Spinners' recent wonderful Whiff of the 1930's Ikarus Ik-2 fighter, whiffed as the AW Elswick, inspired me to get a kit of the Ik-2, thanks Hobbes for linking it for me. Here's the kit's box, newly delivered to me today.



And here's the somewhat simple contents, but it's only a small aeroplane. The wings are all in one piece even, no port or starboard or upper or lower sections here, no, just one plastic slab!



That back dot down in the bottom right hand corner is the instrument panel, one of those sandwiched affairs that I never can get right. We'll see how this one works out.

And just to remind you what it's going to look like, here's one of Spinners' screenies of his original idea for the Elswick.



LOVE those wing markings.    I see lots of time designing decals in my future.

I'm not sure if the wing in the kit is 'gulled' enough to look like the Elsewick, but I'm sure I can bend it a bit, if need be.

Spinner's version looks way better, that's for sure !

Hope that it will get spats? 

Quote from: Dizzyfugu on February 22, 2025, 03:44:58 AMHope that it will get spats? 

It may be easier than assembling the mind boggling array of struts that hold the main wheels! 

That's one of Azur-Fromm's earliest kits, not a bad limited run one. Their current Battle shows how far they've come.

(The other thread is deleted Kit)

Quote from: Dizzyfugu on February 22, 2025, 03:44:58 AMHope that it will get spats? 

Channelling your inner da Basher there?

Maybe it's me, but the design looks to be the lovechild of a PZL P.11c and an Avia B-534...

If this is the  A W Elswick, will its successor be the A W Walker?  Walker Naval Yard  was built further down the Tyne was built  to augment the facilities of Elswick Works.  Herewith a great deal of potentially irrelevant but interesting information and photographs:- https://www.tynebuiltships.co.uk/Armstrong-Yard-HW.html

Quote from: Rheged on February 23, 2025, 06:38:20 AMIf this is the  A W Elswick, will its successor be the A W Walker? 

That would have been the Peregrine engined version, originally named the Elswick Mk3, but as it had longer wings (what a surprise....) a much longer nose and larger tail surfaces it was renamed.

Thanks to the wonderful Mr. Spinners, the decals for the Elswick are almost already designed! 

And I've only glued two parts together so far, and they're the instrument panel bits! 

The Azure Ikarus kit, er, sorry, Elswick kit, comes with some very nicely etched seat belts etc. Unfortunately  the belts are all about TWICE as long as they need to be, and need to be heavily trimmed in order to use them.  The cockpit isn't too easy to assemble as it's not at all clear from the instructions which bit goes where, but I think I figured it out eventually.

Here it is, complete with the etched panel which you can just see poking over the top of the plastic panel. I didn't use the film bit, there's NO way I'd have got that to stick in place.



If I'd have used the full length of the shoulder belts they'd have stuck out maybe three scale FEET above the canopy!

Oh yeah, canopies, they give you two of them in the kit, one injection moulded and one vacformed. Why? 

Quote from: PR19_Kit on February 25, 2025, 06:53:01 AMThe Azure Ikarus kit, er, sorry, Elswick kit, comes with some very nicely etched seat belts etc. Unfortunately  the belts are all about TWICE as long as they need to be, and need to be heavily trimmed in order to use them.  The cockpit isn't too easy to assemble as it's not at all clear from the instructions which bit goes where, but I think I figured it out eventually.

Here it is, complete with the etched panel which you can just see poking over the top of the plastic panel. I didn't use the film bit, there's NO way I'd have got that to stick in place.



If I'd have used the full length of the shoulder belts they'd have stuck out maybe three scale FEET above the canopy!

Oh yeah, canopies, they give you two of them in the kit, one injection moulded and one vacformed. Why? 

😆 🤣...ya just gotta love the way some manufacturers think don't ya 🤔 😁
Most times there's not real reason we'll ever know why aswell....still now you've got spare belt bits and a canopy 

I've painted up the cockpit and glued the two fuselage halves together, and then added the tail surfaces. The tailplane slot needed a bit 'easing' as it would have been slanted otherwise, but that was easy.



The hybrid panel's not come out too badly, but it's too tall and stops the wing fitting down properly.



The red arrow shows the small 'gunsight' port on top of the panel, and it needs to be lower or the whole panel moved back maybe 5 mm. As that's impossible I'll be 'relieving' the wing trailing edge a little.............

More annoyingly..it's also really small   
I'm going to be watching this mate 

It turns out you can't actually build this the way they say in the instructions.

The cockpit floor is too long by maybe 3-4 mm and that pushes the instrument panel so far forward that it would be underneath the wing centre section, which then won't fit down onto the fuselage. If you cut a chunk of the wing off to get it to sit down you end up with hefty gap between it and the front edge of the canopy!

So I sawed the upper part of the panel off and glued it directly to the rear part of the wing centre section, then glued the canopy in place, and filed the front edge of the wing so it all fitted together nicely. In that position you can't see that the panel is effectively suspended in mid-air, but it's all so small it won't matter really.

This plane is TINY. Where's the Scale Reference Cat when you need him?

Quote from: PR19_Kit on February 25, 2025, 02:10:31 PMIt turns out you can't actually build this the way they say in the instructions.

The cockpit floor is too long by maybe 3-4 mm and that pushes the instrument panel so far forward that it would be underneath the wing centre section, which then won't fit down onto the fuselage. If you cut a chunk of the wing off to get it to sit down you end up with hefty gap between it and the front edge of the canopy!

So I sawed the upper part of the panel off and glued it directly to the rear part of the wing centre section, then glued the canopy in place, and filed the front edge of the wing so it all fitted together nicely. In that position you can't see that the panel is effectively suspended in mid-air, but it's all so small it won't matter really.

This plane is TINY. Where's the Scale Reference Cat when you need him?

If it's that small Kit there's no way my scale cat should or would be used. He'd crush it