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Showing results for tags 'Commando Mk. 3'.
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I fell in love with photos of Qatar’s beautiful Exocet-armed Sea King/Commandos in the late, lamented World Air Power Journal back during the Gulf War years. I waited patiently, hoping that some aftermarket company would produce suitable decals, but that never happened. Eventually, with the proliferation of good online photos, I found an image clear enough to use to reproduce the Arabic inscription used on the tails of Qatar Emiri Air Force’s Commandos and Gazelle helicopters. This done, I was able to make up and print my own decals on my PC. Chosen aircraft for my depiction was the oft-photographed QA33 (c/n WA922), one of (8) Commando Mk. 3s acquired by Qatar for the anti-shipping role, fitted to carry Exocet missiles. These aircraft serve with QEAF’s No. 8 Anti-Surface Vessel Squadron, operating from Doha. I tapped Revell’s popular 1/72 kit of the Sea King Mark 41 with Skua missiles as the basis for the project. The kit offered the necessary options for the required fuselage windows and many additional pieces like the intake filter and 6-blade tail rotor. I removed the molded-in floatation bags from the kit sponsons, then scratchbuilt the smaller “thumbtack”-style pop-out emergency floats and sponson-mounted sensor domes. [For a more complete account of the various changes to the kit, check out the build log here.] The Exocet missiles came from Italeri’s venerable NATO/US Aircraft Armament set, with scratchbuilt launchers and mountings. Paints for the attractive QEAF camouflage scheme are all Tamiya acrylics, mixed by eye (with more than a bit of trial and error involved). Drybrushing and weathering with Testors “square bottle” enamels, and artists oils. All decals home-made with the exception of the “dotted line” markings around the main entry and side fuselage door windows, which were borrowed from an old Model Decal modern German AF sheet. Really a fun project, and very satisfying to have it done after so many years. I hope you enjoy the photos. Special thanks to members MarkdipXV711, Rodders154 and andyf117, whose great work on these forums provided major inspiration for this project. Thanks also to all who followed along on the build.- 52 replies
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A number of the folks commenting on my QEAF Sea King build have lamented the lack of available aftermarket decals for Qatar's Air Force. Since I ended up making and printing my own decals on my PC, I thought I'd share the bit that was hardest to come by, the inscription (in Arabic) on the tail boom/fuselage of the oft-photographed QEAF Sea Kings and Gazelles. Below is a link to the downloadable file (on Dropbox) of the "stencil" version of the inscription which I created in MS Paint. It's a TIF file, so it can be opened in Paint or any other graphics program and manipulated if necessary. (I paste the final image into a Word document and resize it there as required, then print out onto clear decal paper from there.) The link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2f5vlnoc6ut8mdm/Qatar%20Emiri%20Air%20Force%20inscription.tif?dl=0 Hope it proves useful.