Aluminium Seaplane — Handmade Metal Model Airplane

A floatplane in polished aluminium finish — hull-mounted floats, high wing and propeller, built as much for the metal's own surface as for the aircraft.

Handcrafted with metal propeller and hand-finished aluminium surfaces.

Details

• Handcrafted aluminium-finish metal construction
• Metal propeller
• Float, strut, wing and cockpit detail
• Ready to display

The type

Before there were runways there were lakes, rivers and harbours — flat, free, and available everywhere. For the first three decades of aviation the seaplane was not a niche but the mainstream way to fly long distances, because the world had far more usable water than paved ground.

The war changed that. Building airfields across three continents left the postwar world covered in concrete runways, and the flying boat services that had crossed oceans in the 1930s were finished within a few years. Floatplanes survive where the water still beats the alternative — Alaska, northern Canada, the Maldives.