HU-16 Albatross (Flight 714 to Sydney)

Flight 714 to Sydney (French: Vol 714 pour Sydney; originally published in English as Flight 714) is the twenty-second volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly from September 1966 to November 1967 in Tintin magazine. The title refers to a flight that Tintin and his friends fail to catch, as they become embroiled in their arch-nemesis Rastapopoulos’ plot to kidnap an eccentric millionaire from a supersonic business jet on a Sondonesian island.

– courtesy of Wikipedia

THE FINISHED MODEL:

THE VIDEO:

THE STORY:

Okay, so by all accounts, Flight 714 to Sydney is not one of the better Tintin albums.

Fair enough. It’s one of the last Tintin adventures, and was produced at a time where Hergé had largely lost interest in Tintin and his companions.

It’s also a bit of a product of the late-1960s, given the focus on the supernatural/alien abduction phenomenon that was all the rave at the time.

Still, I’ve always been fascinated by this album. The title itself, Flight 714 to Sydney, just evokes a certain call to adventure. Maybe I just a product of a time where getting on a plane was still a pretty major thing – and maybe it will be again now that we’re starting to come out from under the global COVID-19 pandemic – and I bet when this adventure was first published a flight to far-off Sydney would have been an even more special event.

And let’s not forget the cover. I’m not entirely sure why Tintin is shown packing heat. In fact, I think it might be the only cover where Tintin is shown armed. Of course, longtime readers will know that Tintin’s no stranger to guns. But usually his armed encounters are more of the handgun “stick ’em up” after getting the drop on the bad guys variety. Here he looks like he’s about to take on an entire army of goons at the remote volcanic island base of Professor Evil.

At least, that’s what I thought the first time I saw the cover to this adventure. The story itself doesn’t quite live up to that standard, but who am I to argue.

Now, of course the Carreidas 160 is going to be the star entry from this album in my Tintin project. However, I’m almost equally happy that this adventure gives me yet another excuse to build a flying boat. And if anyone spends any time reading through my blog, you’ll know, I need very little excuse to build float planes and flying boats.

THE BUILD:

Now, I’ve built a few old kits before, but I don’t think I’ve ever built one quite THIS old before. According to Scalemates, this box first came out in 1959!

It seems to be a bit pricy on eBay, and a bit hard to find, but I was lucky enough to find an incomplete kit at a much cheaper price. After a careful study of the posted pics, I believed that the only missing pieces were from the relatively complex folding landing gear. Kits from the late 50s early 60s often needed to be functional as toys, and this one has a very neat set of landing gear that can be deployed – at least it can when you have all the pieces. However, I knew I’d be displaying the HU-16 in flight, so really, as long as it had two wheels and all the wheel well covers – happy to forgo the functionality and save some of my hard-earned cash.

For a kit this old, the fit itself actually wasn’t all that bad. The trickier part was how brittle the plastic was. While drilling the holes for the small DC motors, I managed to snap a rather large hole in the upper wing on the right side. With some VERY careful glueing and some even more careful sanding, I got it back into passable shape – but I should’ve known it was a bad omen.

The electronics were easy enough to hide, given the in-wing landing gear, and with enough putty the fuselage went together relatively easily. Much more easily than its “sister build”, the Short Sunderland from The Seven Crystal Balls. However the one exception was the windscreen. Maybe the plastic shrank over the years, but the gap around the windscreen was huge. Putty wouldn’t have worked, so I needed to plug the gap with about 1mm of plastic card and then carefully trim the edges around the clear parts.

There are a lot of yellow vehicles in Tintin, and I usually rely on my Tamiya X-17 Pink undercoat, but given that I’d just done that on the Sunderland, I decided to mix it up a bit and go with a white primer instead. It covered the silver/grey plastic well enough and made the top coat of XF-3 Yellow quite a bit more “lemony” in tone. The painting overall didn’t give me much trouble. I painted XF-2 White over the primer and then masked it carefully, doubling up the tape to ensure I got an exact mirror image of the mask on the other side. The only issue was the rivets lifting the tape and causing a bit of overspray on the XF-1 Black. Short of sanding off the rivets, I couldn’t think of a way to solve the problem, so I’ll just have to live with it.

The homemade decals went on without a hitch, but I think I was too loyal to my Scale Modeller’s Guide to Aircraft from the Adventures of Tintin. The logo on the tail should’ve been a bit lower. Oh, well.

Of course, just when I thought I was done, disaster. I managed to snag the power cord while taking the final pics and pulling the whole thing off the table and onto the floor. Luckily I was mostly able to pop the cracked bits on the wing back into place. I also had to re-attach one of the floats and most of the antennas. All-in-all, it could have been much worse. The hardest thing to overcome was the wiring was broken inside the fuselage. However, I popped off one of the wheels, carved out a giant hole behind it, and then fished around with some tweezers until I found the ends. A little bit of soldering and we were back in business.

There’s still a rather large crack on the under wing where it meets the fuselage, and I only brushed over the cracked bits on the top of the wing, but all in all… could’ve been worse. If you want to try and play “before and after”, the only pic I managed to get before the fall was the one where it’s plugged in and the props are spinning. Enjoy!