Some times Russians
don't make just planes. They make flying poetry. Boris Ivanovich Cheranovsky
dreamed about the half-moon gliding on the frozen surface of the lake. And he
created a series of planes with a charm that is hard to ignore. The daring design
created some stability problems, but most of his planes at least flew, and some
times they flew very well.
I include an image of my scratchbuilt BICh 7a, a smaller, previously designed
plane, for size and type reference.
The BICh 14 was a transport (four passenger) version, and both date from the
early 30's.
Click on
images below to see larger images
For the construction
of the model I used some styrene, wood, metal, invocations, imprecations, a
magic wand and some pixie dust. I tried some of the otherwise good Mr. Surfacer
500 on bare .010 styrene sheet, and didn't go very well. Just for you to know.
The interior was provided with five seats, control column, instrument panel and
rudder bar, all to be forever forgotten under the dark, impenetrable canopy. The
Townend rings were made of two layers of .010 styrene wrapped around the right
size of metal tube, and later a half-round styrene rod was added as a lip to the
inner front side. Once dry the part was sanded close to shape. The engines were
made of scored styrene rod and stretched sprue, and the half-round front covers
are heat-and-smash styrene over the round end of a kitchen wood spoon.
No custom made
decals for this one (phew!). After spray-priming metal enamels were airbrushed
although the scheme is speculative. The flying croissant was then ready for the
flight to the shelf and -in digital form- to the ARC airfield, where Steve will
surely scratch his head once again.
Gabriel
Click on
images below to see larger images
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