cdclukey wrote:

Yeah, when I looked around for pics to check my smoke jumper scheme against reality, I found a lot of pics of Shorts birds being used for that purpose, but few pics overall.   Here's a question you might be able to answer, since you have that book at hand: Do smoke jumper planes ever carry the prominent tanker-style numbers on the tail that tankers do?

No cluke the Shorts in my book doesn't have any numbers whatsoever other than the N#. Which is N175Z btw, if that helps. Also youcan try searching planes by Registration on airliners.net and see if it comes up. Otherwise I'll try and scan the pic from my book and post it. Aero Union also uses a Cherokee Six as a personnel transport that is in there tanker colors and has a big 2 on the vertical. N4096W is the rego.

Thanks Aaron for those sites! will have a looksie later.

Cheers, Richie

simpilot34 wrote:

S'ok cluke, still can't wait to see pics of her. I picked up a book at a used book store here in Australia. It's called "Fire Bombers in Action". It has pics of tankers of course, helos and jumper planes. If I could find a Shorts 360, would surely do it up as a jump plane. Have a Skyvan in my stash, but have already had the mindset to do it up in Austrian Air Force colors. That might change. Cheers, Richie

Not to bust your bubble, Richie. But, the U.S.F.S. and B.L.M. didn't use the Skyvan. They used the C-23A Sherpa. If you have the Airfix kit you will have to do some modifications to build the Sherpa. If you have the 1/72 Aeroclub Sherpa kit? I'm jealous!! The tail markings for the Sherpa are nothing more than a small, very small, 'U.S.F.S.'. Now the B.L.M. Sherpa's have a larger 'BLM' in white on them. As can be seen in this picture.

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Randie Agape Models

Without them? The men on the ground would have to work a lot harder. You can help. Please keep 'em flying! http://www.airtanker.com/

I've been after that Sherpa kit too, thought I had one a couple years ago but after several months of waiting the company I ordred it from cancelled my order since they had not been able to get one.

I hate when places list an item they don't stock.

The red one is used by USFS smokejumpers, I got some photos of it at Willows, CA in 2005.

Not particularly relevent to the GB but kind of an interesting trivia bit. The USFS smokejumpers use round canopies with a static line deployment, while BLM smokejumpers freefall and use a rectangular canopy. 

chopperfan wrote:

Yep! That's a pretty good book. There are a few pictures of some planes that I have been around when they were still flying.

Unfotunately that list is getting pretty short even for me, and I think you've been at it longer.

Hi Aaron,

That S58 is awesome.  Very nice! 

As a Fire Ranger, my first non-training flight was a crew re-location from Dryden, Ontario to Kenora, Ontario, in 1983.  10 Rangers and gear in the back with the door open!  Yee-haw!

What is interesting about that helo in Northern Ontario is the lack of skid gear.  99.99% of the terrain is uneven or beaver meadow (bog) so use of wheeled helo for helitack is quite limited to say the least.   I guess you have to make do with the tools at hand.

I will also be completing a started kit.   I started a Hobby Craft Grumman Tracker in the early 90's and got called away to an early fire season.   The Province of Ontario bought 6 or 8 of these aircraft from the Canadian Navy, when they scrapped the "Bonaventure", Canada's only aircraft carrier.  These landbased attack aircraft were used in Ontario to drop retardant for a couple of seasons in the late 1970's.  

This started kit is a bit banged up.   I found it in the toy box at least twice, so it deserves to be finished!  

I would appeciate learning about making my own decals.

Can anyone provide a link to a good site or provide advice?

Thanks,

Shouldda

It will be nice to see an S-2 in something other than CDF markings.

There are a few options for custom decals depending on what you need. One of the easiest is just using microsoft word. You can use it for the lettering and by inserting cropped and edited photos of markings you can use it to scale logos and such. The Word art feature lets you make more fanciful lettering as well.

Microsoft paint can be used to make up logos fro scratch, then again inserting the finished design into word to adjust the final size.

That is the easy & cheap method since it uses a program most people already have. The downside it they are pixel based images so adjusting the size tends to distort the image and the detail is a little fuzzy on smaller images.

Testors offers a decal making program, but from what I've seen of the free sample and heard from people who bought the full program, it doesn't really offer much over the method I described above.   

