Norwegian C-47

[Jpthedog]

Nice detailing in 144 scale!

[Terry1954]

On 3/11/2020 at 11:17 PM, Jpthedog said:

Nice detailing in 144 scale!

Thanks! I've made a little more progress but have not had a chance to photograph just yet. Updates will come soon!

 

Terry

[Terry1954]

I've started to prepare the Dak for taking on some primer, needing to black out the engines and wheel bays first. I initially used some quite soft almost bubbly like sponge material I had immediately to hand in the starboard engine, but it was quite fiddly to get in place and stay there, so I reverted to the stuff I'd used before which came off some large sheet glass pieces we had delivered when the house was built. For protection, the glass had been covered in hundreds of small, quite firm blue sticky foam cubes which I salvaged for use as masking sponge product. It cuts very accurately and easily with a scalpel and can be compressed for placement, and then expands when in place. The port engine has that stuff in place and a blob of blue tac. You can see it went into the U/C bays ok:

 

 

I was checking my build checklist and remembered I needed to do something about the tail fin at the top. The model gives you this:

 

 

The small bracket just above the top edge of the fin de-icing strip needs cleaning up and seems to be OK for running aerial wire up to. What was missing, which is certainly present on all the Norwegian C-47's I have seen, is the fin tip navigation beacon, which is quite prominent. btw thanks here to Martin @RidgeRunner for supplying some excellent reference shots of a number of Norwegian C-47's.

 

Some examples to show what I mean from various C-47's in service, although you will notice there appear to be minor variations on style!

 

 

I plan to fit something similar to the prototype I'm modelling serialed 315613. From the Vingtor sheet, you will see there were even apparently variations amongst the Norwegian birds, with some having a fatter looking beacon. From pictures I have seen of 315613, I'm happy that Vingtor diagram looks about right for that aircraft at that time.

 

 

So today's task is to add the beacon and smooth in before priming, and also decide whether or not to place the finer arial details before paint. In this scale they are very delicate, and I may need to place them carefully towards the end, and touch up any that need it. There will need to be some careful masking, between white upper fuselage, NMF airframe, dayglo panels and de-icing boots.

 

More soon

 

Terry

 

 

[trickyrich]

good luck with the masking work, looks like you'll have a bit to do with this scheme.

 

It's great scheme so can't wait to see the final result.

 

[Terry1954]

16 hours ago, trickyrich said:

good luck with the masking work, looks like you'll have a bit to do with this scheme.

 

It's great scheme so can't wait to see the final result.

 

Thanks Rich. Masking will be a challenge, but with a methodical and careful approach, should be ok.

 

Before that, one or two little odd things like the fin tip nav light. I managed to drill vertically down into the fin tip and insert a small pointed shope piece of white rod - the point being on the part that fed into the fin, thus:

 

 

 

Then a quick test fit....

 

 

Once I was happy with the fit of the rod, I cut about a half inch length to give me scope to work on the top part, and also allow enough length above the fin to eyeball that it was pretty perpendicular. Then I ran some fine Tamiya liquid poly into the join and left to set overnight.

 

 

This morning things were set well enough to clean up the join and cut to the correct height above the fin. For correct height read "eyeballed to a few photographs"!

 

So this is where we are right now:

 

 

 

More soon

 

Terry

[Col.]

1 hour ago, Terry1954 said:

...and cut to the correct height above the fin. For correct height read "eyeballed to a few photographs"!

In this case very much 'if it looks right it is right'   Tidy job Terry.

[Courageous]

Ticking along Terry. Looking forward to the primer.

 

Stuart

[Terry1954]

On 3/23/2020 at 4:20 PM, Col. said:

In this case very much 'if it looks right it is right'   Tidy job Terry.

Thanks Col.

 

On 3/23/2020 at 7:06 PM, Courageous said:

Ticking along Terry. Looking forward to the primer.

 

Stuart

Thanks Stuart. Primer coming............

 

I gave the top area of the fuselage two light coats of Alclad gloss white undercoat, with a little polishing between each. I'm also planning to gloss white the area to contain dayglo, although that will also have some yellow applied first. Then, the idea is to mask off the top fuselage and the dayglo areas and then apply a gloss grey undercoat to the rest, ready for the NMF finish. That's the plan at least. White wingtips to underpin the dayglo not yet applied in this shot.

 

 

The white gloss base should be smooth, which it is in most areas, but there was some wing root "roughness" plus some joins showing between tailplane and rear fuselage, so some Mr Surfacer 1000 was added which will need rubbing down when fully set.

 

 

All good, but then I noticed for the first time that the C-47 in the kit has a "normal" aerodynamic tail piece, as do many others I have seen, but the Norwegian aircraft all seemed to have a cut out at the extreme rear.

 

The model:

 

 

A similar real example:

 

 

And a real example with the cut out:

 

 

The example I am modelling:

 

 

It looks like it's a simple job of two cuts and some putty to remove and make good the tail cone itself.

 

So some further surgery needed to sort that!

 

More soon

 

Terry

[PeterB]

Hi Terry,

 

My memory may be playing tricks but as I recall the ancient Airfix DC3/C-47 kit came with two tailcones - the long one for the Silver City civilian version and the truncated one for the USAF paratrooping version - not sure why.

 

 

Pete

[Col.]

Good to see all those small details being attended to Terry

[trickyrich]

On 3/28/2020 at 2:44 AM, PeterB said:

My memory may be playing tricks but as I recall the ancient Airfix DC3/C-47 kit came with two tailcones - the long one for the Silver City civilian version and the truncated one for the USAF paratrooping version - not sure why.

