After the war some DH4's were rebuilt as DH4A's by replacing the rear gunners place with a two-seat compartment, cloth covered with sliding windows. To compensate the centre of gravity change, the top wing was moved back to give a 90 degree wing angle.
Instone Airlines was one of the first airlines, flying between London and Paris with DH4A's until larger planes went into service, Instone were originally a shipping line, their airline merged with Handley-Page and some other small airlines to become Imperial Airlines One of their DH4A's G-EAMU was prepared for the Kings Cup Air Race in 1922, and won it.
My model is converted from the Airfix DH4, which is a good model, basically correct, except for the undercarriage which is too short, and the wing surfaces that could have been better. If you think there is a lot of rigging on a DH2, then a DH4 is actually worse. The rigging is mostly stainless steel, except for the long contol lines which sagged under their own weight, I used strue instead. Painting and lettering are from lots of different sources, and homemade. The propellor is hand-carved and I'm rather proud of the brass sheathing, which came from a chocolate wrapper. It took about a year to build.
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Depperdusin Monocoque winner of 1913 James Gordon Bennett trophy (pilot Maurice
Prévost). First plane over 200kph.
"Kit": Classicplane vacuum-form/ scratch
Paint: Tamiya
This was an awful vacu-form, there was about 3mm mismatch between the fuselage
halves. I fixed that by dipping it in a cup of tea and bending outward. The rest
is mostly scratchbuilt. Wheels are from Aeroclub, the engine which is a double-rotary
160 hp Gnome comes from two Airfix Sopwith Pups, propeller is cut down from an
Airfix Avro 504.
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This is the Revell Ni17 from the collectors series, it is the second WW1 model I made, so must be about 30 years old. The decals are from ABT, I don't know how accurate they are, but as the kit is straight from the box, it probably doesn't matter.
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Nieuport 28 from the Revell 1/72 kit. This is the 94th Aero sqn machine that Eddie Rickenbacker flew, before he got a Spad. I won't be making another one, so I chose a famous one. I added a cockpit interior, corrected the front cowling, scratchbuilt an undercarriage, added aeroclub m/g's and engine, and carved a new propellor from walnut. Decals are adapted from Microscale and a horrible old sheet of "Finishing touch" decals, that had the best "hat in ring". Paint is Humbrol, followed by future/klear, and finished with pastels.
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Tummelisa swedish trainer. This one is cheating a little because it's in 1/50 scale. The drawings happened to be in that scale, and in those day's 1/48 wasn't so established, this was over 20 years ago. I had just got Harry Woodmans bible, so was very inspired by that, and felt that I really wanted to scratchbuild everything, so even the tires are carved from plasticard, silly thing to do really! All the markings are handpainted.
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