Beechcraft Bonanza (The Calculus Affair)

The Calculus Affair (French: L’Affaire Tournesol) is the eighteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly in Belgium’s Tintin magazine from December 1954 to February 1956 before being published in a single volume by Casterman in 1956. The story follows the attempts of the young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and his friend Captain Haddock to rescue their friend Professor Calculus, a scientist who has developed a machine capable of destroying objects with sound waves, from kidnapping attempts by the competing European countries of Borduria and Syldavia.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

THE VIDEO:

The story:

As I’ve said earlier, The Calculus Affair is a story that has a bit of everything, adventure, intrigue, mystery, science.

One nice thing about that is there’s lots to choose from in regards to subjects for my Tintin project.  I knew that the Bordurian Tank was my go-to selection for this album, but I was also excited about being able to build out the Bell 47-D helicopter that Tintin and Haddock commandeer as well as the blue and white Beechcraft Bonaza that the kidnappers use to make off with poor Prof. Calculus.

However, although it’s not quite as hard as getting cars (and basically any non-military vehicles) in 1/72 scale, civilian planes are also a bit of a challenge.  Luckily, there is a proper Beechcraft Bonanza kit, most recently available from Arii, that doesn’t mean that it’s all that easy to come by.

I suppose that it only makes sense that most people would prefer to build action-packed military planes, rather than a mid-sized passenger plane, but for a kit that’s been out since 1972, you’d think there’d be a few more reboxings of it.  Sadly, such is not the case, and it was only by a bit of luck that I found it on the shelf (well, the wall) at the Leonard 1 store in Akihabara (Tokyo).  I hummed and hawed over it for a bit, because the price was a bit strong for such a simple little kit… but really, it’s the rarity that commands the price, not the complexity I guess.

Besides, it’s such a neat little plane, with it’s V-shaped tail, I probably would’ve wanted to build it anyway, regardless of the fact that it plays an important role in the story.  So, I really couldn’t say no to this one.

The build:

The build itself was relatively easy, but I will admit to feeling the pressure of both the price tag and the rarity. I really wanted to “get my money’s worth” out of this one, so I felt the need to make sure I didn’t cop out on any of the elbow grease.

The kit goes together quite simply and the fit is pretty good for a one of its age-range.  However, as you can see from the reference images, the Bonanza in the Tintin album only has two side windows, not three.  So the first order of business was to get rid of that last rear window on both sides.

I had to think about how best to accomplish that. On the one hand, I’ve heard that the best way to remove unwanted windows is to cut out a larger area and fill it with a strip of polystyrene.  However, I decided to cop out just a bit since the clear plastic window insert seemed to fit so well.  Of course, there was a ton of putty and sanding involved.  I’m not sure if it was the best option or not.  In the end, I was able to remove the window, rendering it invisible in all but the most direct and harsh of sunlight. But I think it came at a cost.  All that putty and sanding, no matter how careful I tried to be, slipped over and took out some of the panel lines.  So I needed to rescribe them.  However, by then the plastic was very hard, so I had some trouble getting a nice straight line.

What I should’ve done is rescribe a bit as I went along… making sure to keep the line clean and accessible. Oh, well.  Luckily panel lines aren’t that big a deal on small passenger planes, so I decided not to do a panel line wash at the end.  So, they’re relatively unobtrusive.

I also had a bit of trouble with the masking on the engine cowl.  Curves always give me trouble and this one just didn’t seem to want to work. First of all, it took me a while to figure out the correct “cream colour” for the main fuselage body.  My first attempts came out too yellow.  Luckily, following my wife’s advice, I used 20:1 ratio of Tamiya XF-2 (white) and XF-15 (pink skin tone) to make it just enough off white to do the trick.  Of course, I couldn’t remember the ratio and after doing a touch up spray on the wings, I managed to “pink them up” with a 20:2 ratio.  So, it was back to the drawing board.  Luckily, I guess, I had to re-do the blue striping as well.  My first attempt came out too light, but the second time around I added a witch’s brew of blues, greys, and white to come up with a shade I thought worked well enough.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the result, but please feel free to tell me what you think.