Williams Bros. 1/72 Boeing 247D (USAAC C-73)

A kit I would drool over at every visit to Peterson Hobbies was the Williams Bros. Boeing 247. For some reason though, I never bought it, nor asked for it as a gift. Just last month I finally lived the dream: I built the sucker! I found an old opened but complete one on EBay for a reasonable price. The decals were moisture damaged, and instead of buying an aftermarket set, I chose to make it a U.S. Army Air Corps C-73 transport.
According to the history books and a few photographs, the USAAC lifted 27 Boeing 247s from the airlines to serve as personnel transports. This happened some time in 1942, hence the rather high designation number for such an old airplane. One can find about a half dozen decent photographs of C-73s on the Internet. One interesting one is shown on a Boeing advertisement in a magazine from 1942. It shows an olive drab painted C-73 with 1942 style stars, and no other visible markings. Another shows what may be an all metal finish or gray-painted 247 with 1943 style stars and bars. It's hard to know if the C-73s had the forward-pointed windshield or the slicked-back "Turner" windshield, or a mixture of both. I figured the Army most likely had both, depending on whatever they grabbed from United, Western, or whomever was flying them at the time. I wasn't worried either about the accuracy of the color scheme or the stars for my model, since all 27 C-73s could have looked different. I put the number "04" on the tail, to suggest it was an early conscript, and perhaps the fourth 247 to be put into military service. The interior is the standard United Airlines scheme. The few pictures I found of C-73s were taken at U.S. military airfields, suggesting that perhaps these ships were flown mainly within the CONUS as short-hoppers for brass going from base to base for meetings, formations, and such.

Regardless of whether or not my "C-73" is accurate, it was fun to build and I like the way it looks. This was Williams Bros. first full airplane model kit. Before the 247 they had made scale models of vintage rotary airplane motors and machine guns. I can't say it's the most well-engineered kit I've ever put together; there are numerous problems with poor fitting parts. This model, and the ones that followed such as the Martin B-10B, Northrop Gamma, and Curtiss C-46 were intended for experienced modelers skilled at manipulating styrene and modifying small plastic parts. Still, this is one I'm going to keep on my shelf for a while.

Entex 1/144 Lockheed C-5A Galaxy

I started working on this Entex C-5A Galaxy before Christmas! It was a partially built kit I won on Ebay. The wings had been poorly glued together with some kind of cheap adhesive maybe twenty, thirty years ago. The fuselage halves had pits and stains on them. The right half window piece was cemeted in, but the other two clear pieces were missing. Thankfully, the decal sheet was complete and untainted, so I went about restoring the parts to their original condition before assembly. That took about a whole month of disassembling the wings, filling and sanding the pits and flaws, and polishing the pieces.

Once I got started building, things went pretty smoothly until painting. I used Tamiya gloss white spray for the top fuselage half, but failed to put primer down before that. When I masked the top half to paint the lower half Aircraft Gray, the tape peeled away the white! So I had to start over again using some Testors gloss white. Not exactly what I had planned, but it turned out okay. I debated airbrushing the lower gray versus brush painting, and I chose the latter because I was fed-up with masking. From a foot away, you don't really notice the unevenness of the finish. To try and make the surface look more even, I sprayed the whole thing flat, then gloss again for a semi-gloss look. I was worried about the original decals; vintage Entex decals are notorious for breaking apart into a million pieces when disolved in water. But after testing a couple of the ridiculous Pan Am decals included on the sheet, I happily found them to be quite good, and they applied with no problems. Even if the original decals hadn't worked, I would have bought a set from Draw Decal, which makes an excellent sheet complete with door outlines, windows, and walkway stripes.

When I was a kid I couldn't afford this model, and today it's still way over-priced. I guess that's because no model company since Otaki in 1971 has released an updated 1/144 C-5 - not even Anigrand. Entex marketed the Otaki kit in the early 70s, and when they went out of business in the early 80s, Revell got the molds and released it as part of their modern USAF airplane series which included the excellent KC-10, KC-135, and B-52H, all in constant 1/144 scale. Later on, Testors got the molds and released it as a "B" model in Euro-One paint scheme. I believe that was the last time the kit was released. I wonder where those Otaki molds are today?
My copy here is by no means perfect. I suppose if I wanted perfection, or something close to it, I would have airbrushed the whole thing, and used Draw's detail-enhancing decals. But this one definately has the vintage, early 70s "boy-built" look, which fits in well with the rest of my rebuild collection.

