by Josef Fuchs
Model photographs by the author
Josef Fuchs of Vienna, Austria offers us a beautiful model of the famed Bristol Blenheim. As he points out in his comments, it's his first card model in 15 years. I think you'll agree that it's a real masterpiece, accompanied elsewhere in this issue by another, and very unusual, creation that takes the concept of multimedia to its limits. Before you get distracted by the other project, enjoy Josef's beautiful Blenheim.
After a pause of more than 15 years, I decided to build a paper model again. I choose the GPM-Kit Nr. 173, a model of the famous 'Bristol Blenheim', a twin-engined bomber of WW2.
The kit comes in an A4-Booklet of 10 pages with parts, some drawings and description in Polish. The print quality is good, but in light of the long time since the print design was done, the print quality of the newer kits of GPM is much better. The coloring shows a very light weathering effect.
The cockpit glazing was self-made, by heat-forming some transparent plastic material over the original paper cockpit, which was built and then filled with synthetic resin filling compound. The wheels are the wooden ones from Gomix.
The parts between the body and the wings were glued with wall paper glue, which is perfect to soften the paper and to make a good connection without gaps. The antennas were made of fishing line, which is available in very thin dimensions, but is also strong and with very few filaments.
To avoid dust and stability testing by my two cats, I build a vitrine. The baseplate is dark grey plastic and the cover is made of plexiglas (acrylicglas), which I glued (welded) with Dichlormethan (methylene chloride). The two wheel chocks, which you see on some pictures, were home made by etching parts.
Click on the thumbnails to see the larger images
