¹⁄48

Hélène Boucher 's Caudron C.450

hostory

The Caudron C.450 and C.460 were French racing aircraft built to participate in the Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe race of 1934.

Developed from the Caudron C.362 flown in the previous year's race, a single C.450 and three C.460s were built for the 1934 event. All were powered by a supercharged Renault 456 air-cooled six-cylinder inverted air-cooled engine driving a Ratier two-position variable-pitch propeller. The airframe was primarily built from spruce and birch plywood, with steel and alloy engine bearers and magnesium cowling and fuel tanks. The wings were fitted with split flaps and the angle of incidence of the tailplane could be varied while in flight. The principal difference between the types was that the C.450 had a fixed spatted undercarriage, while the C.460 had a retractable undercarriage. This difference resulted in structural differences, the retractable undercarriage necessitating a two-spar wing for the C.460 in contrast to the single-spar wing used by the C.450.

History adapted from Wikipedia.

On August 8, 1934, Hélène Boucher take off to fly as soon as possible on a 3km circuit. Two pylons mark the each ends. With her blue Caudron marked with number 13, she beats internationnal reccord speed over 1000km on all cathegory at an average speed of 409.187km/h. On August 11, 1934 she broke the world speed reccord and became the "fastest human of the world" at the speed of 445.028km/h. She died at an early age of 26 on a test flight near Versailles when the machine crashed into the woods of Guyancourt.

The Kit

This is the JMGT 1/48 Caudron C460 (resin)

• - The caudron will be part of a diorama with a figure representing Hélène Boucher.
• - The cockpit and the instrument panel are remake.
• - Louvres are redone with a piece of alu of food box (In the right direction).
• - New air intake.
• - New oil cooler .
• - The nose of the plane was modified.
  
  
• - I cut all the moving parts because I could not rewrite them correctly.
• - New fuselage side.
• - The landing gear is scratch built.
• - New blades.
• - Scratch built figure.

- NEW DECALS come from FFSMC . They are perfect : the shape, colors, the thickness of the support. And in addition they are solid. They may be found at FFSMC's website.

The complete build may be found here on Aeroscale and additionally en francais ici.