Scratchbuilt 1/72 BICh 14

by Gabriel Stern

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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.

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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 

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Photos and text © by Gabriel Stern