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Boeing 307 Stratoliner 'Pan American'


BAC

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It's almost exactly a year since I last did a Maquette kit.

And that was this!

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It was a hard kit for two reasons, firstly the extra conversion sprue was at best poor and secondly it had loads of rigging which is fiddeley at the best of times.

Now a year on I thought I'd have a go at Maquette's conversion of the old FROG tooling of the B17E.

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Here's the sprue.

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Although the old FROG bits seem to be free of ejector pin marks and sink marks there is quite a bit of flash. There's also quite a few bits that won't be used -bomb doors, crew and other military parts.

The worst parts are the fuselage. They have the distinction of probably being the worst molded fuselage parts of any airplane I've ever built!

Also the decals are inaccurate and incomplete for the Pan Am version I'm doing. The blue is too light and there are no wing registrations, no 'Clipper' name decals and no 'Pan American Airways' decal that goes around the entry door. Also the starboard 'Pan American Airways System' decal leans the wrong way. They are both supposed to lean back towards the tail.

Oh dear, I think I've some work to do!

I've started putting it together. The FROG bits are actually quite good in terms of quality and fit. It's the Russian bits that are causing headaches -is it the parts or the filler that's doing that??

Anyway, the instructions say to install the tailwheel into the retainer before fitting the fuselage halves together.

Problem is, there is no retainer! -out with the Milliput!

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I made up retainers for both sides and made a cockpit bulkhead out of the original FROG piece plus some Milliput to make it bigger. I'm not going to detail the interior as it won't be seen, but I did the bulkhead to catch the windscreen piece that I just know I will drop inside when I fit it! I then painted the interior Matt Black.

I used superglue and accelorator to fit the fuselage together. It was a rubbish fit! One side seems bigger than the other so I lined up the top half as best I could and let the bottom half just stick where it touched. It needs loads and loads of filler.

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I have rattle can primed one wing and started painting the engines.

It was time for a test fit.

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Fill, sand, prime. Fill, sand, prime. Fill, sand, prime. Fill, sand, prime. I've had to go over this kit four times to get rid of all the gaps!

I was quite pleased with the result though.

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I can start adding the Polished Aluminium next....

Here it is with one coat of Polished Aluminium brushed on and two coats of clear.

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I'm only doing the fuselage and engines for now, it makes the model easier to handle. Once those are complete I'll carry on with the wings.

I have thought now and then of trying out some metal foil but it is expensive and to be honest I've only seen relativly few models that look really good with it. On many I've seen it can look wrinkly, maybe it's hard to do and not for amatures like me!

Here it is with one coat of Polished Aluminium brushed on and two coats of clear.

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I'm only doing the fuselage and engines for now, it makes the model easier to handle. Once those are complete I'll carry on with the wings.

You can see with these two images how I used Post-it notes to mask the individual panels. I used Post-its as they are ultra un-tacky as I didn't want tape to lift the paint.

I started by masking one rectangle and painting the small strip. I then used one Post-it to mask the next panel and painted up to the previous one, then continued to the next, and so on all the way round.

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The fuselage, tail and rear wings have been done and given the first coat of Klear. I've left the wing fairings until I've painted the wings.

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Edited by BAC
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I've come to an involuntary halt with this. It's pretty much all built and is just waiting for some aerials and Clearfix windows -which I'll do once the decals are on.

That's the problem, the decals! I mentioned from the start that they were incomplete and wrong, but they are more incomplete and wrong than I had first thought.

Here's a recap of the image.

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Not only is the blue colour for Pan Am too light, the decals are only good for the left hand side of the aircraft. The titles should lean back towards the tail on both sides, and the wings of the Winged Globes should flow back to the tail. But if you look carefully the globes are the same -just two sizes! It would just look wrong if I applied them. Also there are no 'Clipper Silver Cloud' decals or wing reg numbers and letters. It's all a bit rubbish really.

They should look like this

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0973628/L/

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0914078/L/

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0400634/L/

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0366715/L/

So, I thought how am I going to get round this?

So far I've scanned the decals and used 'Fill in' to change the colours to a much darker blue -almost black. Next I 'mirrored' the globes so the wings point the right way but now the problem is South America on the globes are now back to front. To get round this I've copied and pasted a couple of extra correct globes (with the wrong wings) and I'll trim off the right globes and add them to the right wings. I've also made up some 'Clipper' titles.

My only problem now is how do I make the 'Pan American' titles lean backwards? I sort of need 'reverse italics'. Any body got any ideas?

I've never made my own decals and I'm waiting for the postie to deliver some decal paper and a decal sheet (already ordered) for the wing reg numbers.

Hannants delivered the decal sheet so I could do the wing registration. That was simple enough. Then everything had a coat of Klear except the control surfaces which I used Flat varnish just to tone down some of the gloss. The aerial wire was painted gunmetal (H53).

That's about it.

Here it is.

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Plus one 'old' picture.

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Overall it wasn't as bad to put together as I thought it was going to be. The fuselage was badly molded and needed alot of attention, and the same applied for the wing to fuselage joints. Loyts of filler was used! The orignal FROG tooled parts did fit very well despite the molds age. The main item that let the kit down was the decals. Still, I was pleased with my first results of doing them myself and I'm quite proud that I think I did a better job with them than Maquette!

Cheers!

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My only problem now is how do I make the 'Pan American' titles lean backwards? I sort of need 'reverse italics'. Any body got any ideas?

The image manipulation function you need is called 'Skew'. In Photoshop, select the scanned text and choose Edit menu, Transform sub-menu, Skew. Then use the handle at either top middle or bottom middle of the selected area to skew the selection to the left until you like it. The higher res the scan is the better.

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