1/48 Aeroclub DHC-1 Chipmunk

Gallery Article by Geoff McDonell

The model is a modified Aeroclub vacuform of the DHC-1 Chipmunk in 1/48 scale that I built back in 1988.  The Aeroclub kit comes configured as a British version with the greenhouse canopy and the faired landing gear struts.  Obviously I had to modify it into the Canadian military version by supplying a new canopy and scratchbuilding the landing gear legs from brass rod and wire.  The cockpit was completely scratchbuilt as well, with the structural portions built up from Evergreen styrene stock, and seats fabricated from sheet plastic.  The canopy was my own home-made vacuformed unit.  I first built a master shape from sheet styrene bulkheads and formers, which was then filled with Milliput and shaped to close to the final profile and plan.  The master was then sanded and polished to match photos and plans and I vacuformed the canopy using some 0.020" sheet butyrene stock using my own home-made vacuform machine and the kitchen stove top as the heat source.  Don't ask me where that master mold is gone now- after a few moves, it has disappeared!

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The yellow was Model Master Chrome Yellow, while the day-glo was the old Metalizer product labelled "Day-glo Orange".  I sprayed the model with a flat white primer before shooting on the colours, to make sure the yellow and day-glo paint would have a good light coloured base.  Yellow and day-glo are very transparent colours and require a lot of coats to build up a nice even depth of solid colour, and the flat white certainly helps minimize the total number of coats.