obermartin

This Italeri C-47 has decals for „Kwicherbitchen“. I have a couple unused decal sheets from that kit - if you want one, it‘s yours. Might take a while till it gets to Australia, I guess.

Finally managed to take some decent pictures. (more shots in the gallery)

Finished! (more photos in the gallery)

R4D-5 / LC-47H - Dakota on Ice 1&72 ESCI Kit, some decals from the spares box, some self-printed Build thread here. One of the skis popped off during the photoshoot, that's why it is somewhat misaligned in a few shots. It's fixed and drying now.

Early 60s R4D 1&72 ESCI Kit, some decals from the spares box, some self-printed Build thread here.

Almost there. I might just make it in time... Another couple rounds of masking and painting got me here: And on to decals - some kit decals, some from the spares box and some self-printed: Only weathering and the fiddly bits to go!

The deadline is looming large, thank god I found some time to work on this over the past weekend. First round of masking. Primer. Second round of masking. Orange. Grey (Third round of masking omitted). Yet another round of masking.

This is incredible. I used to think the WW2 olive drab/neutral grey scheme was the most boring option possible for an aircraft that wore hundreds of colorful and interesting liveries. But you proved that wrong. Seriously impressive work.

And we're back in business! Ebay yielded another copy of that kit with thankfully straight fuselage (and a complete set of JATO bottles!), so here we go again.

Impressive build. I‘m furiously taking notes here, since I have one of those in my stash. BTW, if you‘re still struggling with the decal lettering, I can help you with that. I‘m a graphics guy by trade. Shoot me a PM if you‘re interested.

Right. I repeatedly tried to fix the warped fuselage, only to end up with something vaguely looking like a squished C-47. Trying again (and again, and again) only seemed to make it worse, so I admitted defeat and binned the poor thing. Oh well. Time to hit up ebay and look for a replacement.

Yup. Engine grey, natural metal and fluorescent red-orange.

With the other R4D finished (and still awaiting decent photos), this is gonna be my second entry. It's gonna be another USN bird. This one, to be more precise: Mostly because it's dayglo again, it's a paint scheme that hasn't been done too frequently (i think) and because my inner 12-year-old still thinks the VX6 nickname "Puckered Penguins" is hilarious. So here's the box contents: I got this off ebay recently. Seems to be mostly complete (one set of JATO bottles is missing), but one fuselage half is badly warped. I'll have to see how to deal with that (I remember reading something about warm water?) Anyway, I started on the interior. Didn't put that much effort in it, because I know very little of that will actually be visible. I also glued the wings together and added the window transparencies. Maybe that was a bad idea when I still have that warped fuselage to straighten out? We'll see.

Added landing lights made from bits of clear sprue. I decided against trying to rig antenna wires. I've never done that before and using this model for my first attempt would be too risky, I think. Maybe I'll revisit that later, but for now I'd say she is done. So now I'll wait until the weather has cleared up (It's been rain and high winds for weeks) and I can take some decent photos for the gallery. Until then, here she is hanging from the ceiling, above a rather silly C47 I built as a christmas decoration last year:

I had thought about doing it this way before, but was afraid of paint seepage at the points where the rectangle overlaps the circle (hence the silhouette cutter on my wishlist, for cutting out masks that already have the correct shape and don't need to be pieced together). Well, I'll have to give it a try.

Not quite yet. But something like a silhouette cutter is on my wishlist. 😊 Note to self: Add circle cutter to wishlist. Yes, I am aware of that. Though the subjects I've been thinking about are USN trainer/transport aircraft and antarctic aviation (mainly because my inner 12-year-old finds the squadron name "Puckered Penguins" hilarious), which frequently do feature white bordered insignia.

Applied a few washes and fitted the fiddly bits. Yes, the panel lines are a bit overdone. But since this is gonna go on the ceiling, they should look good from a distance - which they do (for my tastes anyway). Save for some minor paint touchups, maybe trying to scratch some landing lights (the clear parts are just stuck on without glue for the time being) and possibly trying my hand at rigging antenna wires, this is pretty much done. And just in time, too, because look what the mailman brought today:

Awesome, thank you!

Yeah, so far I've been printing my own on white decal paper. But I abhor cutting them out because it usually needs a lot of tries to get the circle contours right. Oh well, seems I'll have to look into custom decal printers who can print white.

I like building colorful aircraft with high conspicuity or arctic markings, which frequently require white outlines around insignia. And doing this by hand is very tedious and usually not entirely satisfactory. So I spent quite some time searching for a generic sheet of white-bordered stars&bars in various sizes, to no avail. Does something like this exist? And if so, where can I find it?

I think the small intake might be the rear part of the intakes you used. If I remember the Italeri kit correctly, you may have to cut the front parts off those intakes in order to get the smaller ones. Edit: Never mind, your kit is a reboxing of the ESCI kit that I'm building. That one definitely has that small intake part (I used it in my build).

I painted the black areas. Which promptly caused another mishap - the Tamiya tape tore the stars&bars off the wings even though everything had been sealed with clear. Never happened to me before. Oh well, I had been mildly annoyed with those anyways, since the markings on the original aircraft had a white border and the decals I used didn't. So I printed my own replacements and included the border. BTW, does anybody make a set of generic stars&bars with white borders? I spent quite a while googling to no avail.

You're too kind 😃 Well, decals are on, for the most part. I'm unsure about the upper surface of the starboard wing. Can't find photos of the particular aircraft I chose that show this area, but photos of other aircraft in the same paint scheme show no markings in that area. Next: Another gloss coat, painting the de-icing boots and antiglare panel and then some weathering...

Control surfaces painted and gloss coated for decals. I also tried drawing the panel lines lost in the dayglo areas with a pencil. Might need to be toned down a bit, but I guess it sort of almost works. From a distance anyway, so this bird is probably gonna end up hanging from the ceiling. Anyways, decals next. Those are mostly gonna be cobbled together from the spares box and some I will probably have to print myself.

Finally found a couple days to work on this. My experiment with fitting the wings in stages (center first, then upper outer parts, then lower outer parts) did not really work, so it some filler was needed (next time I'm back to assembling the wing first and then gluing it to the fuselage). BTW - I'm not at all happy with that Revell filler stuff I bought at the local model shop. Very crumbly and sort of feels like spackle. Any recommendations? After some sanding and masking, it's finally time for primer (and I painted props and landing gear while the filler was drying). Some more masking... And finally paint. Unfortunately my trusty MM Fluorescent Red had completely dried up (and is difficult to replace, since nobody stocks MM anymore), so I had to experiment a bit. After some tests, I decided to go with Xtracolor RAL2005 (Fluorescent Orange) over an orange base. So. First orange: And then the fluorescent orange: Unfortunately the Xtracolor paint is very thick and pretty much obliterated the panel lines (I'm brush painting). I thought about stripping everything and repainting it, but decided to press on and paint the grey areas next. It was kinda difficult to find a suitable grey paint - the Monogram Navy guide says, grey parts on transport aircraft of that era should be light gull grey or aircraft/adc grey. But light gull grey is a much warmer tone than the grey in my reference pictures. So I went with Xtracrylix Adc Grey. Which is still too warm for my tastes. Oh well. Let's keep going and mask for painting the control surfaces.