1/48 ID vacuform Constellation- finished pics

[ghodges]

This is the ID/Combat vacuform kit of the EC-121 Constellation built instead as the Connie used by the Blue Angels in the late 1960s. Everything except the basic airframe had to be scratchbuilt or grabbed from spare parts or repurposed aftermarket. There's a complete "in progress" post on building it and its components in the "build" topic area for anyone interested in the gory details. All of the small round windows were made by using UV cured clear resin that was then sanded and polished with a final coat of Future to brighten them.

The model was (in the end) painted in Testors Gloss Dark Blue for the BA Blue (I was out of MM BA blue!) and the BA yellow was done using Tamyia rattle can Camel Yellow applied over flat white primer. The bare metal areas on the cowl sides are Alclad Airframe Aluminum while the prop spinners and cowl leading edges were sprayed Alclad Chrome. The Blue Angels markings came from 2 different sheets, BOTH of them 1/32 scale (to allow for the larger 1/48 aircraft lettering); a CAM A-4 BA Skyhawk sheet and a Draw Decals F7U-1 Cutlass Blue Angels sheet. I did, however, make stencils and mask and paint the yellow "8"s on the tail fins. The American flag decals on the center fin are actually ship decals from the spares box!

And now on to the rest of the pics!

And... just to answer the question "where would you put it'? I have a display case purposely built big enough for such models. The others currently in the case are a 1/48 B-29 and B-50, as well as a 1/32 B-24D, F-86H, and F-84G.

Questions, critiques, and comments welcome, as always.

 

Gil 

[Jmarc]

AIE,AIE,AIEEEEEEEEEE !...Just beatyfull .. Got quite a collection of large birds.. !I'm impress !

[Mark Deliduka]

Stunning work Gil! What a Masterpiece!

[StuartMont]

That is one beautiful model Gil.  The Blue Angel color scheme you have achieved is incredible and the finish on your model makes it look so real to me.  Maybe not the best question in the world but how much time is spent on achieving that kind of finish?  Also, why mask the "8's" rather than using decals for those?

[ghodges]

Thanks for the very kind words! 

The time on the finish had more to do with overcoming painting problems than anything else. If you go to the "Build" topic area and scroll to the bottom there's a complete explanation of the problems. It took about 7-10 days to paint including the various primer stages, but generally about 5 days when it was in the final painting stages for the yellow and blue and final gloss coats, and that was due to time needed for paint to dry and then the time needed to mask off all of the yellow areas. In the end, it looks good on my shelf and in the pics, but wouldn't survive 30secs in a contest setting due to the various rough patches here and there.

As mentioned above, no one makes decals for the 1/48 Connie (but they do in 1/72 if you want to build one). I found a set of 1/32 DRAW decals for the BA Cutlass that had the number 8s for the tails that I needed. However, when I got the sheet, the numbers looked "less yellow" than the CAM Blue Angel decals I had and planned to use so I wasn't sure if I wanted to use them. Therefore I used the 8s on the Draw decal sheet to trace out stencils and paint them along with all of the other yellow trim. By the way.... those 8s aren't really "accurate" either..... if you look at pics of the real plane they were much larger on the fins! But, I also think they looked ugly and out of balance so I scaled them back on my model to a size that I thought looked good and how I think they should have applied them on the real one!

It turned out my qualms about the Draw decals were for nothing.... I had to use their block US NAVY on the bottom of each wing, and when I applied them they were plenty yellow enough, though they looked less so on the sheet. The decal 8s would have been just fine!

If nothing else this model taught me a few things, but I'm glad I've no need to build another one! Cheers!

 

Gil 

[Bradley25mm]

She’s beautiful!!. And what an awesome paint scheme. Congratulations.

 

Chris

[MikeBrickman]

Gil, I followed your facebook posts as you built this. I am completely awed by what you've accomplished here.

I salute you!

Mike

[SkyKing]

Gobsmacked!

[wdedig]

Beautiful Aircraft Gil.

Gutsy move on that Genre.

Cheers Bill

[ghodges]

Once more, thanks for the very kind remarks!

 

Gil 

[Stikpusher]

Your Connie turned out gorgeous! Nice to see that she gets in well in the display case with other large four engine types.