Revell Handley Page Halifax B.Mk.I, II, GR II 1:72

Wheels and Undercarriage

The main gear units are well detailed and fit together superbly. Add to this the detailed wheel bays and the overall level of what’s provided is very good.

However, there is some debate about the size of the main wheels, considered by some modellers to be too small. Those supplied in the kit are definitely in-scale and look ‘right’ when used with the kit undercarriage parts (note the gap at the top of the tyre between it at the arch of the Messier undercarriage unit).

Options…?

Well, I guess we could raid our Revell Lancaster kit again (the larger Lancaster wheels can be seen on the right of the image above), although that would pretty much put an end to building that kit (except an in-flight option perhaps).

The Lanc wheels do fit into the Revell Halifax Messier undercarriage units, although as you can see from the images below, the gap above the tyre is too small to look convincing to me.

Decision – use the Halifax wheels…

You may choose the Lancaster wheel option, but I reckon on looking at a number of images of both aircraft that the Halifax wheels were in fact slightly smaller than the Lancaster – reasonable due the higher bomb tonnage capacity of the Lancaster.

Of course, it would have been ideal to have an image of both types nose-to-nose but that’s not going to happen so you just need to make your own choice of which way to go.

For me then, it’s to stay with the Revell Halifax wheels and we can always change them later if the model doesn’t look right. Note the flats sanded onto the bottom of each tyre.

Fuselage comes together…

The main wings, tailplanes and fins are all added now and the latter have extremely thin training edges, which are another highlight of this model. A really mixed ‘Bag is emerging…(pun intended!)

More Issues…