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.

Entex Rockwell B-1 Bombers!

Monday morning, 10:30am, December 23rd 1974, on the outskirts of Palmdale Air Force Facility, my mother, father and I watched the first flight of the B-1 bomber. I was nine years old and didn't know much about the B-1 yet, but I vividly remember the slender, white airplane taking off with a loud roar. When I returned to school after Christmas vacation, I drew a picture of the takeoff as best as I could remember it. My B-1 didn't look anything like the real thing, but several months later I would become more familiar with the shapely lines of the Rockwell B-1.
Some time after that first flight, my parents and I stopped in to a fast food restaurant in Lancaster for a bite to eat. There are on the ticket counter was an Entex B-1 model. We all noticed it right away and commented to the owner about it. It fueled my perception that the B-1 was a big deal to everyone in Lancaster. I knew I had to have a model of the B-1!
I don't know how long afterwards, but my parents bought me an Entex B-1 at Gemco. It was one of my first models along with the others I've posted on this blog already; I just wish I could remember in what order I built them all. Like some of my other early kits, I painted only a few details on my original with Mom's black ceramic lacquer. The kit's cockpit section is moulded in a smoked-brownish purple color, and requires masking the windows, and painting the surrounding area white. I'm sure I didn't do this on my original, and so I had a B-1 with a purple cockpit!
I wish I knew more about the history of this rather historic model kit. Entex was a company in Carson California that packaged, marketed, and distributed model kits and toys from Japan. As far as I know, they did not design, tool, or produce their own models at their Carson facility. They contracted with other companies in Japan such as Nitto, Otaki, Marusan, Doyusha, and Mania to name a few, to sell their kits in the U.S. Some of the most famous of these were the Otaki C-5A Galaxy, the huge Doyusha 1/100 scale Boeing 747, and the tiny "Air Giants" series of planes from Fuji. The B-1 however seems to be unique to Entex. Even though the plastic parts were made in Japan, they do not appear to be made by Otaki, Nitto, or any of the others. I believe Entex really wanted to be the first to produce a model kit of the B-1, and contracted with a Japanese manufacturer to make the moulds, but only for Entex. They did this with the Spruce Goose kit too (which will be covered in a later post.)

This model is very accurate in scale and shape, even though it's obvious from the box art and the drawings on the instruction sheet that Entex got their hands on early Rockwell diagrams and concept art to produce this kit before anybody else. Interestingly, only Lindberg came out with another B-1 kit shortly after Entex's, and theirs was horrible. Poorly engineered and moulded, Lindberg's odd-scale, pitiful little B-1 didn't hold up to Entex's crisp, accurate scaling in 1/144. It wasn't until the early 1980s with the rebirth of the B-1 into the production "B" version that model companies started to take the aircraft seriously. Monogram, Revell, and Testors started producing large scale, accurate models of the B-1. Entex went out of business in the early 80s, but their B-1A kit lived on with Revell-Germany, and most recently Minicraft. Amazing! This model kit has been readily available on store shelves for over thirty-five years! Entex even had the kit reduced in scale to be included in their "Air Giants" series of mini model kits, and you can still buy it by Minicraft at hobby shops.
But back to 1974 - the Entex B-1 was all the rage and they must have made hundreds of thousands of these things because factory sealed copies are still plentiful on EBay and at model swap meets.
For my rebuild project, I chose to do two of these so I could display them in both in flight "slick" mode, and "on the ground mode" with wings out. For the "slick" B-1 I painted it to look like the one on the box, and the one in the original Rockwell artist's conception photo from 1972, which was actually a photograph of the mock-up at Rockwell's Seal Beach facility, superimposed onto an aerial backdrop. This version is all white, including the radome. The first B-1, 40158, rolled out of the hangar at Palmdale with a black radome, and black test patterns on different parts of the ship. For my "ground" version, I chose to paint the radome black, but left the rest of the ship white. The new Minicraft reissue includes decals to replicate the black areas on the tail, and the belly.
The original Entex decals on both models were dried out and brittle, even on one of the kits that was still factory sealed. A little Micrsoscale Liquid Decal Film helped, but a few of the decals on both ships dissolved and are incomplete. From a distance though it's hardly noticeable. For the "ground" ship, I left the cockpit section unglued to demonstrate it's separability, but on the "slick" ship I puttied and sanded the cockpit section smooth to blend with the fuselage.

This is one of my favorite kits for the sheer fact that the B-1 was an important part of my growing up, and made a big impression on me. You couldn't escape the noise of those first B-1 test ships if you lived in Lancaster. In the evenings Rockwell technicians at the Palmdale plant would run up the engines to full afterburner for what seemed like hours. The noise could be heard all over the Antelope Valley! Some nights it was rather disturbing, and I remember having trouble getting to sleep. But, I loved my old B-1 model and these rebuilds are a nice reminder of those early magical days in Lancaster.

