Ricardo Orlandi Franca, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Citing a longtime lack of kits for 1/48 scale ground equipment, Ricardo resolved to build his own. The retired architect developed drawings and assembled a JG-75 aircraft towing tractor made by Northwestern Motor Co. “I saw that it could be easily made, for its angles and lines were right and straight (respectively) and the surfaces were simply planar,” he says. That gave him the tractor body, but he needed more. “I attacked my scrap box,” he says, “where I found the seats (Matchbox A-1E), the chassis frame and front wheels (Airfix 1/72 scale Quad truck), the air filter (Taurus Macchi 205) and other tiny bits. The big double rear wheels were found in a toy shop, attached to a Chinese plastic toy truck. Needless to say, I bought and destroyed it to harvest the wheels. The rest of the work entailed the usual tasks of puttying, sanding, painting, and finishing with some decals and touches of dirt, done sparsely with diluted artist’s oils.”