The Little World

The Fairchild Flying Boxcar model is proceeding apace, but the pace is slow. This is a deliberate decision as I am using it as my weekly Men’s Shed project.

This means I do most of the work on it in the Tuesday 9:00 to 12:30 time slot when I can attend the modelling club. So far I have trimmed and sanded, painted the interior, joined the major components, and puttied up  – all at the club. The only thing I won’t do there is the external spray painting – I have my own guns here at home and an area set aside for dust-reduced painting. There is a spray room at the club ( currently under reconstruction ) but I’d still prefer to make my grievous errors here where they can be rectified without embarrassment.

The plane is big, as I’ve mentioned before. So big that I baulked at committing small jars of Mr. Color to it through my regular brushes. Not that they could not do it, but I could see multiple mixes needed and the precious stock of Super Silver running out before the whole of the airframe was covered. So I resorted to the Tamiya rattle can system. Even here, it took two cans to do the job properly.

Purists may point to the polished aluminium of the original RCAF C-119 aircraft – particularly in the early 50’s version I’m building – and advise black undercoat and Alclad spray and polishing and whatnot. I am restricting myself to what I can readily obtain for my modelling materials, and Alclad just doesn’t appear that often in the local shop. I shall decide later whether I am going to finish the plane with a gloss overspray or a semi-matte one and be happy with that.

The raised lines depicting control surfaces are similar to the rivets that are encountered in older Airfix kits – they are decried in modern reviews but I do not mind them at all. The light glancing off them delineates the features just fine to my eye and the photo result is much the same as engraved lines.

This early plane doesn’t have the lightning side flash and white top sported by the 60’s RCAF aircraft. I’m a little saddened by that, but there are four images taken of the real thing in the day that show all I need to know to decal it. I’ll opt for reality over fantasy.