The Wright Brothers

Kitty Hawk

The Wright Brothers

Kitty Hawk

December 17th, 1903, on the wind-swept outer banks of North Carolina two brothers made history with the first powered flight of a heavier-than-air craft.  Wilber Wright watched as his brother Orville took to the air in the Wright Flyer, later rechristened the Kitty Hawk in honor of the site of the first flight.  On the 100th anniversary of that historic event Revell/Monogram models re-released it's classic model of that famous craft.

This was a straightforward project built out-of-the-box with the simple addition of some thread for the rigging as suggested in the kit instructions.  Moulded in light brown and cream colored plastic, the kit as pictured consists of 53 pieces.  In addition to these are is the launch rail, Wilber, and several objects from the scene in case the modeler wants to recreate the flight in a diorama.

Floquil paints were used for the majority of the finish on this kit.  Model Master paints were used for the steel tone on the mechanical parts and flesh tone was used for the pilot.  Before any construction could be started it was necessary to paint the wing surfaces.  I started with a basecoat of Antique White for all of the surfaces.  Next I mixed some Weathered Black into some Antique White and airbrushed this mixture over all of the ribbing and stitching and then followed up with another light coating of straight Antique White to mute the grey shadowing.  As can be seen above, this gave the effect of the wooden ribbing silhouetted under the fabric of the wings.  All of the remaining wooden structure was brush painted with Floquil Rust and the propellors received a coat of a lighter wood tone.

All of the rigging was done following the instructions and secured at each end using CA glue.  A tan thread from a previous sailing ship model was used.

The kit wouldn't look complete without Orville at the controls.  His suit is painted Engine Black with a drybrushing of Weatherd Black for highlights.  Reefer White was used for the shirt cuffs and collar, and his hair is a thin coat of Rust.