead of the
usual power plants for the 190 family.
When a client contacted me to build a model of it, I was very
pleased because I had already built a sort of family relative, the Farman 1020
http://www.internetmodeler.com/2007/may/aviation/Farman_1020.php
And also because the plane was in service in
Uruguay,
Argentina's close neighbor.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Some research was
done to fill the gaps in the client’s documentation, and useful
information came from Michel Barriere and Alain Bourret, among others, for
which I am really grateful. The machine depicted got later on the CX-ABH
registration.
The images of the in-progress building will give you a view
of the techniques and procedures used, and all in all more than 140 parts
were fabricated for this project.
A few items were adapted after-market parts which saved some
time, always important when you are spending a lot of it in research and
the fabrication of the model. The interior (cockpit and cabin) was taken
care of, depicting the stretchers’ holder, interior lights, pilot
“gruyere cheese” seat, control wheel, rudder bar, instrument panel and
a few holders; as well as exterior details, like the wing tank details,
Venturis (two), nav lights, oil radiator, control horns, cables and the
multiple struts, about two dozens of them between big and small. Fine wire
rings were made and inserted as window sills, leaving enough space for the
transparencies to be glued from the outside at a later stage –after done
with the exterior painting-. The stretcher hatch and the access door were
positioned open. The open door shows the furrow into which a slider runs
to open the window, which was depicted half way down. I also carved a wood
prop from a Popsicle –replacing the metal one that came with the engine-
to be more faithful to the original, adding a photoetched boss. An area
that proved to need quite a time was the cockpit glassing. The issue was
solved, after a few trials and discarded parts, with a front panel, two
side rectangular panels and two triangular windows, as per original. These
transparencies have same angles involved, and are not accurately depicted
in some plans of the type. At some point during preparations the
aftermarket metal Venturis went to the great beyond, so replacements were
fabricated as per photos. Small braces for the tail and wing struts (eight
of them) also proved troublesome. There were extremely hard to glue in
their places. I lost many of them, after the dreaded “twang” sound.
Some circular windows followed the same fate. Actually, I spent a lot of
time under my desk and I am thinking about installing some speakers and
allocate a pillow to the area.
References
prescribe a sort of whitish aluminum for the French planes. Wing tanks were
painted another hue, and so was an area on the nose, close to the engine. Decals
were home-made with a laser color printer that was not home, of course.
Now, this is not my usual bread and butter of bizarre types, as many of you well
know, but it is indeed fulfilling to build a replica of a plane used to help
people.
Gabriel Stern
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images below to see larger images
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