Maquette 1/72 Vickers 66 Vimy Commercial By David Miller

Introduction

At the end of World War I, a number of military aircraft were converted to civilian passenger use, including the Vimy bomber. Conversions were often hasty and crude. The Vimy Commercial liner conversion, however, was an exception. Some consider this aircraft to be the first step toward building a true, modern, airliner. The bomber fuselage was replaced with a spacious passenger compartment that accommodated ten passengers. The new fuselage was of plywood construction, and billed as “water tight”. Instone Air line acquired one Vimy Commercial, and named it “City of London”. The passenger compartment in this aircraft was fitted our like a proper Victorian drawing room, complete with pictures on the cabin walls!

Eventually, nearly fifty Commercials were built, most destined for service in China and the Middle East. Some of these were fitted out as air ambulances and troop transports.

The Maquette Vimy Commercial kit consists of parts for one Vickers Vimy bomber, plus a basic passenger fuselage, some additional liner parts, and a decal sheet for the Instone Air “City of London” liner. Not clearly indicated on the box, the kit also includes decals for air ambulance and troop transport versions of the Commercial. Assembly instructions consist of ten exploded diagrams. A painting and marking guide is provided.

Construction overview

The kit has a good supply of flash, sink holes, and ejector pin marks. This makes the construction of the Vimy Commercial a labor of love. For instance, ejector pin marks must be removed from the inside of the wings and all control surfaces before they can be assembled. Additionally, some struts are warped, clear parts are thick and optically distorted, and minute part identification numbers further hamper construction. The assembly diagrams suggest an awkward building sequence.

The passenger fuselage sets the Vimy Commercial apart from its bomber predecessor, and is the heart of this kit. Unfortunately, the fuselage has major accuracy problems. While the fuselage length is to scale, the window and door arrangement is all-wrong. Perhaps Maquette tried to incorporate features of the Commercial, ambulance, and transport versions in the same fuselage but failed to accurately represent any one of these versions. The kit instructions provide no help in this regard.

In any event, the fuselage does not accurately represent the Commercial. Pictures of the Commercial show that the port and starboard windows are directly across from one another. Port windows in the kit appear to be in approximately the right location, but the starboard windows are fewer in number, and wider than on the port side. The Commercial’s forward baggage/cargo door is not scribed on the fuselage side. On the other hand, a nose door is scribed on the fuselage. The ambulance version contained a nose door, convenient for loading stretchers, but the Commercial did not. The rear passenger door on the Commercial was hinged at the bottom and folded outward and down; boarding stairs appear to have been built into this door. As scribed on the model, the rear passenger door would be prevented from opening by the trailing edge of the port wing. Accurate, scale drawings of the Commercial are necessary to make the needed corrections with assurance.

Web searches yielded a number of interesting and useful photos, but no scale drawings. Lars Opland also provided encouragement, photos, and useful information. So, armed with photos, but no scale drawings, I set about to build the Vimy Commercial kit.

Photo 2 shows the modifications made to the fuselage. Plastic sheet was used to partly fill some windows and new windows were cut in the fuselage. The forward baggage door was scribed and removed. I chose to fill the scribing depicting the rear door and made no further modification in this area.

Wings

Before the wings were assembled, ejector pins marks had to be removed. The top wing consists of a right, mid, and left section. The assembly diagram indicates that the outer wing sections are to be attached after the wing mid-section has been joined to the engine struts and lower wing. However, the wing section joints are a poor fit and filling and finishing is necessary. This would be difficult, or impossible once the top wing is attached to the struts. Therefore, I assembled, filled, and finished the top wing at this point in the build. Photo 3 shows the assembled and finished wings and the fuselage halves.

Fuselage Interior:

Photos of the interior of the “City of London” show rich, dark, wood paneling, lace curtains, comfortable wicker chairs, and a deeply upholstered rear bench seat. As an added touch, paintings hang above the windows. What class! I wanted the model to capture this inviting interior. Passenger chairs were fabricated from florist’s wire and textured card stock. Photo 4 shows a chair being made. For ease of assembly, the card stock is left long, and trimmed to shape when the glue is dry. I use yellow carpenter’s glue in this step.

Photo 5 shows the completed interior. The base coat is Floquil zinc chromate primer. Various acrylic paints ranging from umber to light brown were dry brushed on the undercoat to create a wood grain effect. A coat of Future provides a glossy finish. The Oriental rug and pictures were clipped from catalogs.

Because little of the interior can be seen in the finished model, I took several photos of the interior before closing the fuselage to display with the finished model.

Photo 6 shows the closed fuselage. The fuselage fit is good, and only minimal filling is required to close a small gap towards the nose. A plastic channel was shaped to make the raised area behind the cockpit. This feature is prominent in photos of the “City of London” but not included in the kit.

