De Havilland D.H. 60 Gipsy Moth

The Amodel 1:72 scale Gipsy Moth kit is about the only injection molded version available for this subject in this scale, other than the old Frog/Novo version, which is now out of production.

The Amodel kit is a short-run kit, and so it has the usual flaws--flash to clean up on a number of the parts, some awkwardly placed molding gates, etc. The kit is fairly simple, but is still nicely detailed. There are two sets of wings for older and later versions of the Gipsy Moth. Amy Johnson's aircraft will use the wings on the B1 sprue.

With no locating pins on this short-run kit, I added styrene sheet tabs in order to help with alignment when I glue the pieces together. The engine cylinders on the inside of the port side of the fuselage don't allow the fuselage to close as molded. I spent some time filing both the inside of the starboard side of the engine compartment and the cylinder head section in order to get things to fit. Fortunately, there's plenty of plastic in that area.

The cockpit is rudimentary, with only seats, one set of rudder pedals, and a single control stick. There are instrument panels, but no instruments or decals for them, only depressions suggesting the dials. The real aircraft had a very simple set of instruments, which should be easy enough to suggest with some paint. The front cockpit of Amy Johnson's plane was faired over for her solo flight to Australia, and so I will be doing that as well, meaning that there's no need to do much in the front cockpit. The cockpit sides have some molded in stringers and there are some throttle controls molded to mount on the cockpit side as well.

The engine is pretty rudimentary for being exposed, so I decided to add some detail. Johnson's actual aircraft is preserved in a museum in the UK, so there are some good pictures of it available online. The engine shows a brace of some kind along the outside of the cylinders, which I replicated using .020" styrene sheet.

Engine detail from Amy Johnson's aircraft in the Science Museum collection in the UK.

A bit of filing, and the result isn't too bad. I also added some exhaust stubs represented by pieces of 22 gauge copper wire.

The instrument panels are rudimentary, but sufficient. The original panels were made from mahogany, and the dials were black. I used Model Master Burnt Sienna for the panels and filled in the dials with black after they were dry.

I couldn't find much to indicate the interior color of Johnson's plane, so I painted it the same as the exterior color. I painted the stringers with Model Master Wood for contrast, though I suspect that they would have been painted the same as the rest of the interior in the original. The kit supplies two throttle quadrants, which I have mounted. The instructions show the wrong placement for these, but there are small rectangular bosses molded into the fuselage side that show where they go.

There is a separate section that forms the cockpit floor and fuselage bottom. Engineering it this way was asking for trouble, and they got it! The piece was nearly a millimeter too long, and needed to be trimmed. The fit was horrible, anyway.

The seat assembly mounts on top of the cockpit floor piece. It has a ridge that runs across the fuselage to locate the seat assembly. The ridge extends beyond the sides of the cockpit floor, and needed to be trimmed to allow the fuselage to close.

Closing up the fuselage left some nasty gaps in the seam that will need filling.

The bottom is really bad. There's a step under the engine, and the cockpit floor piece is not salvageable. I decided to fill it completely and rebuild the strakes and access panel detail. While I appreciate the desire to replicate these details, I think it would have been better to simply mold a flat fuselage bottom, since the fit is so poor.

After filling and sanding, things look better. I added the strakes using .010" strip stock and also an access panel cut from .010 sheet under the engine compartment. There are two more panels that I will add after the lower wing is attached.

The wing is now attached. The opening for the part needed to be enlarged with some strokes of a file. As I expected, this section will need filler to bring it level with the rest of the fuselage. Once that's done I can then add the other two access panels.

Underside fuselage detail from Amy Johnson's Jason in the Science Museum.

Filler and additional access panels added.

Front cockpit faired over.

Empennage and gas tank added.

Drilling holes for adding rigging later.

Holes for the elevator control cables. The fuselage molding had small depressions to represent their locations, which made it easy to locate them.

Holes for rigging.

Added landing gear struts and tail skid.

Added cabane struts.

Primer coat.

Back at the bench after a very busy month. Filler added after the primer coat showed a few places that needed it, and then re-priming. Followed that up with aluminum paint over the wings and empennage (Tamiya Flat Aluminum).

I'll let those coats dry a day or two so I can mask them for painting the green parts.

Masked and painted the green parts (Gunze Sangyo Aqueous Gloss Green).

Next up is a coat of floor polish and then decals.

Fuselage decals added before adding the control lines.

Rigging control lines. I'm using EZ Line, which is very nice for rigging. The stretch allows for nice taut rigging.

Control rigging done.

Adding landing wires to fuselage attachment points.

Top wing attached and interplane struts placed after no little frustration. The strut lengths are not quite right, and to get sufficient plastic-on-plastic contact for gluing I had to enlarge all of the attachment points on the wings. The cabane struts are a little off on one side, but I'm not going to fuss with it any further. In hindsight it would have been better to wait to attach the cabane struts until later. They looked right when dry-fitting, but the rear interplane struts were short, meaning the rear cabanes should have been trimmed a bit. In future I'll make a jig so the wings can be located positively before adding struts. I've not had this issue with other biplanes I've built, but then they weren't made by Amodel!