A Quickie Project Before the Year Ends

[HubertB]

My "Sandbox" GB entry is now finished, and I should resume work on other projects, and deal with a few  SOD queens waiting for me.

The priority is of course to finish the Fisher 1/32 Cutlass.

However, I thought I could show a little time-filling project I started when I was waiting for the putty on the wing-slats of the Cutlass to dry.

When I saw, this one, I just fetched it in a split-second. It is typically in my area of predilection  : off-beat subject, civilian, and resin, to boot.

So, Brengun has released kits of the Rutan Quickie in 1/72, 1/48 and 1/32 scale. The Quickie is one of the many amazing brain-children of the creative Burt Rutan, conceived in the mid 70's.

It features many of the pet-ideas of Burt Rutan : light weight, canard or staggered wing configuration, amateur construction, inexpensive to build, power, and run. In typical Rutan fashion, the Quickie is powered by a stock Onan engine, probably well known to US owners of houses, as my understanding is this engine was primarily conceived to power small lawn-mowing tractors, delivering between 18 and 22 hp acoording to the versions; On this engine, the Quickie can cruise at some 125+ mph, a testament to the fine aerodynamics and light weight of Rutan products.

The Brengun kit is a typical resin kit, in a diminutive box - at least for a 1/32 builder-

Inside the box, a few resin parts, a vac-formed canopy, a small PE fret, an acetate film for the IP instruments, and a small decal sheet. About 30 parts overall, so it should be fairly quick, as befits its name ...

Unfortunately, the bottom of the fuselage is marred by dozens of those pesky pinholes you find on resin kits which have not been pressure-cast. And you know what the issue is: when you fill and sand some pinholes, you reveal new ones

 

Any way, this is where I stood last Saturday :

 

 

You can notice on the pics that I have scratched a new back for the instrument panel. Brengun's kit is based on the Quickie built by a gentleman colled Terry Crouch, from Indiana, who received an award by the EAA at Oskosh in 1995 for the quality of his Quickie build. One characteristic of Terry Crouch's Quickie is the overall neat construction, and it shows also on the back of the IP. Check this videao at about 40' to see what I mean

Brengun's resin part for the back of the Ip was just not neat enough to emulate Mr Crouch's work so I did a new one.

After a first layer of primer, still some pinholes to fill on the bottom fuselage ...

But this is where I am at tonight. The seat has been reclad with some Evergreen strips, and painted. An additional layer of blue is needed to blend the colors of the seat. The detail parts have been painted as well

The instrument panel has been painted and wired ... You may notice the switches on the left of the PE IP, done with 0.2 mm nickel silbver rod, and inserted in the holes I drilled for them ...

 

The main components have been primed and sanded a few times already, the vacformed canopy cut, trimmed to fit, masked and painted

And in the meantime, I have been working on my "Terry Crouch" figure. It is in fact an absolutely fantastic figure from Reedoak, of a "civilian pilot". Here is my current wip of the Quickie pilot. I had great fun painting the Hawaian shirt

TBC, and hopefully finished before the year end.

Hubert.

[JohnB]

Wow! What a neat project Hubert. 🙂

[GusMac]

Really nice job on the Hawaiian shirt Hubert. Zoomed the photo up just to get the full appreciation.

[DocRob]

Nothing better than a little side project from time to time, to reignite the mojo flow. I never heard of the Quickie (Quirky), but like it, especially with your careful treatment. The Shirt is fantastic.

Cheers Rob