by Steve Mackenzie

When I received the email from Brett Green giving permission to use the images of the detail parts that he used in his review on Hyperscale, he also sent three images of his completed model. So you can see what the Red Roo/ Planet kit looks like when completed here they are.

Now I will cover a few schemes that Red Roo did not include for completeness regarding RAAF use of this little beast. To be honest there are not that many others worth doing as they only came in a limited range of colours and most images only show them marked with serial numbers. So little variety.

A21-16 while with 1 Engineering School at Melbourne Showgrounds where many RAAF tradesmen went during the war to learn how to work on aircraft. The scheme was overall Aluminium with Yellow training bands (the only instance I have seen on a Moth Minor). Black serials. Wartime Blue/White roundels on the fuselage (none on upper wings and likely none underwing). 'Inst Airframe #3 in White'. The cowling appears to be Yellow alhough there is a small possibility there is a light coloured covering over it, but it is much lighter then the canvas over the cockpits.

A21-31 as photographed while parked beside fuel dump, date and unit unknown.

A21-31 date & unit unknown. The scheme was overall Yellow with Foliage Green upper surfaces (once again the image appears to show only one upper surface colour). Black serials. Red/White/Blue roundels in six positions plus fin flashes. Red tip to Yellow spinner.

Thanks to David Vincent (via Geoff Goodall), here is a rare example of artwork on a RAAF Moth Minor. The photograph was taken at Camden NSW in early 1943 while the Moth Minor was with 32 Squadron, most probably A21-19.

And that is it unless you wish to get really adventurous and go for the camouflage experiments that were conducted at Richmond in 1941. The first of them below was postulated by Geoff Pentland in one of his books as being Black stripes on the original Aluminium background. Also note it has spots all over it on the underneath.

And the other one, the colours are so far unknown. The Moth on the left is either Yellow or (more likely) Aluminium dope so it can be a reference point. There is no way I was going to try to draw these schemes!!

My profiles are the same ones I used in my twenty year old articles (issues 17/4 and 18/1 available on the club website), but reworked to correct a couple of small things I have more info on now and additional details added. That's it for RAAF Moth Minors but I will likely do a part 4 sometime concentrating on the local civil schemes. I did do three such back in issue 17/4 but I have a lot more reference images now.

Box, contents and several profiles ae from the Red Roo website and the model images courtesy of Brett Green.

Use the index button to return to the main issue 38/2 index.