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1/48 D.H Moth Minor RAAF, by Lad-N-Dad
This lithe and lovely creature is a deHavilland Moth Minor. The Moth Minor was intended to replace the Tiger Moth in the deHavilland lineup as a club/touring aircraft; sharing much of the Tiger Moth’s shape in its fuselage and gracefully-curved tail feathers. It was a low-wing, fixed gear monoplane, which featured folding wings for easier storage and hangar-space conservation. The war intervened before the Moth Minor had much of an impact on sales. In layout very similar to the Magister from Miles Aircraft, the Moth Minor was also produced in a posh cabin version.
As the crisis that would become World War Two deepened, Australia found itself being tasked with providing more and more for it’s own defense industry, as well as contributing manpower to the rest of the Commonwealth. Needing a modern, monoplane trainer before the domestically-designed CAC Wackett Trainer would become available, Australia purchased 40 deHavilland Moth Minors “off the shelf”, impressed three others from civil owners, and put them to work as trainers. A few survivors fly today.
Lad-N-Dad’s model of an RAAF Moth Minor builds relatively easily, though care needs to be taken with the long, slender fuselage, which consists of four segments connected with joining strips, to prevent it from hogging. The kit features a partial cockpit tub which needs some careful trimming as it is a bit oversize. Landing gear legs are bent paper-clip wire, as are the arms of the underwing mass balances. The kit provides some pennant shapes to roll up for mass balances, but I used blobs of white glue, which I painted once they were dry. Windscreens are packing tape, cut to the shape of the kit-provided opaque parts and mounted to lower “rims” made from scrap card.
The kit will be available shortly on Ecardmodels.com, along with a kit of a civil-registered cabin version. Enjoy the photos!
Wyvern
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04-19-2011, 05:55 PM
. Nice and cleanly built. loved the history as well.
Linear Mode
