1:41...ish Revell/Monogram Cessna 185

Gallery Article by Chris Parsons on Sept 4 2012

 

 

Hello fellow modelers.
A Cessna 185...for all the masochists out there. 
Quite a bit of conversion work is required to build a 185 (F) from the old Monogram 180 kit, not that the work is hard to do but there is quite a bit of it to do...I actually started this model in 2003 (master procrastinator)

 

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OK. in point form starting from the front of the model the work involved (but not limited to or, in this order ): New prop spinner (the blades were good) engine oil cooler added to the right hand side (starboard side) and easily seen through the now re profiled front air intake and, new cowl profile with a more blunt upward curve to the front, landing lights relocated to the cowl one each side of the lower engine carb. air intake (the engines were actually fuel injected) An exhaust pipe added from brass tube and the kit single cowl flap opening changed to two separate cowl flaps. The cowling as well as the rest of the model was also sanded smooth and rivets and panel lines scribed in. Not a hard job at all as sanding the model down doesn't eliminate the flow marks in the silver plastic so I just used the original still visible lines to guide my scribing. next up, modifications to the airframe. I added a lot of scratch items to the cabin interior in the way of instrument panel, floor, seats, headliner etc. The following are some details of the changes or modifications, (again from front to back). I built a new instrument panel, a new interior upholstery was made, assist handles added to the fwd door pillars, fresh air intakes added to the front wing overhang, V brace added from the instrument panel coaming (center top) to the top corners of the door pillars, new (left) control yoke (the right hand side was usually removed) and rear bulkhead. Outside the fuselage; steps were added in front of the wing struts, the wing struts were made from flat steel stock, (as were the float spreader bars) The doors and door frames were corrected in shape size and attachment, new 3rd row windows were added to the rear sides and the middle windows were squared (rectangled?) off. the roof of the model was removed from the front immediately behind the windshield to behind the wing, as the 185 has a flat roof, not crowned as molded in the kit. The new flat roof was made from .030 plastic sheet. New radio aerials were added to the roof from brass rod. Moving back to the empennage, the fin fillet is larger on the 185 than on the kit 180 and the 185 also has a smaller rudder mass balance than the kit 180. The shape of the fin at the front top is also slightly more squared off where the anti collision beacon is mounted at the top front of the fin so I needed the fin squared off, and the fin top flared out near the top to support the collision beacon. Also on the fin a rearward facing V style antenna wire was added from thin steel wire. The wings were also sanded smooth and re-riveted and re scribed. I also removed the cast on flap track rails and replaced them with .010 plastic strip...(that looks a lot better). the wing tips were removed and the more commonly seen (STOL like) droop wingtips scratched together and added along with navigation lights. The corrugated control surfaces stymied me, I finally decided to just represent the corrugations by scribing grooves into the control surfaces and calling that a day. The floats were (borrowed) from another 180 that I had in a spare parts bin. They are a little rough but they look good enough to me to pass muster...at night, from 15 feet away...in a snow storm at -45 below, passing by at about 90.

The model is painted with Tamiya acrylics in the colors of Harbour Air (British Columbia) modeled after C-GZSH. The dark trim color is actually Royal Blue but in the pictures appears black. (It isn't black.) The markings were made on a bubble jet printer on Testors clear decal sheet.

Thanks must also be made to:
Bruce Kennedy- who gave me the model
John Winter- who inspired me to finish it
Lars Opland- who provided much technical information

Chris Parsons

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Photos and text © by Chris Parsons