Cashulette Saturn V with Gantry & Crawler

Here's another space model kit my Dad came home from work with and gave me. Bought from the Rockwell company store at Palmdale Plant 42 no doubt; the store probably had these on sale as this kit went out of production by the early seventies. It was originally produced in Jacksonville Florida by a company named Countdown, and was later issued by Cashulette Engineering. I had the Cashulette version in '75, and I was excited to find an unbuilt Countdown version on EBay a couple years ago. They are very much the same including the box art. This Countdown version I rebuilt however had an unmarked Saturn V rocket, while my old Cashulette one had the black roll patterns and USA markings pre-colored on the white plastic rocket body. I liked the pre-colored one better because this Countdown version uses stickers, and they don't stick very well after forty years. I had to use some Micro Metal Foil Adhesive to get them to stay on.
This model is extremely fun to build because there is no painting, and not much to it. I used Plastruct liquid cement on almost the whole model which was perfect for the kind of joints and attachment points this kit has.
I remember not being satisfied with the orange color of the gantry on my old one, and I painted it red to match the photo on the box. I actually made it look worse! I also remember taking pictures of it in my back yard on J-5 with an old Kodak Brownie camera. Most of the shots I took of it were blurry because I didn't understand the Brownie could not take pictures close up. I still wish I had those old pictures though because a couple were in focus, and in vivid color.
It's nice to have this model again to look at and enjoy. It looks like it could be a toy, but it's really a fine scale model when one considers the challenge of shrinking down such a huge, complex object, and engineering it to be assembled in parts of styrene plastic. I wonder where the moulds for this kit are; hopefully they weren't scrapped and melted down. It would be nice to see a reissue of this model again some day.

Aurora North American XB-70 Valkyrie

Here she is, the creme-della-creme of Aurora's USAF bomber kits: the XB-70 Valkyrie. Aurora and Lindberg were quick to produce model kits of this experimental SAC Mach-3 bomber, and interestingly, were the only ones available for almost two decades until Italeri released a beautifully detailed one in the nineties. Both Aurora's and Lindberg's were engineered from early concept drawings from North American, and Aurora's came out ahead in accuracy and quality. Lindberg's version was smaller, but did have some cool features such as retractable landing gear, and movable wing tips. It was terribly inaccurate in shape and detail though compared to Aurora's. Aurora's is simple with relatively few pieces, and no moving parts. It's an odd scale, and this frustrated serious model builders for years who were trying to build a fleet of USAF bombers in constant scale. Contrail came out with 1/72 scale vacuform version to fix this problem, but not all us modelers are, or were into vacuform.
I did this rebuild as simple as possible in memory of my original. I left it in the original white plastic, with only a few painted details such as black anti-glare panel, and silver struts and tires. The six jet engines are nicely detailed, but once you glue them into the lower intake assembly, you can't see them unless you peer into the narrow intake openings; and then, all you see are the front fan blades.
Out of the four Aurora kits my uncle Norman built for me back in '75, the XB-70 lasted the longest - well into my high-school years. It's long life finally came to an end one day though, when the lower intake assembly busted off from the wing. It looked to me like the top wing assembly should fly, so I tried throwing it in my back yard. The dang thing flew! Well, somewhat. It didn't fly very straight or for very long, but it actually rode some air for a few seconds before falling to the ground in pieces. The Aurora XB-70 will always be one of my favorite kits from childhood.

Aurora Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar

This is one of my favorite Aurora models. It's almost toy-like with it's opening rear clam shell doors, loading ramps, and cargo on pallets - I got a lot of quality "play time" with it. It was for many years, the only plastic model kit of the C-119, other than a very hard-to-find version from FROG, which was not widely available in the U.S. As with most of Aurora's other kits, the C-119 was produced well into the seventies. Early versions were moulded in gray, but later ones such as my rebuild pictured here are moulded in silver, which makes for a better, unpainted model. The model has raised lines for decals placement, and I painted in the "USAF" markings with a black paint pen. The stars & bars and other markings are from the original decal sheet, but the stars & bars started curling and flaking off shortly after assembly.
Italeri released a superior version of the C-119G in 1/72 scale in the 1980s. Testors co-released the kit in the U.S., and it is by far the best kit out there of the Boxcar. Italeri converted their "G" model moulds to produce a "C" model Boxcar, which is also a very fine kit. But the old Aurora Boxcar will live on in my memory (and my office shelf) as one of my favorites.

Aurora Convair B-58 Hustler

Uncle Norman built my original B-58 with the wheels up, and no decals. I suspect he bought it at a swap meet and it was missing the landing gear and decals. When it was given to me, I tried enhancing the detail on it with my Mom's black ceramic paint by painting "USAF" and the nose cone. It helped a little bit, but remained a pretty drab-looking model. This rebuild is much better because I sprayed it silver, and did my best to use and preserve the original decals. This is another one of those early model kits that have raised areas on the surface for decal placement - I hate that! Even with Micro-Sol, the decals didn't lay down well and I had to coat them with Testors clear acrylic.
The model is good size, but pretty simple. It has a clear windshield piece, but no clear parts for the side windows! The weapons pod is detachable, but I chose not to put it on, because it makes the plane wobble too much on the stand. I did this rebuild gears-up in memory of my original one.
The B-58 was a popular model when the plane came out in the late 50s because it was so sleek and awesome looking. Revell, Monogram, Comet, and Lindberg all had their own versions of it.