I've completed three C-47 Dakotas (well, one is actually an AC-47 but same basic airframe). All 1/48th scale.
These are the box tops:
I got that original Monogram C-47 way back at Christmas, 1978, and promptly built it in a day or so. It did not survive for long, as we went through some house moving in the ensuing years.
A few years ago, I grabbed the AC-47 with the thought of back-dating it to a 6-June-1944 warbird; then Trumpeter released their C-47A, which I picked up despite its cost ratio to the Monogram kit. Then I said, what the heck, and grabbed an original C-47 Skytrain off eBay.
With this being the 75th anniversary of 6-June-1944 (I typically will not refer to that day as D-Day, as the term refers to any invasion date and I feel like using the term D-Day for just that date does an injustice to the many other D-Days throughout WWII), I thought I'd build the original Monogram release and the Trumpeter kit. When I got to going, I ran into some issues, one pretty big, and you know how this hobby can some times beat you down to the point that you'd - almost - rather give a troubling kit to the Hulk so he could smash it? I didn't feel much enthusiasm for either of these builds, so decided that the AC-47 was not going to be one that I'd ever want to build if I didn't do it now, so I pulled that one out of the stash and added it to my suddenly very cluttered work bench.
So the issue I ran into early one had to do with the landing gear. Both Monogram releases were destined for gears-up and a ceiling mount in my workroom (alongside other large Monogram bombers). I had researched how the gear struts actually work, and was attempting to dry-fit parts into the gear bay. The Y-shaped actuating strut fell out of my grasp. I never heard it hit anything below, but figured it was a large enough part that I should have no problem locating it. Yeah, I actually wonder if Thanos didn't swing through my neighborhood at that moment looking to erase 50% of model parts from existence ... because the part was just gone.
My bench is a custom-built job. It is an L-shaped bench, mounted to adjoining walls in what otherwise might have been a third-bay in my garage had the original owners built it out that way. I put down half-inch plywood as the lower surface, with three-quarter-inch (something else, not plywood) for the primary, upper work surface. I use the lower surface as storage for various tools, plastic drawer boxes, my compressor, etc. I pulled all of that stuff away, thinking the part had somehow flown way up under something. Nope. I pulled everything off the surrounding floor, swept real well and sorted through the debris that I swept up. No part. The plywood surface was reclaimed plywood, and one of the edges didn't meet flush with an adjoining piece, resulting in a small gap that I'd always thought might gobble up a part someday but had never gotten around to closing that gap. So I even took all that plywood off the lower frame structure. No part, but I did have an encounter, brief though it was, with a particularly nasty-looking spider (I have a serious case of archnaphobia, never saw the movie by the same name and never will). That spider dashed away, hopefully never to be seen again, and after I double-checked for that part and verified that it was not there, I replaced the plywood and put everything back in place.
At this point I was strongly considering two options - trashing the Monogram altogether, or attempting to replicate the Y-shaped part however I could. Then in kind of a hail mary, I posted here asking if someone might have the part, say from a kit that they had trashed. I never expected that someone would have the part, but as it turns out, user learmech was building the same kit but was going to use some metal landing gear and sent me his unneeded parts. Thanks again, learmech!
These builds sapped a lot of my enthusiasm for building. Number one, the Monogram kits were bad. Poor fit and lack of good detail seems to describe them. The Trumpeter is far more detailed and generally fit better, although one of the engine exhausts never did go together properly, and resulted in a gap that prevented me from being able to attach the exhaust pipe without doing a bunch of plastisurgery. Number two, it has been hotter than Hades in recent weeks here in the Houston area. I could only stand an hour or so at the bench, typically first thing in the morning, and too many damn mosquitos for evening work.
The Trumpeter kit came with the invasion stripes on the decal sheet. The wings might have been okay to deal with, but I knew what level of hell I was going to have to descend into to be able to deal with decals for the fuselage stripes. I opted to paint the stripes. The wings look good, but the fuselage ... argh! Ordinarily I would have stopped work and address the fuselage striping, but this time, with all this heat and my generally foul attitude, I just pressed on. I did acquire a Montex mask set for the Trumpeter, which I used for the big squadron codes and the tail ID numbers, but I used the Trumpeter kit decals for the US insignia and raided my spares box for US insignia for the Monogram kit. (I opted not to use the 30+ year old decal sheet from the Monogram kit).
Paints are primarily Vallejo, and the weathering is ground up artist pastel chalk.
Monogram C-47 (repesents a 6-June-1944 Skytrain)
Trumpeter C-47 (represents an Operation Market Garden, September 1944, Skytrain)
Monogram AC-47
I actually have a fourth that is currently on my bench. It is Monogram's ancient AC-47, first put out in the sixties, in a scale of 1/96. I am going old-school with that build and will paint it as I would have as a kid - with paint brush. We'll see if I'm still capable of that, otherwise I'll strip whatever mess I make and just use the airbrush.