American Bulldog

The Bristol Bulldog was an RAF inter-war fighter, also successfully exported to several countries including Finland, Denmark and Latvia. My model depicts the first of two examples sent to the U.S. for evaluation, which crashed after an aileron failure during a dive.

It's the old Airfix 1/72 kit, originally released in 1970. I didn't have to do much to it – a bit of cockpit detailing, replacing some of the heavier details and rigging with stainless steel wire.

A tractor in the hand...

Last night while waiting for glue to dry on my Bristol Bulldog I decided to start this:-

I won it on eBay last year for about $4.00, and thinking that HO scale was 1/76, bought it thinking I could have it in a diorama with a 1/72 plane. However it seems HO is 1/87 scale and significantly too small for 1/72, so it sat on the shelf for a while.  It's quite well detailed for its size:



The red corrugated strips are the rims of the main wheels. The kit includes a clear piece of acetate with circular holes cut into it and the rims are rolled and fitted into the holes, then glued:


It works OK actually. The spokes have then to be individually bent with tweezers and forced inside the rims.  After about 2 hours I was at basic painting stage, I'd decided to portray it as an abandoned vehicle:

This morning I weathered it up and assembled it. (The pics are greatly enlarged so it looks a bit rough...)