Aurora Hughes Airwest DC-9 'Top Banana'

The Aurora Hughes Airwest DC-9 was another early model I built while living at J-5. There are some memories associated with it such as hearing Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years" playing on my Dad's stereo, having trouble with my homework, and a new microwave oven not far from where I sat and worked on my models. My parents probably bought it for me at Gemco, or at a toy store during one of our frequent trips 'down below' to the L.A. area to shop. For some reason, I must have picked this one out because I liked the box art, or perhaps because I remember seeing Hughes Airwest DC-9s fly over my grandparents house in Downey on their approach into LAX. For whatever reason, this model has always been a favorite because of its large size, and bright yellow color.
My original DC-9 was put together rather hastily, and while attempting to put the decals on myself, one of the side window strip decals broke, and was ruined. My Dad helped me with the other side, and it came out okay. Isn't that the way it is with all models? There's always a good side and a bad side! I didn't paint my original, and so most of the decals ended up flaking off anyway, until I was left with a plain yellow DC-9.

This rebuild presented me the opportunity to do it right this time. I found one on EBay, with all parts except the display stand, and good decals. The parts are molded in yellow, and I would liked to have left them unpainted like the instructions say, but the yellow just wasn't the right shade - it was more a lemon yellow rather than the correct 'sun dance' yellow. So I sprayed the body with Tamiya yellow which went on like a dream, and is more the correct shade. For the wings I sprayed them Testors primer gray for the inner panels, and tried Testors chrome for the outer strips. The chrome spray paint didn't adhere well to the primer however, so I tried using aluminum foil. The results are better than I could have ever hoped for. She looks like a company desk model. I was worried about the old decals; they didn't looked cracked, but one never knows until soaking and getting them to loosen from the backing paper. To my amazement and pleasure, the decals held together, and slid on perfectly. I didn't bother to use Micro Sol since the plane's surfaces are smooth and glossy. I put clay in the nose so she'll sit properly on her wheels, but if I can find an original Aurora display stand someday, then I might put her on the stand.

Entex "Air Giants" Tupolev TU-144 SST

Supersonic Transports, or "SSTs" were all the rage in the mid to late sixties due to a vision these things would soon be darting the skies carrying passengers at speeds around Mach 2. Plastic model companies were quick to cash in on public enthusiasm for this new form of transportation, and produced kits of the three main SSTs on the drawing board at the time - the Boeing 2707, Tupolev TU-144, and BAC/Sud Concorde. Most of the kits were based on early concept drawings and public press releases, and were not all that accurate such as Lindberg's Boeing and Russian SST. Airfix came out with an early Concorde decked out in old BOAC markings. Revell had their famous Pan Am Boeing SST kit which included two planes, one with wings folded, the other with wings extended and landing gear down. Monogram had a simpler 2707 with wings back and gear up. Nitto in Japan and Plasticart in East Germany released excellent examples of the prototype TU-144 '68001' in 1/144 and 1/100 scale respectively. MZMPI in the Soviet Union had a rather crude prototype TU-144 somewhere between the two popular airliner kit scales.
By the mid-seventies however, the SST program in the U.S. had been canceled; only Concorde and TU-144 went into production. Both went through some design changes which altered their exterior appearance by the time they were ready for passenger service. TU-144's was the most dramatic; it was nearly a different airplane than the prototype. Due to the falling off of public interest in SSTs, model companies didn't take the extra time and money to upgrade their old versions of Concorde and TU-144. There was one lone exception however.
Fuji models of Japan, produced and small, 1:360 scale kit of the production TU-144 in Aeroflot markings. It also appeared on the Sunny label, as part of their "Sky Giants" series. This is, to my knowledge, the only injection-molded plastic kit of the production TU-144. Only recently has a resin kit appeared from Russia in 1/144 scale, of this historic airplane.
Entex marketed the Fuji/Sunny TU-144 in the U.S. under their "Air Giants" series of 'big planes in small packages.' These kits were sold at my local Gemco department store, were cheap, and I loved them. The TU-144 was one of my favorites because it was a Russian airliner, a subject hardly touched by American model companies. It's very crisp and accurate in scale, but does not include landing gear. The interesting thing is, the markings are for s/n 77102, the first production TU-144 that crashed at the 1973 Paris Airshow. The decals even have the number "451" which was the plane's registration number for the airshow. This is not the first time a model company printed decals for a doomed airplane, either before or after the tragedy. For example, Aurora's C-141 Starlifter "38077" crashed in Spain four years after the kit's release. Perhaps Fuji chose 77102 simply because it was the first ship to roll off the production line, and got the most publicity.

