de Havilland Canada Chipmunk T.10

2nd December, 1979 a young me was flying in this very aeroplane.

The kit is really nice. But it does have one flaw. After that, the rest of the issues are my own failings…

Additional items and mods

I added a few of the usual aftermarket parts to this kit;

resin wheels from Eduard
PE seatbelts and canopy handles
Xtradecal decals

And made a few alterations:

Modified the exhaust stack to later type
Added additional instruments to forward cockpit coving

I used canopy masks – essential for this as the canopy is front and centre on this airframe.

The build

During the build I lost the engine exhaust! Doh! No matter, after checking the references, this airframe had the later stack mod fitted – phew! Except that I wanted to represent the aeroplane as it looked in 1979, 2nd Dec, when I flew in the back seat. Apparently the mod came in after that? Judging by the photos of the real machine it looks like it has been re-built since back then.

Anyway, the kit is great except for those curved wings – which caught me out. If you glue the wing halves together without watching what you are doing they end up curving down from the fuselage – the real thing has very straight wings. This is caused by the locating pins being out of alignment. I had to heat-treat the glued wings in boiling water to straighten them out.

Somehow I managed to get a bad electo-static build up on the model too, which I can’t get rid of (if there’s any proven cure for this, please let me know!). This caused merry hell when painting. The paint is Tamiya and Humbrol lightly weathered and easy on the panel line wash. There’s also some post shading on the fabric wings with some white oil paint.

All in all, a great little kit and master stroke of marketing by Airfix for us oldies of certain generation who flew Chipmunks while in the ATC. I have more in the stash! The next one will be better!

Next time…

There’s a few things I’d do when I build my next Chippie…

The wing build is a key one. Like many have said already, I’d remove the locating pins from the wing halves and glue them together straight. Trying to correct this with boiling water afterward is do-able, but better avoided.
The canopy is a master class from Airfix designers – well done! – but a bit daunting when it comes to adding glue. Next time I’ll be ready for it. On my model there is a bit of miss alignment on my part after the glue had dried.
I won’t lose my exhaust pipe from the next kit!
I’d replace the wing nav lights for clear plastic.
It really needs brake pipes – so obvious on photos of the real thing.
The prop blades need thinning down, they’re a bit thick and slab-like.
The other main things I’d do differently is to add the windscreen earlier and fill the seam around the bottom edge. Like most airframes, the joint between body and windows is usually no more a seam than anywhere else. I don’t subscribe to the process of adding canopies last, but in this case I did. The result in the photos is that there’s too much of panel line around the bottom edge of the windscreen – not present on the real thing.
I’m also not happy about the sharpness of the transition between red and white. I used Tamiya masking tape as always, but I think in this instance I needed to have used something finer/sharper.