A 'Virtually' Whiffed Herk

[PR19_Kit]

An odd title for sure, but I'm building a C-130J-30 stock but in a non-RW colour scheme.

I do quite a bit of Flight Simulator 'flying', FS9 in my case, with a small Virtual Airline called 'The Albion Group of Airlines'. We run like a present day version of Air America but based in UK with strong links to the MoD and the RAF. 

Sadly one of our founder members, Dave Osborne, died suddenly a month or two ago and the rest of the Albion crew decided we'd like to present Dave's widow with a model of one of his favourite Albion aircraft as his Albion flying was a big part of his life and she supported him in that. As the resident Albion model maker it fell to me to select and build the model, and I've already done a couple of Albion models in 1/144 scale, but Dave's favourite was our C-130J-30 and doing one of them in 1/144 would have been an expensive operation as the only 1/144 fuselage conversion for a -30 costs over £40, and in any case Dave liked things BIG, so 1/72 it was.

Our own Howard of Effingham sold me an Italeri 1/72 C-130J at the recent Coventry show at a VERY good price (thanks again Howard  ) and I bought the Flightpath resin conversion set for the fuselage extension, plus some Eduard frets to tart it up a bit. So this week I started the build, and I'll do my usual report on progress on here, even though it could take a while as I have to do ALL the decals for the model, even though I can use the textures from our FS model as masters.

Here's what it's going to look like when it's finished, well I HOPE it will anyway.



So far I've done the basic assembly, wings, tail, wing tanks, cockpit and nose gear bay etc. but the major work was extending the fuselage. Firstly, the basic kit isn't a C-130J, it's a C-130H with a 'J' conversion kit supplied, so there's quite a few spare parts going to be left over. Sadly Italeri do not show the extra sprues for the 'J' in the instructions, so construction is a tad confusing at times. The kit does come with a superb booklet full of photos of various 'Js' from different Air Forces, which will be handy at the detail stage.

The Flightpath conversion is not that easy to use, even though they give you a cutting diagram to show where the two different extensions fit. The extensions have ridges moulded into them which should help in locating them to the styrene fuselage parts but the ridges are smaller than the thickness of the fuselage halves so quite a bit of grinding and filing is needed. The forward extension isn't too bad, but the aft one will need LOTS of PSR work later on, and quite a chunk of the underside needs to be ground off where it abuts the rear ramp door.

Here's the build pic so far, more later.

[kitnut617]

How do the plugs fit Kit ? I've got the conversions too because I'm planning on my RCAF ones just like that.

[PR19_Kit]

Not well Robert, but it's the only game in town.

The aft one is by far the worse as it protrudes below the bottom of the fuselage when the top is aligned, and that will need some serious filing and PSR. In addition the plugs seem to have been made for the old Airfix kit as all four of them have a slight 'chine' at around the 5 o'clock - 7 o'clock position which makes a noticeable hard edge. The Italeri kit doesn't have that 'chine' so there'll be some MORE PSR required.

The instructions indicate that some mods will be needed where the rear ramp fits against the aft plug but I'm some way from doing that yet as I'm adding the Eduard fret to the ramp, and that's MIND bogglingly complicated. In fact I don't think I'll do all of it as they want you to cut about 40 pieces of 0.8mm dia tubing to act as the rollers!

You can see the chine lines in the piccie above, and the bit that protrudes below the floor is also just visible. I'll post some larger piccies of those bit tomorrow.

[kitnut617]

This might be of use Kit-

Found on

http://www.72scale.com/aircraft/Lockheed/C-130.htm

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Kit Review 
The Airfix kit, despite its age, has alot going for it. It has the best constant cross section on its fuselage, including the ridge at floor level. The empenage has the gentle taper of the real thing in plan view as it progresses towards the tailplane. Overall the Airfix fuselage is more accurate than the Italeri one, except for the cockpit roof. There are some areas where the tooling has disadvantages: the main wing fillet is not defined enough, nor is the seam where the sponsons join the fuselage underside. This tooling was originally offered as a C-130E, but was retooled to an AC-130 some years later by permanently altering the fuselage sponsons. Consequently, recent releases of the the C-130E/H type under the Airfix brand have been done so using the Italeri tooling.
The Italeri kit has better defined wing fillets, underside sponson seams, and front fuselage immediately above the cockpit, but the constant cross section fuselage behind is completely incorrect and lacks the ridge at floor level. The empenage tapers too severely in plan view as it meets the tailplane. The biggest problem of
  the Italeri tooling is the engine nacelles. They are the shorter versions associated with the Allison T-56-A-9 or -11 turboprop engines as used on the C-130A. C-130E/H aircraft carry the T-56-A-7 and -15 engine respectively, which requires a longer nacelle, so if you plan to model these variants you will need to obtain the nacelles offered by Flight Path or Ron's Resin.
All other parts of the kit appear to be of better accuracy than the Airfix/MPC kit, but this remains to be confirmed. The wing tanks may be of different sizes. The two kits appear to be similar in dimensions making cross-kitting relatively easy.

