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Djibouti 1981 - French Army Light Aviation Cessna L-19 (and a pile of jeeps)


Tim R-T-C

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Bonjour modelling friends,

 

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One of my absolute favourite kits is the Miniwing Cessna Bird Dog. I have built two already - in US white and red and Iraqi all black - and I'm always on the look out for more interesting schemes so I picked up the Berna decals scheet of French schemes with this particular GB in mind.

 

Aside from some Algerian schemes in light grey or olive is this very nice brown, sand and midnight blue scheme used by the French Army Light Aviation in Djibouti.

 

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The Bird Dog is mostly window and so the kit is cast in clear plastic which means it does take several coats of paint, even the thick Vallejo Model Colour paint.

 

I was planning to make the plane in quite a faded brown, but reference photos show it quite dark, so Tan colours were used to match the pictures.

 

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Largely finished up the upper colours and grabbed a coaster from the stash to start making up an African base.

Edited by Tim R-T-C
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  • Tim R-T-C changed the title to Djibouti 1981 - French Army Light Aviation Cessna L-19 (and a pile of jeeps)

The jeeps look like the ones we used for strategy games (tabletop games, that is ;) )

We mass painted them by the dozens - together with tanks, trucks, artillery, platoon pieces...

We had a great time :)

 

Cheers, Moggy

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On 10/14/2021 at 12:46 PM, Moggy said:

The jeeps look like the ones we used for strategy games (tabletop games, that is ;) )

We mass painted them by the dozens - together with tanks, trucks, artillery, platoon pieces...

We had a great time :)

 

Cheers, Moggy

 

Yes they are from Arrowhead Minatures and intended for 12mm wargaming, so quite simple but they have sufficient detail for this scale. I just need to add steering wheels and gear sticks when all is complete.

 

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Painting the lovely blue underside colour and prepping the vignette base.

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Decalled up.

 

Followed the instructions on the decal sheet which suggest the Army title was occasionally present on this airframe.

 

My photo of this aircraft shows tiny top wing roundels but those included in the decal sheet have a very off-centered yellow layer that was too noticable to use. Fortunately the decal profile sheet shows no upper wing roundels so I left them off.

 

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You are really cracking on with this build. Love the idea of the jeeps as well, they really add context.

 

If you are looking out for some more O-1 schemes here are 18 of the 20+ aircraft at the Jesda museum in Thailland. There are at least 5 schemes from O/A grey or O/A green to variations of multiple greeens or SEA 4 colour camouflage.

 

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Enjoy

Colin

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42 minutes ago, Colin W said:

 

You are really cracking on with this build. Love the idea of the jeeps as well, they really add context.

 

If you are looking out for some more O-1 schemes here are 18 of the 20+ aircraft at the Jesda museum in Thailland. There are at least 5 schemes from O/A grey or O/A green to variatoons on multiple greeens or SEA 4 colour camouflage.

 

 

Enjoy

Colin

 

Many thanks for those photos - really useful to see how the plane can be broken down for storage - definitely something for a future project, although it would be very hard to break the rear windows on the Miniwing kit, its a thick curve of plastic.

 

Interestingly the kit I used for this build was actually provided with Thai decals.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Size doesn't matter....

 

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So I made a slight change. One of my aims is to ensure figures in my scenes look organic in their interaction - not just randomly posed.

 

I now use detailed 3d printed and resin figures where I can which look far more realistic than the generic model railway figures I used before.

 

I noticed that my crewman looked like he was looking towards the jeep, so I decided to add a second figure - the pilot, climbing out of the jeep. A second Heroes Models resin figure suited perfectly.

 

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