Heller 1/72 Nord 2501 Noratlas

During its service life with the Armée de l'Air, the Noratlas was initially predominantly operated in it cargo-carrying role; however, 10 had been fitted out, as ordered, to facilitate performing passenger operations as well. However, following the conclusion of Algerian War of Independence in 1962 and the conclusion of French military operations in that theatre, many aircraft underwent conversion work to perform additional secondary roles. Of the various post-delivery customisations and modifications made to the Noratlas fleet, the eight Nord Gabriels, which were used in the electronic warfare role, was perhaps the most useful as well as being the longest serving aircraft. During 1989, the final Gabriel was finally phased out of operations with the Armée de l'Air, marking the complete retirement of the wider type as well.

Heller produced a lot of pretty neat kits during its productive days. This included several fairly large kits such as the Constellation, DC-6, and this Noratlas. In fact, these are still the only kits of these aircraft in this scale. According to Scalemates, this kit was tooled in 1978. Molded in a grey plastic with the now shunned raised panel line detail, the kit is actually not all that bad.

It has a full cockpit with a floor, rear bulkhead with molded in radio and navigation instruments, generic seats, an instrument panel, and controls. There is also another bulkhead on the forward part of the cabin floor. Nice sidewall detail is present on the inside of the fuselage halves for the cabin. Surprisingly, there are no sink areas on the outer fuselage opposite all the interior detail.

Nose gear well is separate and it along with the nose gear attach to the bottom of the cockpit floor. There is some room under this floor for nose weight, but it doesn't look like enough as this one will be quite tail heavy. Jump doors and the forward entrance door are separate with the entrance appearing to be able to be posed open. Rear tail cone sides are separate and are shown modeled closed as there is no rear ramp. There are two different cockpit transparencies that differ in the size of the side windows. Cabin windows have large flanges around them so are to be inserted from the inside. 

Wings are six pieces with a center section and two outboard sections. The outboard sections have the upper part of the tail boom. These booms are left and right sides with a separate fin insert. The main gear are trapped between the boom halves so realistically need to be mostly assembled prior to assembling the booms. There is no main gear well detail. There is also no engine detail with the cowlings being attached to a small exhaust section and firewall piece that fits onto the booms. There is a separate prop shaft that goes into this assembly so that the props can spin.

Instructions are several fairly large sheets. Two pages are devoted to exploded views of the kit and construction with a few detail images. You do have to determine which variant you are building fairly early. There are six options, some of them in unpainted metal. One of several French versions is the box art plane in a desert scheme. The others have white upper fuselages. A Greek plane is in overall light grey, a German version is in green/grey with da-glo patches. Same for a Portuguese aircraft. The decals are questionable. Despite the kit never having been opened until this preview, it is obvious that the sheet has seen better days.

This kit would make a good comparison with a C-119 as they are both similar types. From the look of things, this will make into a fairly large model so one will need to have the space for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Noratlas

July 2025

Copyright ModelingMadness.com. All rights reserved. No reproduction in part or in whole without express permission from the editor.