De havilland comet windows#

The instructions show installing the clear windscreen after decals. I also glued on the horizontal stabilizers at this point.Ī warning here. I put a coat of Future on the entire plane. I pulled off the masking tape from the top of the fuselage and then the Tamiya tape from the window area, being VERY careful not to close that large door again. I added large areas of masking tape to the top of the fuselage and painted the rest of the aircraft aluminum. I redid the seams and repainted the top gloss white. It split the top of the fuselage, front and rear. Unfortunately, at this point I moved the large door, and the hinge caught. Then I removed the tape from the blue area and replaced it so it barely covered the bottom of the windows, making the stripe the same width as the decal. I painted the top of the fuselage gloss white. The tape was a little wider than the stripe I wanted, but that was OK. Then I put a long strip of Tamiya 6mm tape over the windows, aligning the top of the tape with just above the tops of the windows. I closed the door and painted the center section of the fuselage 15050 dark blue, which matched the stripe pretty closely.

De havilland comet windows#

I put a piece of paper towel inside the windows and across the seats to keep the spray from changing my color scheme inside. So I decided to paint a very dark blue stripe over the windows to replace the center part of that decal. I looked at the decals and decided that I would have big problems with those stripes that ran down the fuselage sides, continuous from the cockpit to the tail. At this point I was about ready to begin painting. The positioning of the engines pretty much covered up the wing root seams, so I left them alone. I glued the wings to the fuselage.Īt this point I cleaned up the seams on the fuselage top and bottom. I then added the large door on the left side and put the left fuselage half on. Just following instructions, I used a lump of modeling clay with some birdshot as a nose weight. I assembled the interior and put the seats in, then put it in the right fuselage half. I painted the interior nondescript gray (36440 if you MUST know), and the seats pale blue. The original Hawk kit is listed as 1/153, but that’s pretty close to 1/144. The A/C cart can also be used to hold the tail up if you don’t weight the nose. You also get three auxiliary vehicles, a bus, a refueling truck and an air conditioning cart. Except for the interior, the kit is very basic, with 2 fuselage halves, wings top & bottom, horizontal stabilizers, landing gear (10 wheels, 2 main gear legs, one nose gear leg) and the clear windshield. And there’s a BIG door which opens to reveal the passenger compartment, a feature not found on the original Comet. There’s not a lot of detail except for the interior of the passenger compartment, which has seats and passengers. The box art is copied from the original Hawk box top, with some features added at the bottom. The model is from the original Hawk molds, from 1958. The military successor is the Hawker Siddley Nimrod, which was retired in 2011. The Comet 4 remained in service with British airlines for 30 years. The windows were redesigned to be oval, with no corners. The visible fix was actually pretty simple, and can be seen on this model. There were also other issues with general assembly procedures and metallurgy. Because the early Comets had square windows, the corners became the focal points for strain, and cracks would develop, causing catastrophic failure of the fuselage. The Comet was the first large pressurized aircraft, and the strain on the fuselage from pressurizing and depressurizing caused fatigue in the outer skin. And then there was a crash where the aircraft was recoverable, and the problem came to light. There were unexplained crashes of Comets.

The Comets had only been in service a short time when trouble struck. BOAC ordered British made Comets, Pan Am bought American made Constellations, DC-4s and then 707s, DC-8s and Convair 880s. The major overseas airlines of the early fifties were BOAC and Pan Am. The de Havilland Comet was the first purpose-built jet airliner which first flew in 1949, entering service in 1952. As IPMS Historian, I also find it gratifying that the models that have disappeared from the shelves have reappeared for the newer modelers to enjoy.

Round 2 Models has certainly come out with some interesting stuff in the last few years, including AMT, MPC, Polar Lights (Aurora), Hawk and Lindberg kits from yesteryear.