HAWK U.S. Navy TV-2

I remember buying the Hawk Lockheed TV-2 at Peterson's Hobbies & Crafts because the picture of the assembled model on the box looked very colorful and detailed. Upon opening the box at home however, I discovered a pretty basic kit molded in translucent white plastic! The decals were not the ones shown on the box cover, and the instructions also showed a different version. I built and painted the thing any way, and it looked horrible. I didn't paint the translucent white parts, and the red I hand-brushed using Testors flat insignia red - awful! But, I remember having lots of fun building it because the instructions had Captain Hawk, an illustrated character yelling out commands such as, "You're getting sloppy with that paint!"
In rebuilding this kit, I discovered why the kit shown on the box top differs from the kit inside. Apparently Hawk's original TV-2 kit from 1959 (shown left) had the correct early Navy version illustrated on the box, which jived with the decals and instructions. Hawk reissued the kit in 1965, but chose to show a TV-2 built by a professional modeler on the box top. This pro apparently decided to model a TV-2 in a later Navy scheme, and used his own decals from the scrap box. It's a nice looking model, but unfortunately deceives the buyer into thinking he can build the same thing.

I chose to build the kit in the original 1950s scheme. To my delight the parts were molded in a thick, semi-gloss white styrene, which meant I didn't have to paint them white. The red panel I painted using Tamiya gloss red. I stuck to Captain Hawk's painting suggestions in the plans, which results in a pretty decent looking model. The original decals had yellowed a bit, but went on nicely. This is one of Hawk's semi-action kits, with removable tail section and engine ala-Lindberg. The canopy also moves up and down; other than that there are no moving parts.

Airfix Britten-Norman Islander

To the best of my recollection the Airfix 1/72 scale B.N. 2 Islander is the last model airplane kit I built before I moved from our first Lancaster home on East Avenue J-5, to a new mobile home on 20th Street East. I remember picking it out from the shelf at Peterson Hobbies and my Dad saying, "Looks like an Aero Commander." That made me want to get it because I liked the Aero Commander. I would see the Rockwell company Commander fly over our house every now and then, and my Dad had great stories of being shuttled around in it during trips between Downey and Palmdale. I would have bought a model of the Commander if there were one available at the time. Comet's little Aero Commander 680 kit along with Aurora's reissue were long since out of production by the time I started building models; and I had no knowledge they even existed until years later when I started trolling through kit auctions on EBay. Nevertheless, Airfix's Islander was the next best thing, and I liked it. I still do.
The kit is molded in bright yellow, so overall painting is not necessary unless you want the model to look more like the real orangish-yellow of Aurigny's old paint scheme. Once the thing is all put together and the decals applied though, the original yellow doesn't look all that bad. Some dark red needs to be applied though on the tops of the engine nacelles, along with flat black de-icer boots. I painted the seats blue as per the instructions, but went a step further and painted the control panel and dash board flat black. Airfix instructions can be rather lacking in painting suggestions.
Build-wise the model is very detailed and accurate in scale, but suffers from poor fit, especially the fuselage halves and wing mount. Airfix decals over thirty years old can be hit or miss as far as usefulness, but the ones of this Islander rebuild were acceptable.
This is a fun little model to have again on the shelf, and reminds me of a time where I transitioned not only to a new home, but to mostly 1/72 scale aircraft.

AMT 1/48 Corsair, P-36, Vega, Temptest, and F9F

My Mom bought me the complete set of AMT's 1/48 scale plastic aircraft kits from the JCP Penny mail order catalog for Christmas, 1976. We were getting close to moving from our first home in Lancaster to a new double-wide mobile home further east of town. I already had the MiG-15, but the set came with another one. I didn't finish building the set before we moved, but I think I finished the F9F Panther because it was the MiG-15's nemesis.

I was very excited to get these models for Christmas, but I wouldn't have bought them on my own. I wasn't very keen on the Tempest, or the Lockheed Vega. For this reason, I'm going to skip over building them again so I can get on to projects that I was more interested in as a kid, and still am today.

Nichimo 1/20th Scale Hughes 500 - A Dream Come True!

