Search the Community

You would think that after punishing myself building the Unicraft Bird of Prey I would stay away from their kits, but when it is the only game in town what can you do. I have always thought that any kit is buildable but this one is stretching my conviction. Anyway as much to test out migrating to Village.Photos from Photobucket, here are some pictures; I am not sure that these pictures fully show the crudeness of the parts. Anyway we will see how far I get.

This is the last member of ‘FAC trilogy’ composed of previous O-1E and O-2A shown here in the past. It’s the most unusual and less known of three, the ‘pre production’ Lockheed YO-3A Quiet Star. YO-3A was a two-seat nearly silent observation and reconnaissance aircraft designed by the Lockheed Missile and Space Division for use by the US Army at night over South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Its purpose was to detect enemy activity and direct artillery fire and helicopter gunship strikes upon them. The Observer sat in the front of the cockpit and the aircraft was fitted with a downward looking Night Vision Aerial Periscope (NVAP), infra-red illuminator and a laser target designator to complete its night mission. Unarmed, silence was the only protection it carried into conflict. The bubble canopy was large to enable all round observation capability and it is hard not to notice those long, thin wings (17.3 metre wingspan) which show its glider heritage. To keep the aircraft super quiet it was fitted with a special muffled 210-horsepower Continental Model IO-360D engine that powered a slow propeller to eliminate the typical sound generated by a spinning aircraft propeller (originally it was fitted with a six bladed variable pitch propeller but in 1971 this was changed to a 3 bladed laminated constant speed wooden propeller that was just as quiet but also more efficient at higher speeds). Only eleven were built in 1969 and nine of those were operated from the summer of 1970 to 1972 in South Vietnam. In an attest to the silent design of the aircraft, none were ever shot down or even hit by enemy fire during its time of operation in the conflict and it was proven to be very successful in its role. The hard-to-find second hand kit by Legato in 1:48 was found in Slovakia last Spring. It’s a full resin kit with vacuum canopy and an useful photo etched sheet. It’s a medium quality kit (dated 2005) with poor interior details, I suppose due to lack of images at time… Camo color indications are of pure fantasy as well. Interiors are from scratch, except a revisited floor. WiP pictures taken during these ten months of working were too many to show all you here, so that I decided to get a (large) selection. Model, pilot, extinguisher and plates are painted by Testors/Humbrol enamels. The real 69-18007 is now stored at Western Museum of Flight (California), waiting for restoration. Thanks to Museum’s press office and Quiet Aircraft Association for essential help. Work started June 2018, ended early March 2019. Man hours worked h.378. Cheers, Alessandro Rome YO-3A 69-18007 at Phu Bai (Vietnam), 1970 (photo credit http://www.yo-3a.com/ ) Cockpit, port side Dry fitting - starboard side **********************************************************************************************************************************+

This is my Unicraft YO-3a, affectionally know by its crews as the Yoyo. The work in progress thread can be found at; The YO-3a was a low altitude silent stealth aircraft designed to observe enemy troops at night without making an audible ground level sound. For more information see: http://www.yo-3a.com/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YO-3 You can see the build thread for my trials and tribulations, but this is what I had to start with; Given that I am kind of proud about how it turned out, K'velen in fact. Next up is the Airfix O-2 Skymaster. Enjoy.

Hi all, I am working on a 1/72 YO-3A kit. Unfortunately the kit "instructions" give no instructions on the color scheme. It only includes so photos with color retention too poor to really be able to tell. The same is true with most pictures I can find on the internet. The best I can tell is it looks like the 2 SEA scheme greens with either a blue-gray, or light sand, but again I can't be sure. Does anyone have any good data on what colors they were painted; FS or Humbrol numbers? Any help would be greatly appreciated? Thanks Howard