Bluebird K7

As a child I remember having many discussions with my dad about Bluebird the boat which had crashed during a water speed record on Coniston Water and had never been found, or so I thought at the time.  This had sparked my interest in Donald Campbell and all his exploits. In my later teens I remember watching Across the Lake starring Anthony Hopkins which renewed my interest specifically in Bluebird K7.

I was always interested in model making and I used to make many Airfix models. My dad and I built a scratch built model battleship during the 1980s which I am sure was detailed in a weekly or monthly magazine, but I cannot remember who published this. Once complete we used to take this with us on holiday and sail it on various boating lakes around the country. Unfortunately, this model along with many others were lost when my elderly mother paid someone to clear her loft out.

I remember thinking in my teens how great it would be to build a model of Bluebird K7 powered by a jet engine, although at the time simply did not have the skills or knowledge to achieve this, and the idea was forgotten for many years.

As an adult I started building models again in the 2000s and again the thoughts of building the Bluebird boat returned; but it was not until 2017 that I started to investigate this in more detail. I decided that I would not attempt a scratch build but would try to obtain a kit to build the shell as my fibreglass skills were not up to making the required parts.

I made a number of enquiries regarding the available kits that were around or had been from Touchwood and Speedline and even some model from China although I though the 1:8 scale Speedline would be the best option to allow space for power by jet engine. It was while having discussions regarding availability of these models that I spotted a listing on eBay for a 1:10 shell which had already been built, although I thought this was a little too small to power by jet, I went ahead and bought it.

I set off to London to collect my new acquisition. When I arrived and was shown to where the model was stored, I was shocked to discover it was much bigger than I expected at around 1.7m long. When I got home, I did some calculations as established it was somewhere around 1:4.7 scale based on the full sized boat being around 8m long.  So now my hunt was over I had the starting point I needed to complete my jet powered model.