PWS-50, 2010 Update

[B-Manic]

the modele-kartonowe.com PWS-50 has been updated. It now has a nice woodgrain skin and improved detail particularly in the cockpit.

Modele kartonowe

[cardist]

Thanks for this. It is a beautiful re-work.

Bernie

So many models, so little time

[Leif Ohlsson]

Thanks for doing this thread. I noticed the woodgrained version whilst looking at the Polikarpov recolourings you pointed us at in a similar thread, and wanted to point it out too. It is a good trend, these recolourings where the possibilities for various wood & fabric textures are tried out.

As an incitement to take a new look at Lech's Modele Kartonowe site, here's a photo of an early Polish aircraft (earlier than the PWS-50) he has added to the section for Polish aircraft history.

[Don Boose]

Yes. Some of the most beautiful models in recent months have been those with natural wood grains and fabric textures. Your excellent wooden propeller technique seems a natural complement to these aircraft, Leif.

Don

[Paperwarrior]

Excellent repaint. Looks stunning.
Thank you for sharing.

[Don Boose]

The historic Polish aviation photos are excellent. The photo of the Polish section at the (French?) aviation exposition with some famous French aircraft in the background is mouth watering.

I am thinking of trying my hand at the PWS-50 once the intense summer teaching period is over and wonder if Jeff and Douglas are contemplating a build once they finish dealing with the Fokker Scourge. It would be a salutary experience to have the benefit of your advice on building technique.

Leif: Did you once build a 1/72nd version of the PWS-50? Or was it another, perhaps Swedish, aircraft of similar appearance? I am at the office and can't get at my Ohlsson Dossier to check, but I recall you providing a tutorial on building small some years ago, using a similar early, low-wing monoplane as an example.

Don

[B-Manic]

Originally Posted by Don Boose

I am thinking of trying my hand at the PWS-50 once the intense summer teaching period is over and wonder if Jeff and Douglas are contemplating a build once they finish dealing with the Fokker Scourge. It would be a salutary experience to have the benefit of your advice on building technique.

Don

I do have a fondness for early monoplanes so yes, it is on the list.

~ Douglas

[Leif Ohlsson]

Originally Posted by Don Boose

Leif: Did you once build a 1/72nd version of the PWS-50?

Yes, Don, the PWS-50 did come out very well in 1/87. It was such a nice & simple model that I thought it could be used for experiments in downscaling to that scale.

At the time I had the idea that 1/87 was such a good common scale for all kinds of paper models - aircraft (for me), boats, cars, and trains for others - since there were readily available plastic figures to make the paper models come alive. And it would be a common ground for very different kinds of models to meet up and compare their relative sizes.

Here's the result again, starting with my 1/87 rescaled Modele Kartonowe PWS-50. After the build, I let the PWS meet its new crew of two Preiser 1/87 plastic figures, painted with common gouache.

After that I tried upscaling some of David Hathaways 1/250 ship's crew members in paper to 1/87, and let them meet the Preiser plastic guys around the PWS-50. They weren't totally out of place, right?

Thanks for letting me do this little walk down memory lane, Don. It was nice.

[Don Boose]

Many thanks for reposting those photos, Leif. You built a wonderful little world in 1/87.

The PWS-50 and this thread remind me of the role the Farman Moustique played in peanut-scale free-flight scale modeling some 30 years ago, when Bill Hannan or one of his interlocutors designed a peanut-scale version. It became very popular and appeared in a number of whimsical photos. It had some similar characteristics to the RWS-50.

All this has caused me to download the Modele-Kartonowe model and to do some dreaming about it last night. I am at least going to make a start on it over the next couple of weeks.

Don

[Leif Ohlsson]

The funny thing is that the PWS-50 is a one-of-a-kind, a prototype aircraft. No other exemplars were built but this one. It was specifically aimed for the 1930 Challenge competition for light aircraft [Wikipedia]. The attached photo (the best I have found) must be from that occassion.



Flight magazine, in its report from the competition, has only this to say:

The 06 was a PWS 50 with a Cirrus III. This was a mid-wing monoplane with the two passengers seated side-by-side between the spars. The view appeared very good and the construction sound.

Airwar.ru has a very good drawing of the PWS-50 (if you download it from the original source you get a gif-image of much higher resolution than appears when the same gif-image is converted to jpg here). The drawing shows a different exhaust tube than at the competition; perhaps added later.

That's about it, as far as readily available sources go.