1/72 Italeri Airspeed Horsa Mk. I


  I had a spare kit that I picked up somewhere that someone had started. The wings were poorly joined and they may have given up at that point. In any event, the carpet monster, if not doomed, at least has suffered a major setback. It also allowed me to take a different approach on the cargo door. Italeri's plan was to cut out the door, and they supplied separate parts to make up the door. The parts didn't look like what the door looks like in pictures, and I didn't see how you could load wheeled vehicles through the side door when there was a big gap in the ramp where the door was. Also, I believe the door was inset, and slid sideways to open. The steps Italeri supplied did not appear in any photos, not even in the rear door.  All the photos show ladders being used when the door was open, and the doors are never visible when they are open. To make something that looked plausible, I made up a removable section of ramp surface that fits over the door opening to be used when cargo is being loaded or unloaded. There may well be steps on the back of the door in the ramp, but it will not be visible on my model. I used parts from the started kit to make the cargo door and the needed ramp parts, you can tell what they are by the dark plastic. I capped the ends of the new cargo door with plastic card. As I saw in some photos, the man door in the cargo ramp is not flush with the outside surface, but inset a little, so it can slide. I sure hope I interpreted all those photos correctly. I actually did, after several hours, find a photo of the ramp with the door section covered by a section of ramp. Before I worked on the cargo door I assembled the wings, which was a lot like working with vacuform parts. I matched up the upper surfaces as well as possible, then tacked them in spots with CA on the inside surface. When the alignment looked good I applied a heavy pass of CA over the entire inside joint. Next the lower wing parts were attached. Because of the angle of the join, there was still some filling to do so the upper join areas were taped off and a thick layer of Mr. Surfacer 1200 was sprayed on. That was left to cure for a day and then sanded smooth.