Murphy's Bernelli UB-14 Repaint

[Burning Beard]

This was such a silly looking plane, I just had to build it, it went straight from never heard of to top of stack. Since Murphy had a "what if" of the plane in a D-Day scheme, I figured I could paint it like a pre-war transport.



I re-sized it to 1/48 and made a few minor changes. Firstly I took the fuselage split from the middle of the front and moved it behind the wheel wells, so the front of the fuselage would be smooth. You can also see in this picture that I changed the props and added push rods to the engine. The props are now free spinning and counter rotate.



I changed the wheels a little (puffy sides) and made all the landing gear parts into tubes. I also recessed the wheel wells, and left the tail wheel without a well.



And since it is now in the 278th Observation Squadron (the little owl on the side) I gave it a set of radios, though if I were to do it again I would only use a single wire to the rear.





All in all it was a pretty fun build, and can be built easily without the additions I made. Of course if it is easy, I always have to do it the hard way. I also added a few fairings that were not in the kit.

Beard

[zot]

Cool!! Great Job!

[umtutsut]

Now THAT's some great work. Love it!

Les (The Voice of Authority -- VoiceofAuthority.net - The Voice Stylings of Les Dorr, Jr.)

[SCEtoAUX]

Great job on an unusual looking aircraft. The changes you made worked out well.

[Don Boose]

You did a terrific job on this model.

Given the time frame of the UB-14, the USAAC version would have been the Kreider-Reisner XC-31 and the Douglas XC-32, making this the XC-31.5.

Now, can someone recolor the model as General De Gaul's personal transport (license-built UB-14: Cunliffe-Owen OA-1 G-AFMB)? [Aeroplane Monthly June 2006] Does an image of that aircraft exist? Presumably it would have been in the desert scheme of Middle Stone/Dark Earth shadow shading on the upper surfaces and Azure undersides? There is an article on this aircraft in a 2006 issue of The Aeroplane. Regrettably, my collection of that journal only goes through 1995.

Apologies for the diversion, Beard, but your fine model got me thinking.

Don

[willygoat]

That looks awesome! Great rework on this goofy plane.

[Kevin WS]

Really nice piece of work. Am impressed.

[tatasam]

Nicely done ,as is scale of the original ?

Henryk

[Burning Beard]

I don't know what the original scale is, but it is larger. By the way the UB-14 kit is a freebee at Murphy's site. Just another side note, since I reduced it, I made the wings one piece on each side, the original plans have two pieces on either side.

Beard

[tatasam]

Thank you Beard for the information

Henryk