I am in the process of putting together a model of a Fleep. This was the Australian version of the Rotabuggy during WW2. I Am using an Azur 1/72 Cierva C30 sutogyro, and a jeep from an Airfix kit. I have a few photos from an issue of Air Enthusiast, which also had the 3 view.

I suspect that this may have been painted olive drab, or it could be khaki, but I'm not sure.

Would anyone know what would be the right color that Australia would use?

RAAF foliage green was pretty much identical to Europe 1 dark green, and many of their aircraft were finished in it, so it's sure to have been widely available.

Ok, thanks.

I got the issue of Air Enthusiast with the article on the fleep, as was intrigued, and thought it might make for an interesting build.

All the photos are black and white, and are of the machine in various stages of being built, but there were none of it completed, as during that phase, the higher ups decided that they didn't need rotor equipped jeeps or other ground vehicles any longer/

What they wanted was a way to air drop equipment into Burma, and the fleep seemed to be the best idea.

There an illustration of it in flight, and I have an idea as to national markings, but I didn't have any idea as to the color scheme.

Max, if you follow this link to the Museum of army flying they have a replica of a Rotabuggy. I think I have a photo or two I took a couple of years ago on my home computer I can share with you if you like. Let me know.

Hi Max

Here's a Walk-around I did of the replica Rotabuggy. The Museum staff very kindly let me take measurements which I put on the photos.

All the best

Rowan

Thanks. While I've seen pics of the Rotabuggy before, the fleep is quite different. Where the Rotabuggy uses two rotor blades, the fleep uses the rotor blades and rotor head from a C30. And where the only fairing on the Rotabuggy is the tail, the fleep uses more plywood fairing, fore and aft, and is more rounded in cross section, and the fins are a different.

I have been trying to find the fleep on the internet, and couldn't even find reference to the project that spawned it, Project Skywards, with nary even a bare mention of it.

Hi Max. What a fascinating subject. I had no idea the Aussies had tried to match the Rotabuggy. I found this link: http://www.network54.com/Forum/462197/thread/1216002016/The+Fleep
I think Holden may have some input to the design...

Yea, that's a fleep. Until now, I never realized that anyone else knew about this.

Thanks

I have a question about the Rota buggy.

Did the seats have any kind of restraints, such as seat belts or similar? I didn't see any belts in your walkaround pics, but if this was s serious endeavor, wouldn't restraints of some kind be used? After all, this was supposed to be an actual flying machine, so restaints of some kind would be used as a matter of course.

My assumption here is that the same thing would be installed in the fleep, and would like the same.

Hi Max

I imagine there must have been! The Museum of Army Flying's exhibit is only a replica, and some details may simply not have been available when it was constructed.

All the best

Rowan

Ok, I'll check once again, and if I still can't find anything I could use, I guess I'll have to "wing it" by attempting to be a bit creative.

After all, this isn't a model of something that was actually produced, even as a flying prototype, so I guess I'm allowed a bit of license.

I had to put the Fleep up for a while, because I ran into a snag with regard to the seats of the jeep. You see, the mockup(it was never finished to the point of flight testing), was a plywood shell with a truss framework in the after part, with a plywood fairing on the nose of the jeep, and plywood sides with door to keep the arms of pilot and passenger from flopping in the slipstream.

And while the model of the fleep in the photos is an idea of what the fleep looked like, from the illustration and the three-view I have, there are differences between what was built and the model, most notably in the after fuselage, in that it isn't a curved egg shape, as the model appears, but more of a truncated triangle on top of a slab side tapering box. I don't mean to sound like I'm criticizing his work, something I don't do about anyone else(although I can be a fierce critic concerning what I might build), it is just that as I've been cogitating this project, and building it, I've been trying to think like the designers back then in that the structure had to be as reasonably simple as possible, hence the slab sides and straight lines.

But now, I've found something that might help with the seats. You see, the seats are readily visible, so what was supplied in the 1/76 scale kit might've be adequate, for me, the seats supplied just looked wrong, especially after I looked at a lot of full scale jeeps and saw that the tube support structure is quite visible.

Perhaps at this scale, building up each seat, frame and all, might seem a bit much, but something like this that is that visible, even so small, kind of bothers me.

Besides, in a way, this is preparing me for something a tad larger, either a 1/48 scale Goose that was used for hydrofoil experiments, or a 1/32 scale Lysander(the Matchbox kit) that has been bothering me a lot due to the fact that major parts of the kits just seem wrong when compared to the information I have, including an issue of the 4+ series that covers the Lysander, and this is a whole other subject that looks to be quite involved.

Such things as the truss framework around the cockpit and the cabane on top(in the full size Lysander, there are a pair of tubular struts that the kit does not have, instead it has a silly "garden gate" appearing piece of plastic to tie the wings together. From that I've been picking at, it looks like I'll have to be using a lot of rounded square rod.

And yes, either the Goose, or the Lysander both look like they'd be a lot of fun, although I still can't, for the life of me, figure out why the kit designer at Lindberg decided to mold rivets on the Goose props, because they sure don't look or feel like mold leftovers, but something intentional. As a mechanic, I have never encountered props that have been riveted. Still, a small matter, as I'm going to have to do a lot of scraping with the edge of a blade on the props to get them to the right contours(in the kit, the props look more like straight 2x4s with some curl along the span).