VNAF "Dirty Thirty" C-47B

What the spares box yielded after some judicial disassembly.

One issue though: I need to replace the kit’s nose, which btw is totally inaccurate for an R4D-5L. Luckily I have another ESCI C-47 in the spares box.

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…

In the meantime I gave the kit parts a nice bath of oven cleaner to get rid of the paint.

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!

The moment of truth. Fired up the homemade vacuum former, sheet of plastic in the oven and down she goes, motivated some more with a heat gun.

And it worked! An amazing first time right.

Cut out the nose halves and now I just have to graft them on. How hard could that be?

Cut off the nose cone and glued the replacement to shelves I glued inside the nose. Just a dab of filler and we’re good to go…

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.

Preparing the lower fuselage. This area is difficult to get right during assembly.

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.

Finishing off with a coat of HG51, worked out nicely.

Ready for closing up the fuselage

Wrestling everything in place

WIth the fuselage together I can continue with the nose. Also still lots of filling required on the underside.

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

The wheel wells are awfully bare. Added bulkheads and lined them with thin sheet.

Main parts of the wheel wells ready for assembly…

… and further detailing.

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 lost the exhaust pipes but luckily could copy them from my other C-47.

Added sprue behind the leading edge landing light hole to create a cavity.

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.

Adding the wings and stabilizers. Fit was not so great anymore due to the disassembly.

More filling and sanding, especially at the wing root.

Front part of nacelles added and cleaning up the lower wing joints.

Added a replacement astrodome which is too big. Frustratingly I still had the original but lost it in the sink while polishing it. Duh…

The nose was still not smooth enough so still more filling and sanding. Reinstalled the engines and cowlings.

Another coat of primer sanded down to a smooth finish and we’re ready for painting!

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 deviated from my initial plan and started with Humbrol gloss white for the fuselage top and as a base for the dayglo orange areas. Stupid me …

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.

Decals done, the Blackbird decals proved vulnerable again and the fin flashes came off later, but they do look nice.

Weathering in progress, mainly to break up the monotony of the airframe…

… 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.