I'm taking a break in my usual lineup of kits I built as a kid, to show you one I wished I had as a kid. The Nichimo 1/20th scale Hughes 500 helicopter was one of those untouchable model kits displayed behind the counter at Peterson Hobbies. I knew I could never afford it, and that it would probably be too complex for me to build. Thirty-five years later however, the opportunity finally came to procure one of these highly collectible action model kits.
These appear rather frequently on EBay, but for outrageous starting bid prices. In the case of this one shown here, patience payed off when I spotted it complete, but in a tattered box. The seller claimed all the pieces were included, so I took a chance and bid on it. To my surprise I won it for a much lower price than these usually sell for. The box was indeed in bad shape, but I wasn't getting this kit for the box!
This is an awesome model; extremely fun and challenging to build, especially if one chooses the motorized version because there are lots of gear boxes and wires to assemble. There's even a working miniature light bulb for the landing light! The interior is stunningly detailed, with everything from pilot's headsets, magazine pockets in the forward bulkhead, fire extinguisher, first aid kit, vinyl strapping material for the seat belts, and wire tubing for the turbine engine. If you choose to go with the display only version, you can mount the assembled engine into the fuselage and view it through an opening access cover. But the neat thing about going motorized is you can still build the highly detailed engine and display it externally on its transport dolly.
There's a lot of anticipation of the finished working product when assembling this model. There are many steps to completing the motorized workings, and no opportunity to test the thing out until you finally mount the chopper to the control platform. Then, and only then, with a push of a button, the kit comes alive with rotating blades. It's really quite amazing to see the thing work after all the labor involved.
There is a full color painting guide showing five versions, but the decal sheet only includes full body panel markings for one version - the American one. I chose to do the Japanese Kawasaki version, but that meant painting the decorative panels on the fuselage, tail boom, and fins. What a pain that was! I used Tamiya gloss blue, but there was a lot of bleeding through the masking tape that had to be painstakingly corrected afterwards. The original decals were barely usable, not wanting to come off the backing sheet. I had to coat them with clear gloss when they dried to ensure adhesion.

This is a really fun model to have on my office shelf, and goes to show one is never too old to have something dreamed of since childhood.

AMT MiG-15 'fagot'

For Christmas 1976 my Mom bought for me all six AMT 1/48 scale model airplane kits which came out that year. I already had the MiG-15, but it was nice to get the other five (F9F Panther, Hawker Tempest, P-36 Hawk, F4U-1 Corsair, and Lockheed Vega) in the set. She got them from a catalog store, and they came together in a cardboard box. When I tore off the Christmas wrapping and opened the box, I saw all six kits neatly packed together - what eye candy!

At the time these kits came out, AMT was better known for their automobile and "Star Trek" model kits. Perhaps the popularity of their Hindenburg kit in 1975 prompted the company to explore a wider range of subjects. The interesting thing about these early AMT airplane kits is they are very basic and easy to build, yet are very accurate in scale. They have minimum surface and interior detail. For instance, this MiG-15 kit has a 'bathtub' type cockpit you drop into the fuselage once the two halves are glued together. There is no wheel well detail whatsoever. The decals include just the basic national insignia and markings. AMT molded all their kits in white styrene, and their instructions give no painting guidance other than "look at the picture on the box"! The box art doesn't help much either as the illustrations are rather cartoon-ish. AMT packaged these kits in a collapsible 'cereal' type box, with a little schematic of the airplane on one edge, and a short illustration of how great their kits are engineered on the other. Still, with all their simpleness, they make nice looking models if finished well, and go together nicely as a set, especially the MiG-15 and F9F.
The MiG-15 shown here is the third I've built in my lifetime. My first two were hand brushed with Testors silver, and were very streaky looking. This latest one was sprayed with Testors chrome. I painted only a few minimum details such as black gun barrels, tires, and exhaust cone. The interior was painted with Testors Russian interior green, with a brown-suited pilot.

Monogram came out with their own 1/48 scale MiG-15 the same year, which seemed redundant; but theirs was far superior to AMTs. Monogram's had a fully detailed cockpit with sliding canopy, wheel well detail, and markings for three versions. Interestingly, their North Korean Air Force markings were the same as AMT's, even duplicating the plane's serial number "2057"! Monogram included national insignia for the wings, while AMT did not.
It was right after Christmas 1976 we moved from J-5 to another part of town. I didn't get all six kits finished before we moved, and I may have left the newer MiG-15 from the Christmas set for last since I already had one on the shelf. But seeing as how I had bought one separately for myself before I got the complete set, I decided to build this one first for this blog project.