Observer Plane
Built by Adrian Ashford in September 2008
This is the very first model in the 1962 4/5/6 manual. This year marked a major revision of the Meccano range, which was described in the March Meccano Magazine for that year. It was at this time that plastic plates, narrow strips, the long threaded pin, single braced girders, 5½” axle rod, 3-hole square plate, 1” x ½” double bracket and the flexible gusset plate were introduced, and also completely new-style manuals, with building details given by means of exploded drawings, rather than written text, to overcome the problem of producing the manuals in many languages.
When first introduced, the opaque plastic plates were sensibly made the same colour (red) as the flexible ones, so the two were virtually indistinguishable when built into a model, as can be seen in this model, which uses both.
It has been built as per the drawings, a few slight changes being made to incorporate a motor to drive the propeller, which makes rare use of a pair of propeller blades!