Filling, Priming and Painting:

Nearly all of the filling on this model was done with Elmer’s Carpenters Wood Filler. I first tried this wood filler because I developed skin sensitivity to CA adhesives and harsh solvents. Now, I find wood filler has some advantages over the other fillers. Thin applications of the wood filler dry within minutes. Thicker applications seem to dry faster than the equivalent amount of solvent-based filler. I find that this wood filler does not mar plastic like the solvent-based fillers. Excess, dry wood filler can be easily removed from surrounding panel lines with a toothpick or scribing tool, often making the re-scribing of panel lines unnecessary.

The area or seam to be filled is first spot-primed and allowed to dry. I apply the filler with Popsicle sticks that have been carved and sanded to convenient size and shape. When dry, the filler is sanded to its proper contour with 320 –420 grit paper. The filled area is primed again, and finish sanded with 1200 grit paper. When the entire model is primed, I finish sand the primer with 4-6000 micro mesh before painting.

Back to the Vimy, the lower wings were attached to the fuselage before painting. Small holes (#80) for the rigging were also drilled beforehand. Windows, doors, and cockpit were masked off, and the fuselage was airbrushed with Testor’s French Blue. After removing the masks the fuselage openings were touched up with French blue applied by small brush.

Props and wing struts were painted with Floquil zinc chromate primer and dry brushed with acrylic umber to simulate wood. All were given a coat of Future. Tail surfaces and wings were painted with Floquil Old Silver. Engine nacelles and struts were painted with Alcad polished aluminum. I did not apply Future to the metallic surfaces.

Decals

For some time I have thought about using clear decal film to simulate glass in small windows. After some experimenting, I decided to try out this technique on the Vimy. I brushed some Badger Model-flex liquid decal film onto a sheet of clear decal paper. This gives the carrier film some extra strength. When dry, I cut a single strip of the prepared decal paper to the proper size, about 1/8 in. wider than the windows. I covered the windows with a continuous strip of film rather than cutting a separate decal for each window. The clear film snuggled down nicely, and created the desired effect. The fuselage was given a coat of Future and this also added to the clarity of the windows.

The kit decals were fragile and tore easily. However, after a coat of Model-flex liquid decal film was applied to them they performed well. The “City of London” decal is printed incorrectly. It is also shown incorrectly on the instruction sheet and box art. The three words are printed in one line and are applied across the nose:

CITY OF LONDON.

The words SHOULD be printed one - below - the other:

CITY
OF
LONDON

The three words should be centered on the nose. This can be fixed by cutting the decal into three sections. Even knowing this, and planning to modify the decal, I goofed and applied the decal as printed. I did not notice my mistake until the decal had set. Oh Blast!

Struts and Rigging.

Rigging begins with the control horns and surfaces of the tail and wings. These were rigged with a fine, synthetic, fly-tying line. The lines from the tail surfaces into the fuselage were rigged next. The engine nacelles with their attached struts were partially rigged, as were the landing gear assemblies. Even though I do not like to use it, lines were attached with thin CA, applied with a small wire applicator. Very little CA needs to be applied.

Now the model is fastened to a building board that I fashioned from plywood. The model is secured with small rubber bands, taking care not to stress the fuselage and wing joints.

No part of the model should extend beyond the plywood base. This protects the model from accidental bumps and the base can be used to handle the model comfortably during rigging. If desired, a lug can be fastened to the underside of the base to allow positioning in a vise.

Using small amounts of thin CA and accelerator, the engine nacelles and struts are aligned and attached to the lower wing. The wooden struts that extend from the fuselage to the nacelles are attached. Building upward and outward, the top wing is next attached to the engine struts. At this point the assembly is quite delicate, but can twisted a bit to obtain proper alignment. A square block was used as a guide in these adjustments. Inner wing struts had to be shortened by about 1/16 of an inch, and were installed. In similar fashion the outer wing struts were attached. The cabane struts from the bomber kit need to be shortened substantially before they are installed

Photo 8 shows the model on the building board. The upper wing has been attached. The wing rigging is completed before the model is removed from the building board.

Photo 9 shows detail in the engine/nacelle area. The kit nacelle is empty, and an internal tank made from a piece of aluminum tubing was added. Wire rigging, that passes through the rear of the nacelle was also added. The Commercial had cone shaped “silencers” on the exhaust ends. These were fashioned from plastic scrap from the spares box.

As finished, it is an attractive aircraft and has received favorable comment from other modelers. The kit has accuracy problems that are pointed out above. With the exception of the seams in the upper wing panels, the parts fit is generally good. Although no interior detail is provided, the engine nacelles are nicely cast. The propellers are well molded. The kit provides no interior for the passenger fuselage, but a few interior photos are available on the web so that the scratch builder can have fun building one!