Tiger Moth; 1/72 vacuform kit

[vacant]

I have no idea which company produced this vacuform kit of the Tiger Moth, or why. I am hoping that someone will tell me. All I was given was a single sheet of plastic card with basic shapes. There were no bottoms to the wings and indeed, nothing other than the fuselage and wings. I covered the bottom parts of the wings with plastic card and added rib detail from stretched sprue. I modified some Airfix Auster Antarctic floats to make them resemble the floats used on the Tiger Moth. My modifications were simplified and may be inaccurate.

I gave it the colour scheme of an aircraft in the Norwegian air force but know nothing more about it.

[JamesPerrin]

The more blank the canvas the better your models seem to get. Not seen a Tigermoth on floats or in that scheme before.

[flakmonkey]

It's lovely work, and one of the best colour schemes I've ever seen for a Tiggie, but like you I am scratching my head wondering why anybody would make a vac kit of it.

[K5083]

So unnecessary, yet so impressive!

August

[skypirate]

Nice work, Fred, a real eye-catcher in that scheme, with those floats.

David

[vacant]

I can only imagine that a vacform kit was produced at the time when the only available kit was the ancient Airfix one. The Airfix kit had some inaccuracies, such as the angle of sweepback of the wings and shape issues around the fin/rudder. The vacform kit may have corrected these errors but honestly, they could be corrected far more easily with a knife and sandpaper. Besides, building it as a vacform is bound to produce its own inaccuracies, at least it does when I build it. Not including the underneath of the wings did not help. I am waiting for someone to tell me which manufacturer made this one - I can't find it on Scalemates.

[Eric Mc]

Could it be somebody like Airmodels? I think they were German.

It turned out really nice.

As mentioned above, the old Airfix Tiger Moth was quite inaccurate so there would have been some sense in releasing a vacform alternative back in the 70s and 80s which is when I suspect this kit was released.

[vacant]

I don't see it listed as an Airmodels kit and it did not look like one. I thought that perhaps it was Aeroclub, but the Aeroclub Tiger Moth was injection moulded (as far as I can see).

[JamesPerrin]

Did it say TigerMoth on the sheet? Could it be a close cousin of the TigerMoth so not listed under that name? I tried Queen Bee and Menasco Moth but got nothing.

[vacant]

I did not have the instruction sheet or any other packaging. A previous owner had written Tiger Moth in pencil on the plastic sheet. It is, therefore, possible that it was written in error - perhaps it was intended to be a Queen Bee or .....? It looked enough like a Tiger Moth to me to build it as I did.

[vacant]

I am now suspecting that the original kit was intended as a Queen Bee - it does not show signs of the forward wing slats. I had put this down to the generally crude moulding, but it may have bene deliberate. The queen Bee did not have these slats. I am now wondering if it is worth the effort to add them!

[Lone Modeller]

Whatever the kit was intended to be, you have made a first class model from it. The markings are unusual too - just the kind of model that I like!