1/48 SantaMarine S6B

Gallery Article by Alvis 3.1 on Dec 24 2009

Christmas Eve 2009

 

It was 1933, and the great Depression was in full force. Santa needed a fast, nimble plane to deliver the badly needed presents that year, as his previous use of airships had proven to be filled with troubles. His crack team of aircraft designers were naturally drawn to the highly successful Supermarine S6 design, and after modification to operate on skis instead of floats, the plane was ready for a Christmas delivery schedule. 

Click on images below to see larger images

Unfortunately, the design team at the North pole neglected to redesign the coolant system as it required large radiator surfaces built into both the fuselage and floats...with no floats, there was a noticable loss of cooling capability. Fortunately, the winter that year was sufficiently cold enough that the plane survived long enough to make all its' runs, but the engine was heavily damaged and had to be scrapped.

This model  was built from the 1/48 scale Testors Supermarine S6B racer. I used the skis from a Modelcraft Norseman, and painted it using a combination of Tamiya sprays and acrylics. The decals came from my home printer and Testors Decal Film.

This kit was very kindly supplied to me free of charge by "Major Matt Mason" AKA M3 from Starship Modeler.  I honoured this act of generousity by numbering the plane with his moniker.

Alvis 3.1

Photos and text © by Alvis 3.1