L-749 Constellation (Tintin in Tibet)

Tintin in Tibet (French: Tintin au Tibet) is the twentieth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly from September 1958 to November 1959 in Tintin magazine and published as a book in 1960. Hergé considered it his favourite Tintin adventure and an emotional effort, as he created it while suffering from traumatic nightmares and a personal conflict while deciding to leave his wife of three decades for a younger woman. The story tells of the young reporter Tintin in search of his friend Chang Chong-Chen, who the authorities claim has died in a plane crash in the Himalayas. Convinced that Chang has survived and accompanied only by Snowy, Captain Haddock and the Sherpa guide Tharkey, Tintin crosses the Himalayas to the plateau of Tibet, along the way encountering the mysterious Yeti.

– courtesy of Wikipedia

THE FINISHED MODEL:

THE VIDEO:

THE STORY:

No surprise, Tintin in Tibet is one of my favourite The Adventures of Tintin albums – right up there with The Blue Lotus… which is really no surprise since this is more or less the sequel.

This album, and the next, The Castafiore Emerald, are arguably the high water marks of the entire Tintin series. Hergé was really at his best when he was at his worst I guess – as the white landscapes of Tibet reflect a time in his life when he was beset by nightmares all in white, likely caused by the mental anguish he was feeling by falling out of love with his wife Germaine and into love with a young colourist at the studios, Fanny Vlaminck.

More personally for me, Tintin in Tibet is a bit special because it’s one of the few times I was able to purchase a Tintin album, in the local language of a place reflected in the story. I have a habit, when I travel, of trying to find TIntin stories published in the local language of the country I’m visiting. It’s not easy, but I’ve got Tintin albums in Japanese, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Vietnamese, and even Kmer (among others). But rarely do I get the double pleasure of being able to get a Tintin album in the actual place in the story. But I was able to buy a Chinese copy of The Blue Lotus in Shanghai… and I was able to get a copy of Tintin in Tibet in Hindi in New Delhi, India.

So being able to build a project that reflects Tintin’s arrival in New Delhi on a L-749 Constellation has a special place in my Tintin project.

Of course, it also doesn’t hurt that this is one of the few relatively easy-to-achieve 1/72 scale projects. I might be able to get the 1938 Cadillac type 75 taxi… but with all that white landscape, there isn’t a ton to choose from!

the yellow float plane that dive bombs our heroes is the prime one (and I do love float planes!), and who could forget the lifeboat that Captain Haddock drunkenly sets on fire, but I really like the boat chase at the end between Tintin and Allen.

THE BUILD:

Tintin and Captain Haddock arrive in New Delhi

Let’s hear it for the biggest (to date) of all my Tintin 1/72 scale builds! I’ve got plans for a few bigger… but up to now, the only ones that comes close in size to this baby are the Arabian Dhow from The Cigars of the Pharaoh and the XLFR-6 Test Rocket from Destination Moon!

Since it was so big, I also decided I needed to up my game and add some DC motors to those four massive propellors. But more on that later!

Of course, it might be big, but it’s still a plane. So I first got started on the cockpit. There’s really not much to see in there, so I didn’t spend a ton of time on that, or the rest of the interior – and I’m glad I didn’t because you really can’t see much after she’s all put together.

One of the biggest challenges was the main top-of-the-fuselage seam. I really did try to make it as tight as possible, but no matter how much putty and sanding I did, I just couldn’t get that “ghost shadow” to go away. That also caused me to make one of the biggest mistakes on this build – endless coats of white (XF-2) paint . I didn’t use any primer (another mistake) but after masking it off, I spent a lot of time, painstakingly masking off the red “India Air” stripe down the side of the fuselage. I even printed out a guide for the masking tape, which worked better than I hoped. I should’ve known it would be too good to be true. Sure enough, when it came time to remove the masking, I ended up pulling off almost all the white.

Frustrating is an understatement, but I was fully committed to this project, so it was back to the drawing board. I remasked the red (Tamiya X-7) and then used Tamiya’s white primer – which did the trick, but still left me with a ghost shadow along the top seam. Oh, well. I had to do several rounds of touch ups… a bit of overspray on the red, or the aluminium (XF-16) or the metallic grey (XF-56) or the black (XF-1)… and repeat. Eventually I was able to wrestle it into submission.

Then I did the wiring for those massive props. A lot easier than when I work with these in 1/144 scale, but still a bit tricky seeing as how I was hoping to run the power wires down through the wheels and into the base. Most of the wiring is hidden in the wings, but they still need to poke out somewhere.

Finally, since this is the plane shown after Tintin and Captain Haddock land in New Delhi, I just couldn’t resist scratchbuilding a little passenger set of boarding stairs as a finishing touch. I just cobbled together some parts from the spares box. All in all, I’m pretty happy with the result, but feel free to tell me what you think.