There's nothing to building this kit; it only has ten pieces, plus a three-piece display stand. My original looked pretty good back in '76, and this rebuild looks about the same since the TU-144 is all white. I would have left the plastic parts unpainted, but they yellowed a bit after forty years, so I sprayed it gloss white. I thought this might also help the original decals adhere, but they were mostly unusable except for the Soviet flag insignia. I used a set from the newer Academy version, which is identical to the Entex, except the decals are a little brighter and bulkier than the original. Amazingly, this is another one of those old Fuji/Sunny/Entex kits still in production today by Academy.

Entex Convair F-102A "Supersonic Series"

Gemco had a large selection of Entex kits, especially the smaller, cheaper ones such as the "Air Giants" series and the "Supersonic Series." They were all under a buck, which is unimaginable today. The only kit from the "Supersonic Series" I bought was the F-102 "Delta Dagger" because it was featured in an Air Force recruiting pamphlet I had from the early 70s. These were Otaki 1/144 scale kits repackaged by Entex, and included the F-105 Thunderchief, F-111 Aardvark, F-4 Phantom II, F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, and A-5 Vigilante. They are finely detailed, and superbly molded little kits. On my original F-102, I left it mostly unpainted except for the black radome which I painted with, you guessed it, Mom's ceramic paint! The landing gear was very fragile, and didn't survive playtime very long.

For this rebuild, I wanted to leave the main surfaces unpainted, but the plastic didn't seem to be the right shade of Air Defense Command Gray. When I started to brush on some Testors ADC gray however, I discovered the plastic was indeed molded in the correct color! I went ahead and coated the whole thing any way, just to make sure the decades-old decals would firmly adhere. They did, without much breaking, but the California Air Guard decals for the tail were slightly too large. This surprised me as the rest of the decals are accurately scaled. I had to cut away the excess around the edges once they dried. It looks okay finished from a distance.
This is a fun little kit to build, and still an easy one to find sealed on EBay. Entex must have made tens of thousands of these.

Monogram HU-16E Albatross

Sometime in either late 1975 or early 1976, my Mom got a job as a secretary at the Letcher Mint. Al Letcher minted commemorative coins and casino tokens at a small plant in Lancaster. He also collected and flew vintage jet airplanes, including a DeHavilland Vampire Mk3 and an Armstrong Whitworth Meteor N.F. 11. As soon as she started working for Al, he invited my family to watch him fly his planes at Mojave Airport on the weekends. What a magical place for a kid like me at a time when my fascination for airplanes was growing rapidly. In the mid-70s, Mojave Airport was mostly quiet, with lots of derelict airplanes on the tarmac. There were a few small industrial businesses located in hangars along the flight line, including Flight Systems Inc., but it was not like it is today. There was also no commercial airliner storage there either. There were however some interesting artifacts including two Douglas C-133 Cargomasters, a gutted-out KC-97, and two U.S. Coast Guard HU-16E Albatrosses parked next to each other. One day, the airport manager Dan Sabovich, got the padlock key for one of the Albatrosses, and let us take a look inside. I remember the interior being all flat black, which made it very hot inside. What was striking though was the completely original interior, including passenger seats, radar gear, radios, and navigational equipment. I even got to sit up front and play with the controls for a couple minutes.
Around this time I was excited to see a model kit of the Coast Guard Albatross at Gemco, and had to have it. It was Monogram's 1975 reissue of their popular U.S. Air Force SA-16B Albatross kit from the late 50s. The model looked exactly like the two HU-16Es I saw at Mojave.
Putting that first HU-16E model together on the picnic table in my back yard is still a vivid memory for me. As usual for this time in my model making, I used my Mom's black paint for the radome and tires. My Dad gave me some thin purple and yellow pin-striping tape to spice the plane up a bit, but it peeled off not long after application. This first Albatross got a lot of heavy play around the house. I especially liked the retractable landing gear, and I wore it out after repeated operation.
A couple years later, I bought another HU-16E to replace the first one. On the second one, I hand-painted the red and blue Coast Guard colors, but it didn't look very good. I free-handed all of it, and my demarcation lines were pretty rough. On top of that, painting gloss blue and red enamel on white plastic by brush looks terrible.

