Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina – HPH 1/32

the build:

Starting this build took me quite some timeand a lot of careful considerations. But in the end I decided to make it a ‘cutaway’ build because it would be such a shame to hide all the wonderful details HPH has put into this kit. Therefore the build started with cutting the cutaway holes in the kits left fiberglass fuselage half.

After a good cleaning, of the MANY parts of the kit. The tedious work of fitting the inside stringers to the fuselage and dry fitting the bulkheads, was the largest time consuming part of the build. As this was my first resin kit, it also required some time to learn how to tackle placing the fine resin stringers, which are somewhat brittle, using super glue. Two weeks later, nearly cross eyed, this part was overcome. No were to hide mistakes, I stayed at it until I was happy with the result. After this I started painting the interior with some home brew mixed interior greens in three different shades, a dark, a medium and a light mix. The goal was to avoid making it look like one big green monster, but instead bringing some life to the large interior surfaces. Some shading and washes was required too, to finally get a satisfying result.

Compartments:

Next step meant returning to some more ordinary modelling work, preparing the many parts of the interior. The sheer amount of time used just to locate the parts in the many bags with loose parts and cleaning them for painting, well if you have ever done a resin kit, you probably know what I’m talking about. Well it’s what I wanted right? A huge amount of details, nothing to scratch build, except for some wires in the radio compartment. No complaints from me. But I did paint all the small parts before placing them inside the fuselage.

The kit contains all you need for detailing the interior, photo etched instruments and many other details from Eduard. There is a sheet of printed seat belts and covers for the bunks. Brass machine gun barrels etc. There’s really no need to buy any aftermarket parts, it’s truly a kit you can build ‘out of the box’. But that doesn’t mean than you can’t put in some small extra details, here and there does it? Using some paper tissue and white glue I added some bed linen and pillows to the bunk compartment. I found some covers from LIFE and other magazines from the year 1943, printed on glossy paper, I think they add a nice touch to the bunks compartment, imagining what the crew would distract themselves with, during their long, up to 20 hour long patrols! I also added the parachutes which were mounted on the bulkheads. Far aft I made some flares for the flare chutes. Text was printed for the oxygen and fire extinguisher bottles.

Cockpit/Navigator/Radio

Next I turned my attention to the cockpit/navigator/radio compartments and decided to go all in on detailing them. These are completely cramped with equipment, this really adds to the overall atmosphere of the interior. The kit contains many, many small parts that needs to be prepared and you can benefit from using original photos of the ‘stations’ to know what is what, not to mention, where to put them.

The very nice instrument panel was detailed on the back, assuming it would become visible in the end. For the navigators desk I prepared maps of Greenland and a navigator book. The radio station has the many different instrument boxes and I tried to find out what every single one was for, not too success full in that endeavour. I added some papers to the desk and the many wires were drilled and fixed using lead wire in different sizes. It was great doing these detailed parts of the build. Some heavy wiring was also put into the fuselage to connect the equipment. Also the engineer station in the middle below the wing was detailed using the data I had collected visiting the Danish Catalina. The APU and the fuel gauges in either end of the tower. I had to add a roof to both, the radio and the aft compartment, the kit hasn’t got them. On the original plane, the fuselage continues under the tower of the main parasol wing construction and because everything would become visible in the end, they also had to be constructed using styrene in various sizes.

Pratt & Whitney engines:

The power plants of the Catalina are the famous Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp engines. These engines were used in two of the most-produced aircraft ever built, the four engined B-24 heavy bomber and twin engined DC-3 transport. More Twin Wasps may have been built than any other aviation piston engine in history. The kits gorgeous engines are highly detailed and invite you to get the most out of them.

As I was planning to open up and show one of the engine installations, I had to raise the detailing bar a bit. The ignition wires were added to the engine using 0.3mm lead wire and some very short pieces of cut brass tube as connectors.

Working my way backwards and keeping an eye on the manuals at hand, the hatches and openings of the engine nacelles were cut. The installation slowly got more and more detailed. One of the things missing from the kit engines are the exhaust manifold. These parts were created using Milliput epoxy putty. The firewall, engine bearings and exit fairing, even a little carburetor were all scratched. After the installation of the left engine it was time to add the aft wiring, cables and tubing behind the exit fairing of the engine.

One of the more characteristic parts of the Catalina, are the engine maintenance platforms. And early on, it was important to have these as a part of the build. Using some of the walkways of the interior, a mold was created and copies were cast in resin. Thin styrene rods and strips were used to create the framework.

Interior lights:

At this point of the build I started experimenting with some lighting. I wasn’t sure if the openings in the fuselage were enough to get a decent view of the interior detailing. I have absolutely no skills, regarding electric installations, but luckily I found a lighting kit on Ebay with very small LED’s. Voila the compartments were coming alive. I’m really happy I did the plunge at added this feature to the build. It brings so much life.

Presenting the model:

The sheer size of this model was intimidating to me, to say the least. 100 cm’s! What to do? After pondering on this problem, for some time, I decided not to add the outer wing ends. It’s not uncommon to see photos of Catalinas without outer wings. This decision however, required opening up the wing ends and to build at least some of the inner construction of the wing. I took contact to HPH and they helped me with some of the cutaway kit parts, including the wing ribs. Two wing interior end plugs were put together and the ends of the wing were thinned with a Dremel to fit these plugs into the wing interior.

The parts from the cutaway kit also enabled me to make the tail, rudder and the left elevator as cutaway. The last part that needed assembly, were the landing gear. These are resin cast with a core of metal rod, to add strength to the gear. The tires are very nicely molded with heavy treading. The access ladder for the blister were scratched. Time to close up the fuselage using HPH’s epoxy glue, just to make sure.

Painting:

To paint a scale model, in this size in one single color, is always a challenge. The challenge is to make the surfaces interesting without camouflage or other painting features to add variations to the model surfaces. And the surfaces of this kit are huge! Everything was primed using Mr. Surfacer White primer.

Initial tests were done on the upper wing, just to get my bearings on the techniques I wanted to use. The next step was to add some pre shading in a medium grey color. The shadows would not be easy to cover with paint, as the white color is somewhat transparent over a dark color. Later it would require a couple of layers to do so.

Before continuing, all the openings, including the cutaway openings, were all carefully masked using lots of masking tape and masking fluid. Salt weathering is my one favorite painting technique. This technique helps to add structure and variation to large surfaces. It’s being build up in layers with various shades of off white and light grey. The technique is very rewarding without too much work and not having to be exact at all. Adding more salt in between the layers, the result is immediately visible when removing the salt after painting. When the paintwork has dried, the surfaces are sanded lightly to remove some of the salty crust, and to give it a smooth surface. The end result is a very nice subtle weathering with a lot of life. Everything was sealed off, using layers of thinned Future/Pledge, this gives a nice satin surface, ready for weathering.

Weathering:

Photos of the original PBY, shows a lot of weathering. No wonder if you consider the circumstances of the arctic weather, these planes were operated under. The engines notoriously huge amount of oil consumption, also left their mark on this all white aircraft.

The weathering was mostly done using Flory models ‘Dark dirt’. This wonderful product adhered very well on the semi matte surface. The mask for the national insignia was cut from a vinyl masking sheet and painted using salt to create the same amount of weathering as the rest of the plane. No filtering was used. Some oil stains from the engines, were added using an old brush and ‘fresh engine oil’. The panel lines were highlighted using a 0,3mm pencil. The exhaust stains were added to the upper wing, carefully not overdoing it.