I vacformed a replacement nose using my other C-47 as master. Built a square mold to cast a vacform mold using plaster, with vaseline as release agent. First try did not work so well…
But the second try with brand new plaster went much better. Here it is still hardening, I am amazed at the detail. Kind of sorry I plugged the window openings with tape…
The parts came out nicely. And unbelievably, when digging through my spares I found the original unused parts which I now need, such as the carburator intake hump and the nacelle fronts with oil cooler in the six o’clock position. That’s why we never throw away parts!
While filling and sanding the nose halves I reassembled the interior. Hardly anything will be visible so I did not spent much time there. Substituted the aft bulkhead so that I can save it for the rebuild of my other C-47.
The windows are pretty hopeless. Decided to cut them out and sand them flat before reinstalling them with UV glue and sanding and polishing them smooth.
Also started on the wings. By chance I learnt on the Internet that the ESCI kit has an issue with too little wing dihedral. I stiffened the lower center section to prevent it from adding to that problem
Adding the lower center wing. In the meantime kept on struggling to get the nose nice and smooth. And of course sanded through the thin plastic. Sigh…Windscreens also installed by now. Fit is pretty bad.
I tackled the dihedral issue by cutting through the leading edge and adding strips of styrene in the lower seam. Had to force apart the wing surfaces with pieces of sprue to make them fit again.
Decision time: do I go with an orange nose and wing tips or follow the Blackbird Decals instructions which are based on a Squadron Signal reference? Tough choice since I the single photo I know of my subject shows a dark nose and I also stumbled on an Internet photograph of a VNAF C-47 in 1962 with an orange nose. I put two and two together and went for a more colorful scheme than the Blackbird Decals instructions suggest.
I then masked the white and masked and sprayed the black areas with Humbrol matt black. During masking I noticed that the white pulled-off very easily from the primer. Uh oh…
Some more masking and off with the main coat, Tamiya Aluminium from a spray can. OMG, how can I be so stupid. Of course the enamel white overspray started crinkling on me immediately. Rats… Luckily I had only done the lower surface and could sand away the damage.
Over to plan B, first airbrush the control surface Humbrol silver and then masking them. Again pulled the silver off easily. Wtf? Was sanding the primer smooth a bad idea??
Ploughing on with Vallejo duralumin. I did not achieve a very good finish, the surface was not smooth enough and I had lots of overspray to cover. Oh well, I will have to hide it with weathering…
Before the insignia red I first had to touch-up the white areas. I then isolated the white with a clear HG51 coat as my MRP insignia red was in lacquer form. Duh… Afterwards I sprayed the insignia red (which is more orange than red) but still had wrinkling in two places that I could only partly fix.
The insignia red went on well, but adding insult to injury I discovered that I had missed removing a thin strip of masking tape used for the black area. That’s what you get for a too complex masking and painting schedule. This kit is rapidly becoming an awful mess…
More touch-up of the flight controls and aluminium areas from which paint had lifted. Miraculously the white top came out almost undamaged, with only minor damage. Pfff, almost there.
Next up: decals. Oh, and spraying the wing root walkways that I totally forgot. The squadron logo’s were copied from Internet images and printed om decal paper. Of course they need a white backing.
… followed by matt coat to take of the shine and pull things together. Unmasked the windows, with the windscreen coming out so-so, mainly due to the lousy fit.
The tailwheel fork was damaged but luckily this particular plane has some sort of shroud around the tailwheel also seen on other VNAF C-47s. Fabricated one from plastic sheet.