Hon Hon, C'est un Caudron!

 Oui, oui, I said I would build an inbetweenie so I did. I said I might build something by Fabrizio Prudenziati but this one has been on the list for some time too.

Those interbellum French planes really had that je-ne-sais-quoi. They were sleek, long and short-winged, fast and just like Citroëns, very unique in their shape and appearance. Caudron built a lot of these racing planes in the thirties and this culminated in the Caudron Rafale.

The C.450 is one of the many versions of this plane, flown by, amongst others, Hélène Boucher. In 1934 she set a couple of records in this machine. She only had her pilot's license for two years and yet she flew as if she never has done anything else. Concentrating at aerobatics first, she drew lots of spectators to her performances in her Gypsy Moth. Soon thereafter, she bought a new plane and tried her luck on racing. She signed a contract with aircraft manufacturer Caudron and soon flew with their high-speed aircraft in air races. She set a new speed record over 100 and 1000 kilometres and the all-round speed record for women. Unfortunately, she crashed when taking off in a Caudron C. 430 in november 1934 and died of her injuries, only 26 years old.

All Caudron planes answered to the same aesthetics. long-nosed, short-winged. French paper model designer Philippe Renesson designed a very sturdy and super-tight fitting model of the C.450. This is the result, after the jump some build pictures.

Boucher apparently was not bothered with superstitious thoughts. She flew the number thirteen.

The build was surprisingly straightforward. First I had to create the sturdiest frame ever for such a tiny plane. Cereal box carton and not just side frames, no, top frames as well. This wasn't going to bend any time soon. Better get everything as straight as possible or else you'd really wind up with a crooked plane!

Next was the fuselage itself. At first sight, oddly shaped parts, with segments folding over the top, meeting the other fuselage part. Here it was crucial to keep the bulkheads cut out as precise as possible. Although I built this one in 1/48 (originally the model is 1/66), it still is quite small for that scale. It actually was a small plane, though.

Lots of parts had to be edge-glued. I like that, actually. Tabs are the worst glue connectors, causing a step in the skin of your model. Inner strips are good and reinforcing but sometimes hard to apply because of the shape of the parts. This part, behind the cockpit to the tail section is exactly such a piece. If you have strips on the inside, they have to be folded inwards and need to be tightly glued against the plane's body. Chances are, the strips will spring back and leave a seam.
Then edge-glueing is the solution. Just a little bit of glue, spread out over the very edges of the paper that will touch the surface it has to be glued on to. PVA is the glue to go.

I started out with wanting to build a spinning propeller in the plane, like I always do. But I was a little too fast with locating the spinner's place in the nose section and aimed too low. Oh well. It isn't a toy anyway. The spinner's pointy end was just glued to the rest of the cowling. This actually showed the sleek and destinguished lines of the aircraft even more. Man, I love that pointy nose. Nevermind it doesn't spin. Look at that little pointy nose! Come on, look at it. I know you want to. (-;

Well and then it was quite straight forward and quick. Canopy went on, (and a tiny one it is. Just the pilot's head is protruding from the little beast's belly. It is almost like a helmet. But when looking at t he result without a sense of scale, it looks like a big aircraft with a normal cockpit, perhaps seating two pilots behind one another, while in fact the aircraft's tail came up to one's shoulder and the cockpit to a person's chest. Nevertheless, the shape still is impressive. I recall Hergé also liked this plane's shape when he made the comic books of "The Adventures of Jo Zette et Jocko" who also featured a plane like that. (I had to look it up, it was called the Stratonef H.22).

The wheels were a little bit tricky but went on in a whiff and there it was. The Caudron C.450 is all its glory. It looks like speed, it feels like speed and the aircraft design is just beautiful. Just like this model, for which designer Philippe Renesson really did his best. Il liked it a lot and irt was a nice and reasonably quick result. Here are some more shots of the finished aircraft. Now it is - hopefully - back to the last booster of the Space Shuttle stack.

Thanks for stopping by and having a look. See you around!

--PK