If you expect to get serious about custom decals, vector based programs like Corel Draw work well. The images in a vector based program do not use pixels so there is no distortion when altering size, so you can make a nice big image, say 6x6" making it easy to draw in fine details, then shrink it down to 1/4 x 1/4" for your decal. You may lose some detail just because you can no longer see it, but it will be there at least down to the level of precision of your printer. These programs are not cheap, but sometimes you can get a student / teacher version which is far more reasonable in price. Another option would be to use the program somewhere else (library or college maybe?) then save the file as a pdf so you can print it elsewhere without needing the program. Sometime you can download a 30 day trial of a program which would work for a one time need (or work like crazy in that 30 days and make up a ton of decals ) 

The other issue is your printer, standard color inkjet and laser printers work fine for many decals, but don't do white or metallics, light colors (grey, yellow etc) can also be a problem on a dark colored model.

There are several brands of decal film, Micromark, Bare Metal Foil and Testors are ones I've used, but there are many others. They are available in clear and white film, and you need to buy them for your type of printer. You can not use inkjet film in a laser printer or the reverse.

The easiest option is just go with a custom decal maker. There are several out there, I sent some designs to diecast & decals earlier this year and they came back very nice. He uses an ALPS printer so white & metallics are possible. You could check with Joe Osborn at Fireball Modelworks too, I think he does some custom printing in addition to his regular line.

I know diecast and decals will also do design work in addition to printing if you send a photo of the decals you need. I did my own art work but he was very helpful giving me some instruction to tweak my designs for the best effect. Using a custom printer for you decals costs more than doing it yourself but compares to other aftermarket decals so is pretty reasonable.

http://diecastanddecals.com/

http://webpages.charter.net/osborn82/index.htm

A DC-10!!!!!?????? I knew they were testing a 747 at Evergreen Int., but a DC-10???? Makes a bit more sense to me really. A lil more manouverable I would think. Although for its size a 747 can turn pretty good. I remember seeing the S-2s in California when they were still green with orange panels. Absolutely loved the sound of those short stacked 1820s popping as they passed! Also saw a DC-6 or 7 pretty close one time. I just wish like hell I would have taken notice of the tanker number on the tail. It had prop spinners and the red cheat line with white top is bout all I can remember, and it sounded damn good! I also remember seeing a B-17 and C-119 flying east, prolly early '80s time frame. Now that I know more about them, I prolly was witnessing some of there last flights and didn't know it. Also one time travelling I-5 going past the Stockton airport I could see a 2 PBYs, C-97, and C-119 lined up ready for action.

Cheers, Richie

While not relavent to the build ......................how about a list of your fire bomber stash?

I'll start with my 1/48 stuff.

3 - A-26B/C Invaders:  2 - B-25J Mitchells:  3 - O-2A Skymasters:  3 - OV-10A Broncos:  2 - T-28B Trojans:  3 - F7F-3 Tigercats:  1 - F-15A Reporter:  1 - P-61B Blackwidow:

In 1/72.

4 - S-2A Trackers:  3 - P-3C Orions:  3 - C-119G Flying Boxcars:  2 - P2V-7 Neptunes:  2 - DC-6B Super-Cloudmasters:  2 - H-34 Choctaws:  1 - CL-215 Super Scooper:  1 - OV-10A Bronco

And each and everyone has a purpose for being built.

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Randie Agape Models

Without them? The men on the ground would have to work a lot harder. You can help. Please keep 'em flying! http://www.airtanker.com/

My fire stash is a bit smaller, all 1/72

Revell P3 Orion

Academy PBY-5A

Hasegawa B25J (mostly for the engines so I can make the PBY a Super Cat, not sure what the B25 will become)

Airfix A-26

A couple Monogram F7F Tigercats

A couple Hasegawa S2 Trackers

A couple Hasegawa P2 Neptunes

Heller CL215

Italeri HH53C

Fujimi CH-46

A couple Italeri UH-1N

A couple Italeri UH-1D

An Italeri UH-1F

Hasegawa UH-60

Revell Germany Seaking

A couple Italeri UH-34's with the Cobra company S58T conversion

Probably missing something bu that's most of them, thinking I might get a 1/144 DC10 just for giggles, since CDF is blowing millions on the stupid thing I guess I could go to the trouble of building one.

Simpilot, there is a clip of the DC10 at about 0:45 in this youtube video. Actually the whole video could be rather inspiring for the build.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqlM-oBnT8