That was where they had the mount for the tow point for towing gliders.

 

Here are some really nice detailed photos of it on another site 

 

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/hyperscale/c-47-with-glider-towing-tail-details-walkaround-pi-t242780.html

 

[Terry1954]

Thanks @PeterB @Col. and @trickyrich. I think Rich's link does suggest the answer here. Some fantastic shots there Rich thanks.

 

It made me ponder something. Given the number of photos I can find without the tailcone, it seems to imply that many of these old C-47 that were used for glider towing during WWII, were still in service into the 50's 60's and 70's around the world. Amazing when you consider they were used in combat.

 

I'm working on the tail mod today, so will post some pics when that's done.

 

Terry

 

 

[trickyrich]

It was interesting reading one of the accounts for these glider tugs, they reckon over time towing gliders cause the fuselage to stretch up to a foot in length!!! There would be huge gaps around the cargo doors!

 

I reckon the old C-47/DC-3 will be one of the first aircraft to be flying and still sort of in general use for over a century. According to Wiki as of 2013 there were still 2000+ flying examples in service!

[Terry1954]

Wow, that's quite a stretch Rich!

 

Given the small size of this thing, and the fact that a large part of the airframe with be NMF, I'm keen to get as smooth a finish as possible, so keep spotting areas where more clean up sanding is required. The flaps I added underside were of necessity from very thin card, which in the end buckled a little with cement etc, so these need filling and smoothing of. Some green stuff added, sanded then a dab of Mr Surfacer 1200, reading for smoothing right down:

 

 

The tail modification was a little tricky to execute due to having to make the cuts in an awkward area. I managed the cuts ok, and have tidied up with some scrap plastic, some green stuff and some Mr Surfacer. Looking ready for a final polish up now:

 

 

More cleaning up and polishing next, then hopefully back to completing the primer coat.

 

Terry

 

[Col.]

Good work on the micro-surgery Terry

[trickyrich]

mmm that wouldn't have been the easiest to do.

[Terry1954]

On 4/2/2020 at 9:01 PM, Col. said:

Good work on the micro-surgery Terry

Thanks Col.

 

On 4/3/2020 at 2:09 AM, trickyrich said:

mmm that wouldn't have been the easiest to do.

It was a little trickyrich!

 

So today at last I decided everything was good to start to get some primer misted on all over the airframe. Alclad's gloss white undercoat............

 

 

I have to say it went on beautifully. I'll leave that overnight and see how things are tomorrow. The next step in the complex paint/mask sequence, will be to mask off the upper fuselage white area completely, then lay on some yellow undercoat on the areas due to be dayglo, then the actual dayglo, before masking those areas off completely, ready for the Alclad NMF stage. There may be some steps in between as I have to figure out when to lay on the blue around the engine cowlings, and inner engine nacelles. Then we have the black areas, and the de-icing boots............ I need a plan!

 

More soon

 

Terry

[Terry1954]

Some paint which I needed arrived a few days ago, and has now been "decontaminated"!

 

So it was to be masking and then on with some yellow undercoat for the dayglo, but before that I noticed something that the specific serial number I plan to model has along the top of the fuselage. They look like four air vents of some sort, but I can't find any decent pictures other than a superb shot shared by @RidgeRunner.............

 

 

Can anyone shed any further light on these. They do seem obvious enough to model even in this scale, but I'm keen to get the shape right .......... square, round, oblong with an opening at the rear, or what?

 

Ideas or info welcome!

 

Terry

[trickyrich]

I'm not sure if these are what you want/need. I couldn't find any real reference to these scoops/vents......I think more vents.

 

The link is to a build, now mention of them but you can see them in the photos. 

 

http://www.hyperscale.com/features/2001/p47dgmcd_1.htm

 

Plus I found this photo......I assume that these vents are the same? Hopefully this helps or gives you some ideas.

 

 

 

 

[Terry1954]

11 hours ago, trickyrich said:

I'm not sure if these are what you want/need. I couldn't find any real reference to these scoops/vents......I think more vents.

Both the link and the photo are really helpful Rich, thank you.

 

I agree these are some sort of vent, and although the Canadian example seems to have them in slightly different positions to the Norwegian one, I am satisfied they are similar. Indeed, given the speciality of the Norwegian example (used by the King of Norway), I suspect they are bespoke additions for aircraft needing some sort of aircon system.

 

This gives me something to work on as they should be easy to add.

 

Thanks again.

 

Terry

[Terry1954]

I decided to make the vents from very small pieces of half round profile plastic strip - Evergreen to the rescue.

 

Four were cut to size, and the front end of each was rounded in plan profile:

 

 

Then the position of each was marked, working from the drawing supplied in the Vingtor decals. The rear three vents are equidistant from each other, but the front most vent appears to have a lesser gap.

 

 

Rather than glue each onto the flush undercoated surface, and in order to get more glue underneath each, I drilled a very small hole below where each vent will be fitted.

 

 

Then with a steady hand, a magnifying lamp and the tip of the scalpel blade, each one was positioned with a minute dap of Tamiya extra thin cement, centrally over the hole, curved part facing forward and very small opening to the rear.

 

 

I'll let these set overnight and then gently use some fine sanding sheets to lower the upper front edge of each to a slightly round profile.

 

More soon.

 

Terry

[trickyrich]

they look the part. As you said they were probably custom add ons, so shape and position would have varied from aircraft to aircraft. But these look just right. 

[Col.]

Tidy work Terry. Don't know about anyone else but I keep forgetting this one is 144th scale.

[trickyrich]

gosh I did!! 

[Courageous]

Delicate work Terry.

 

Stuart