DHC Chipmunk (The Black Island)

The Black Island (French: L’Île noire) is the seventh volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from April to November 1937. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to England in pursuit of a gang of counterfeiters. Framed for theft and hunted by detectives Thomson and Thompson, Tintin follows the criminals to Scotland, discovering their lair on the Black Island.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

THE FINISHED MODEL:

THE VIDEO:

THE (PREVIOUSLY) FINISHED MODEL:

The story:

From a personal standpoint, I have nothing much to say about The Black Island. I like it. It’s not my favourite adventure, but it’s far from my least favourite (and of course I don’t really dislike any of the stories). In fact, The Black Island is probably right smack dab in the middle of the preference list for me.

Having said that though, perhaps there should be a small asterisk (*) next to it as far as modelling goes. You see, in the mid-1960s when it came time to publish The Black Island in the U.K., Hergé’s British publishers requested a major revision of the story. Given that the story is set in the UK, the publishers wanted the story updated to better reflect the current local situations and thus be more palatable to then-modern readers. To that end, Hergé sent his assistant Bob De Moor to Britain on a research trip, and the revised edition in Tintin Magazine bore the fruits of that research. Why does that matter, you may ask? Well, what it means is that The Black Island is one of the stories (perhaps only outdone by The Calculus Affair) which features the widest section of trains, planes and automobiles – making it a scale modeller’s paradise!

In fact, I think most people start their Tintin-related builds with either the Yellow DH Tiger Moth so comedically flown by Thompson and Thomson (well technically by an aircraft mechanic they order into service… but let’s not split hairs) in The Black Island, or the Bordurian Messerschmidt Bf109 that Tintin steals in King Ottokar’s Sceptre. Now It might be a bit of a chicken/egg argument, as both planes are quite popular modelling subjects in their own right, but I think a lot of their popularity as Tintin-related builds has to do with Blue Rider Publishing featuring them on the first sheet released in their amazing Tintin decals sets – which, incidentally, I highly recommend If you want to build models of the planes

Now of course I have both of those on my list as well, but while doing a bit more research, I discovered that the decals were just the tip of the iceberg. You can imagine I was extremely happy to discover that Blue Rider has published en entire book (or two!) dedicated to building scale models of Tintin-related airplanes! So happy in fact, that I’d like to digress for a moment for a quick plug:

A Scale Modeller’s Guide to Aircraft from the Adventures of Tintin Is a 60pp colour paperback
featuring 1/72 and 1/144 scale colour schemes for 120 aircraft from Hergé’s comics. You can grab it as an instant download eBook here. While you’re at it, you might want to pick up A supplement to the Scale Modeller’s Guide to Aircraft from the Adventures of Tintin– a supplemental 24pp colour paperback that features a further 35 aircraft profiles in 1/72 and other common modelling scales with detailed colour information. Aircraft featured are those with a minor or incidental role in the stories, or some of the many colour variations from serialisations of the Tintin stories in Le Petit Vingtieme, Coeurs Vaillants and Tintin Magazine. It’s also available as an instant download eBook here.

Anyway, armed with the guide and full of ideas, I started looking for something relatively simple, available, and cheap – I’m looking at you, ancient Airfix DHC Chipmunk kit!

So that’s why, despite being pretty far down the list story-wise, The Black Island made it to the top of my Tintin modelling project list.

The build:

The build itself was relatively unremarkable. With a kit as old as the Airfix Chipmunk, I knew I’d be in for some serious scratchbuilding. I started by crafting out a cockpit and adding some sidewall details. I was a bit heavy handed with it, but since it’s a closed cockpit you can’t really see it anyway. Once the cockpit was all buttoned up, I started what seemed like endless rounds of putty and sanding. I sanded off almost all the giant raised rivets, scribed in a few panel lines, and opened up the engine cowling a bit. Again, since this was really my first attempt at this, it was a bit heavier handed than I’d like, but it’s always a learning process.

The part of the build that gave me the most trouble was the wheels actually. I had to use some epoxy putty to craft up some spats for the wheels, but I was never quite satisfied with my result, even after a ton of sanding. Having to fool around with the wheels so much also ensured something was going to go wrong and it did – I dropped the model off the workbench twice and broke off both of the legs. That required a bit of drilling, filling and glueing, but I think I got them back on well enough in the end.

I also had a bit of trouble masking the white swoosh. Again, it was an early build so I wasn’t quite so diligent in checking my masking – especially around the curves – and I paid a bit of a price for it. Oh well.  a few touch ups here and there never hurt anyone, right?

Well, feel free to tell me if you agree: