UNITED NATIONS SPACE AGENCY Fighter B version
Beaver get it?
Group build, yes I’m on board. But good friend and Airplane inclined Nick Williamson was adamant that to truly enjoy the theme ( Vintage Classic’s by Airfix) we all should be tackling the recently re-released BEAVER aircraft kit in 1/72 scale, box number A03017V released in 2022 itself a re-box of the original 1971 model.
I caved and said, ‘Yes Nick, I’ll do the Beaver’.
This is my build on how to build the Beaver not as a Beaver.
I already had my main build roughed out (the Airfix Beach Buggy x2) and that would need some scratch building and careful modelling to realise what I had in mind. This was going to be a bit more freestyle. Very much in the Starwars ILM tradition of kitbashing space craft for the big screen I wanted to see how much of the beaver kit I could use into a ‘new’ design of Sci-fi space craft.
Hence the UNSA Fighter B VERsion was born.
As soon as the fuselage was together I flipped it over and reversed it, slotting it into Gun-pla leg part (or arm?) from the spares box. A hole was cut for a cockpit in what was the underside using a spare piece of canopy glazing as a guide to size. The bottom as it is now was left open as I wanted to do some extra work internally, but an oblong was cut into the ‘roof’ part for what would be the front landing skid as the ‘roof’ part would now be the underside. I now removed all the rivets which didn’t take long as the plastic was easy to work.
I took the floats and after assembling them cut further oblongs for what would be the rear undercarriage bays. The floats were glued in place along with some other random spares and Milliput applied profusely to blend in the mishmash of parts. A section of plastic tube was inserted just behind the cockpit that also needed smoothing into the crafts shape with putty. This plastic tube allowed a further aluminium tube to be inserted that would rotate freely.
Beaver cockpit parts were re used to make a dashboard and rudimentary cockpit. Interesting is the wide range of sizes a 1/72 scale pilot can be as the picture shows, all these claim to be 1/72. The grey one was from the Beaver kit but I went for the biggest version that also comes from an Airfix kit but a much more modern offering of a Seaking if I recall, as it was found once more in the spares box (it is a big box). The same box offered up an X Wing exhaust too.
Here we pause, as I was enjoying myself too much and amassed a number of extras to have even more fun. Some micro high intensity LEDs would be used to make landing lights, taking advantage of the circular window openings in the original beaver cabin. The question would be how to power them? An experiment in powering the LEDs was called for further along in the build.
Referring back to the aluminium tube, I made up some pods from a Hex Gear model and added the tail planes from the Beaver. These need all rivets removed and the inscribed detail filled, yet to be done in the picture. These have been test mounted on the tube and rotate in the manner of a Harrier jet.