On this third rebuild pictured here, I spray painted the red panels with Tamiya bright red, and also sprayed the blue stripe with Tamiya French Blue. What I like about this Monogram reissue is they molded the plastic in a thick white styrene that looks like it's painted semi-gloss white. So, I left the white plastic unpainted, which saved a lot of time and labor. Even for an experienced modeler, the Coast Guard red, white, and blue paint scheme is a challenge to get right. I went through a lot of masking tape on this one! But if done right, the results are fantastic. I also painted the interior flat black like I remember in the real airplane at Mojave. This adds some realism to the model when finished, since you don't see a white interior through the clear windows. I was a little disappointed with the original decals. They stayed together in one piece, but were too thick to completely conform over the heavy rivet lines, even with copious amounts of Micro Sol. They were also a bit yellowed from age. I covered them with a thin coat of Testors semi-gloss clear acrylic after they dried just to make sure they stay on permanently.
This is a fun moel to build, but not necessarily a fun kit to paint. The original Air Force version is much easier. But, with patience and skill, the Coast Guard HU-16E is real eye candy on the shelf once she's finished.
Because of the Mojave Airport connection I have with this plane, the Monogram HU-16E is one of my all-time favorite model airplane kits.

Entex Spruce Goose

Talk about a classic! The Entex Spruce Goose model kit has been in steady production since the early 1970s. It's no wonder though because the real airplane is so famous, and has been a tourist attraction for nearly thirty years. Entex came out with this fine model kit when the "Goose" was still hidden in its corrugated tin hangar near Long Beach harbor.
After Hughes died, and the Goose was brought out of secrecy and put on display next to the Queen Mary in Long Beach, one could still buy the model kit at the gift shop; but by then Entex had gone out of business, and the kit was packaged by several companies such as Anmark, Wrather Port Properties Inc., and Craft, which later morphed into Minicraft. If you go see the Goose today at the Evergreen Air Museum, you can still buy the same kit by Minicraft at the gift shop. The box art has been updated several times over the years, but the parts are still the original Japanese molds made for Entex thirty-something years ago - amazing!
My grandparents bought me my first Entex Spruce Goose model in '75 or '76. My Dad and I put it together in short order; it didn't need any painting to look good. The kit is in 1/200 scale, which was an odd scale at the time, but it seemed just the right size to fit on an average book shelf or desk. At 1/144 scale, it would have been a bit big. Being such a large airplane scaled down so small, there aren't many pieces to it, but the propellers are a problem. They're very thin and fragile. The props on my first Goose broke off very quickly due to heavy play around the house. One day I "flew" it down to a neighbor's house to show a man, who was a C-141 pilot based at Norton AFB. I was proud to show him my new model, but I clearly remember him saying, "Hey, it's the Spruce Goose with a bunch of busted propellers!" I was a bit insulted, but he was right. This first Goose ended up suffering even more abuse when I would routinely take it to friends houses who had pools, and I would recreate the famous first flight in the water. It didn't last long after a few summers, but I bought another one in the 80s and did it up right that time with my Badger airbrush.
This newest rebuild is an original Entex version. The decals wouldn't budge from their backing sheet, and I didn't want to go out and spend $25 dollars on a new Minicraft kit just for the decals. So I improvised with some leftover letters and numbers from an AMT Starship Enterprise model. Thanks AMT, that decal sheet really comes in handy in a pinch!
I was tempted to leave the model in it's original silver-gray molded plastic, but there is way too much crazing on the pieces, which doesn't look good when finished. So I spray painted the whole thing with Testors silver, and painted the props flat black with yellow tips to match photos of the real Goose as she was being prepped for flight. The instructions also say to put some weight in the nose, but not how much. This is so the model will rest properly on the display stand. It requires a lot because the thing is so tail heavy. Speaking of tail, one will notice the real Goose has some reinforcements applied around the tail boom. These were added some time later inside the hangar after her one-and-only flight. The model kit doesn't have these, and so is an accurate representation of the Goose as she was originally built.

Recently a resin model company released a Spruce Goose in 1/72 scale! Can you imagine the size of it? Who's got that kind of room in their house? The Entex Spruce Goose is a much better option, being just the right size for display, crisply and accurately molded, and a fun model to build. It will always be one of my favorites.

Aurora Lockheed C-141A Starlifter!

At last, I've finished the plane which started my craziness for airplanes and models: the C-141A Starlifter! As I mentioned in my earliest blog post, I saw one of these fly over our newly-constructed neighborhood on East Avenue J-5 in Lancaster Calif, as my family and I were inspecting our new home. The Starlifter's high wing and T-tail design really struck me as unique, as well as the TF-33 low-bypass turbofans which had a strange whistle or howl-like sound.
The C-141 was the Air Force's first jet cargo transport; and for as revolutionary and cutting-edge as it was in the 1960s, only Aurora chose to make a model of it in 1/108 scale. It was the only plastic scale model kit of the Starlifter for almost two decades until DML released a very crisp, but small 1/200 scale one in the late eighties. For serious modelers who wished to build a fleet of USAF cargo aircraft in the constant scale of 1/144, the C-141 was a frustrating missing link in the lineup. Only recently has a C-141A model kit in 1/144 scale been released, and it's a resin kit. But that's the story for many other military cargo transport aircraft; they just weren't very good sellers compared to sleek, armed combat planes.
This is my third build of an Aurora C-141A. The first one I built was at the dawn of my modeling days. I remember my Dad helping out on this one. Together we made a nice job of it. I used my Mom's black ceramic paint for the radome, and a few other details. It was one of my treasured models that I flew all over the house, front yard, and back yard. I even "flew" it down to one of our neighbor's houses down the street, who was a C-141A pilot based out of Norton AFB. This model came to a rather tragic end however, when, after a long flight around the house, I left it parked in the garage behind our car. Either my Mom or Dad backed out over it and crushed it. I was crushed too, but I learned my lesson: never leave model airplanes parked in the garage!
I built a second one a couple years later after we moved to another house. That one was done a little bit better, having the wing tops painted white like the instructions say. This third rebuild was a joy to complete, and I tried to keep it "factory display" looking by sticking to the instructions as closely as possible. Like most other model companies of the 50s and 60s, Aurora gives only basic guidance for painting and detailing. It's really all that's needed though for an odd-scale, sparsely detailed kit like this one. I suppose one could dress this kit up with bare metal foil or metalized spray finishes, but I think that would be better suited for the DML, Testors, or resin versions. The Aurora C-141A is a unique, vintage model kit though, probably never to be reissued as who knows where the molds are for it. It remains one of my most favorite plastic model airplane kits.

Lindberg F8U-1 Crusader

Lindberg reissued a bunch of their classic 50's model kits in 1973. The 1/48 scale Chance-Vought F8U-1 Crusader was one of them. It has lots of moving parts including a rubber-band powered ejection seat, retractable landing gear, moving control surfaces, arresting hook, and removable engine. It was a ton of fun to build in '76, and just as much fun again in 2011. You can see a picture of my completely unpainted original Crusader in the first blog entry (along with my completely unpainted Monogram F-105.)

A big question to consider for this rebuild was whether to paint it in operational Navy colors (light sea gray and white) or leave it silver like the XF8U prototype. Since the kit is engineered to have the long test probe fitted on the radome, I chose to keep it unpainted silver-gray like the XF8U. Lindberg included rather basic decal markings for this model which do not match the prototype or production versions. So, the whole thing is not really correct. But it's a fun model to build and display. Lindberg moving parts are only good for several "play withs" before they break, so I've put the gear down to stay, and the ejection set installed without rubber bands. The display stand is rather wobbly, but useful if one has crowded shelf space, as it lifts the plane pretty high.
Thinking back, I really don't remember why I got this model the first time. I was never crazy about the Crusader; perhaps it was just an impulse buy at Gemco or Thrifty Drug Store. I do however remember being pleasantly surprised by the action features on this kit, which made for some good quality play time with it before it fell apart into pieces again.