I'm in Florida at the moment, having attended the Top Gun radio control invitational meet last week. Had a blast, and was then able to add a visit to my son while here, which was only supposed to be a few days, but has morphed into three weeks. Since everyone here right now has to work or go to school, I'm the only one who doesn't really have anything to do, which was not something I had anticipated. It's nice to be in that position until you get bored!
Enter good friend Jack Mugan, who I met through iModeler several years ago and happens to live just a few miles from my son. We get together for lunch whenever I'm here, which usually ends up in a visit to his home to talk model airplanes and whatever else comes up. I explained my predicament and he immediately jumped in to help. From out of the depths of his model room came what he called his travel box, a setup he put together to be able to build models at shows or club get togethers. He handed it to me and told me to get to work. In the box were a couple of model kits, an AMT Stinson and an Entex Cessna 150. I'm a s****r for old airplanes and have worked on too many C-150s to find them interesting, so the Stinson it was.
The AMT 1/48 Stinson is a 70's vintage kit and it shows. It has a fairly nice cockpit, none of which will be visible unless you leave the doors open, which is an option. Parts fit is so so, but there aren't a lot of them, which makes it perfect for this project. The goal is to have it finished by the time I head home sometime next week. I decided to leave everything closed up for simplicity, so I painted the inside of the cockpit in a leather color with red seats and a black instrument panel. The doors didn't fit well closed, a little filler took care of that.
Engine was in three pieces and not bad at all. Fuselage went together with a lot of filler, with a few sink marks to take care of. Windows attach from the outside, but the windscreen is pretty flimsy and required a lot of care to install as I know I can't get a replacement if I break it.
The main snag was discovering that the wheel spats were missing from the kit. Since the wheels are sandwiched between the spat halves, then glued to the landing gear struts, there are no axles to attach a wheel to. The kit wheels are awful, which would not have been a problem if they were enclosed. I decided to leave them uncovered. Jack came to my rescue again with a set of P-51 resin wheels from his stash. I made an axle from a straight pin, then modified the end of the strut and drilled a hole in it to take my pin axle. That made my other dilemma easier, as now I can do the model as a working airplane, so I don't have to come up with a fancy paint job. The kit decals depict a white, gold and green scheme, which I wasn't really crazy about. This airplane will be red, not sure about the rest of the markings yet, as I don't have any!
Comments or suggestions are always welcome. Stay tuned and see what happens next!
7 attached images. Click to enlarge.