For the most accurate model, we recommend using the Airfix main fuselage, substituting a portion of the front for the section immediately behind the wing trailing edge. Blend this into the rear empenage as per the real thing. Use the Italeri wing roots and nose section with considerable modification. Build up ridge on rear empenage.

 
Kit Modifications Schematic



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[PR19_Kit]

Interesting that, it confirms what I thought about the initial tooling of the plugs.

Luckily my friend's widow isn't a JMN and I'm sure she'll be happy with my rendition of Dave's favourite Albion aircraft.

Of course as mine's a 'J' it has totally different engines anyway. Interesting that the current Airfix kit IS the Italeri moulding though, I never heard that before.

[kitnut617]

My 1/72 C-130J is a Testors boxing Kit, which is an Italeri kit.  I've not seen an Italeri C-130E/H to check against the later Airfix kit which I have too. Got an original Airfix one as well.

[McColm]

I've got an old Airfix kit, that I'm going to use as a base and add the wing section from an airfix Nimrod. Sort of jet-powered with the keel section from a Playfix Be-6. I did think of extending the fuselage, and also to shrink it. If I bought another Airfix C-130!!
I'll be watching this build with interest, great work!!

[PR19_Kit]

Robert,

Here's a close-up of the aft plug joint issues. The instructions tell you to fill in below the styrene part of the floor so it mates up with the lower surface of the plug, but as it stands that's impossible as the lower part of the plug protrudes LOWER than the floor anyway. I've had to recut the joint, high-lighted in yellow, and I'll try and bend it upwards somewhat to fit a bit better.

I've also marked the position of the 'chine' in red.

[kitnut617]

Looks like I'll have to pay attention to your build Kit, see if I can learn some shortcuts

[Tophe]

Congratulations, both for the built and for the intention (a gift to a widow)...

[PR19_Kit]

On the port side I glued the top half of the plug to the centre portion of the fuselage and then bent the lower half in until the bottom of the plug lined up with the straight portion of the fuselage before glueing that. The inner edge now needs trimming to match the width of the fuselage and it'll need some styrene sheet laid over the portion by the door, but it should be OK eventually.

Basically this conversion is NOT designed for the Italeri kit, no matter what they say in the blurb.  

[Rheged]

Congratulations, both for the built and for the intention (a gift to a widow)...

I agree.  The build is fascinating, and the reason for  it is greatly to  the Albion  Airways  group's credit..........a  really  gentlemanly thing to do .

One of these days,  when you have time to  spare,  I'd be fascinated to read edited highlights from the backstory.  I wonder if  " Perfidious  Albion  PLC "  (see elsewhere)   might be permitted to  claim  some association with the backstory of this airline group,   please?          

[PR19_Kit]

Rheged, you wouldn't BELIEVE the backstory to the Albion Group if I told you! 

We actually started off as the RAF(v), meaning 'Virtual' of course, back in the late 90s and the MoD banned us from using the title after we became large enough to be noticed! Nowdays there are more than one similar Virtual Armed Forces organisations but don't seem to get the hassle we did back then. Albion grew out of RAF(v) and we have a few oddities in our virtual fleet as a result, like the only civilian owned and operated Canberra PR9. Guess who flies that most often? 

[Rheged]

Rheged, you wouldn't BELIEVE the backstory to the Albion Group if I told you! 

Kit,   
Like the White Queen  in Alice in Wonderland, I can believe as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast.  I  could quite happily believe any  backstory that a whiffmeister such as yourself might choose to  vouchsafe.   Should you feel able to elucidate, I would  greatly enjoy your backstory thoughts should you care  to  display them .    Anyone who can produce the Meteor PR19  backstory  has a liiterary talent that deserves  publishing here .   

Suyitably pleading emoticon displayed at this juncture!!   

[McColm]

In hind-sight wouldn't it have been better to buy two C-130 kits from the same manufacturer. Then you could stretch one and shrink the other
I'll leave this to the experts.