DC-4 WIP

I'll be following this one.

You'd know more than I, the aircraft has been described as a joy to fly.

I'll be following this build too, Don. The DC-4/C-54 has always been on of my favorite airplanes. I know it's going to be a while, but what livery will the finished model have?

fotofrank

I'll be following this build too, Don. The DC-4/C-54 has always been on of my favorite airplanes. I know it's going to be a while, but what livery will the finished model have?

 

It will be American Airlines.

This thing is really testing my 81 year old hands!  And the seat belts are molded into the seats.  Not so bad doing crew seats, but then there are forty plus passenger seats with belts to paint.  I am tempted not to paint the seats.  The belts look funny-like you'd have to be sitting sideways in the seats to buckle the belts.  The pilot and co-pilot seats are an assembly of three parts.  The frames are a real challenge to handle.

Very little flash on any parts, and molding is crisp with great detail. 

A neat feature of this kit is that the fuselage has interior panels along sides.  Windows are sandwiched between outer skin and the interior side panels. No luggage shelves above, but it still will look neat.

Hi,

I can't wait to see how your build turns out.

Pat

I have the Minicraft 1/144 scale DC-4 in my stash. Might do it up later this year. Of course not nearly the detail of your Revell kit, Don. I'm thinking M.A.T.S. livery.

Pretty excited to watch this. This is the first WIP I recall seeing from you.

I'm not familiar with the DC-4 and am in process of reading about it. Didn't know there was a tricycle DC.

Your cockpit looks good. Keep the pics coming, please.

Hello!

I would like to build a HC-54 from Vietnam one day - usuing the Revell kit as a base...

Don, will you try to balance this baby on its undercarriage - that can be tricky with all that heavy interior - or will you go for the tail stand?

Good luck with your build and have a nice day!

Paweł

Greg

Pretty excited to watch this. This is the first WIP I recall seeing from you.

I'm not familiar with the DC-4 and am in process of reading about it. Didn't know there was a tricycle DC.

Your cockpit looks good. Keep the pics coming, please.

 

The DC-6 and DC-7 were also tri-gear.  There was a DC-5 prototype which never saw production that was sort of a follow-on to the DC-3 (twin engine), and that was a trike also.  Douglas seemed to cede the short haul, shorter route to others (Martin and Convair).

Pawel

Hello!

I would like to build a HC-54 from Vietnam one day - usuing the Revell kit as a base...

Don, will you try to balance this baby on its undercarriage - that can be tricky with all that heavy interior - or will you go for the tail stand?

Good luck with your build and have a nice day!

Paweł

 

I sure will try for balance.  A lot of the interior detail is up front, but the interior walls probably will make it tail-heavy.  However, fortunately Revell shows the amount of weight needed in the instructions, and I have a postal scale to weigh it out.  Also, the instructions show exactly where to place the weight.

Don Stauffer

 

 

Greg

Pretty excited to watch this. This is the first WIP I recall seeing from you.

I'm not familiar with the DC-4 and am in process of reading about it. Didn't know there was a tricycle DC.

Your cockpit looks good. Keep the pics coming, please.

 

 

 

 

The DC-6 and DC-7 were also tri-gear.  There was a DC-5 prototype which never saw production that was sort of a follow-on to the DC-3 (twin engine), and that was a trike also.  Douglas seemed to cede the short haul, shorter route to others (Martin and Convair).

 

I sort of forgot about the DC-6 and 7 too. It seems our local airport had mostly short haul Convair 580's, maybe why I am not remembering.

Thanks for the additional info, always eager to learn and take a trip down memory lane, where I often get lost.

Here is a mockup of how the cockpit with seats will look against the rest of the interior. I guess that compartment right behind the pilot/copilot section is for the flight engineer- though the jump seat in it looks more like what a stewardess would use.  There is another section yet to put on the floor, before the seats, and that looks like a stewardess section.  Does anyone know if the -4 had a flight engineer position?

Next will be a tedious job.  There are 44 seats, each with five colors.  Largest area is blue, which I will airbrush.  Remaining colors are brown, beige, white and silver.  Way to small to mask off easily.  I will be handpainting these remaining colors.  However, the seatbelts, molded into the seats, the beige and silver, are very narrow (toothpick details) and I may hold up the side against the floor with a couple of seats in place, to see how visible the belts are.  I am not one to paint or install detail that cannot be seen, just because I will know it is there.  In fact, I have left off a little radio piece in that flight engineer(?) station because I don't think it will be able to be seen.

Don Stauffer

Does anyone know if the -4 had a flight engineer position?

I became curious and did some snooping. Found some things that suggest it might have been a radio compartment, or radio operator compartment, or radio officer compartment.

I'm not sure, just passing along some Googling results.

Don, did a Google-search and found this:

Pilot, co-pilot, navigator, radio operator.

Probably most significant is that the aircraft did not have a FE station.

The Boeing 307 did.

Wow Don. This is going to be beautiful. And tedious. And time consuming. And VERY rewarding. Love this kit...I have one civilian and one C-54, both in Revell 1/72, and am a big fan. Looking forward to following your build. Please DO post pictures and "how-tos" and "I did this's." The cockpit looks oputstanding. Who cares if WE can't see it!!?? YOU know its there!

The inner fuselage walls are different for the two kits. I won't be using my C-54 interior at all. My DC-4 has blanked out windows, and the cargo door will be closed.

Don-

Looks so good I will be starting my Braniff DC-4 shortly.

Plans seem complicated with different kinds of construction symbols---has anyone figured these out?

Also the tin laundry has complicated parts---I think it had fowler flaps but the plans don't show how all this is put in very well.

Looks great, we like the pictures!

Geee;

     First plane I flew in was Orville and His brother's thingy .LOL.LOL. No Really this does actually bring back memories .Like Trains, I have ridden in some civilian history makers .Starting with the D.C.3 and all the way to a 747 and a lot of others in between .My all time fave was the D.C.-7-C, and let's not forget the sexiest plane in history, the Lockheed Constellation ( mainly the 1049 edition .) Was that the long nose or short ?

    Of course my own a/c won't get short shrift in memory though I won't mention them  .The others I've flown in were a Beaver and Otter and an Antonov heavy lifter ! ( The first edition ) Yeah , Got over my fears in the lumbering beast ! In the back no less !

 I can fly again and the most enjoyable was being at the controls of the old Cessna 180 That a friend owns .No More though . I would imagine the TIA will shut down my flying in the office . Darn! but I did it !         T.B. 

Just noticed something- the instructions call for wheel wells to be aluminum color, but box art shows them zinc chromate (green).  Anyone know for sure what color Douglas painted wheel wells in the forties?

Don, I would lean to bare aluminum doors and wells with silver paint struts.  This is based on photos I have of white painted wells peeling to bare aluminum with no sign of green or chromate, and the discussion here:

https://www.airlinercafe.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=7845

jeaton01

Don, I would lean to bare aluminum doors and wells with silver paint struts.  This is based on photos I have of white painted wells peeling to bare aluminum with no sign of green or chromate, and the discussion here:

https://www.airlinercafe.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=7845

 

Thanks, John.  I will stick with the aluminum.  I already have the nose gear well done with aluminum, so I won't have to change that.

Got all the seats painted now.  The picture below was done before I finished them all, but you can see how I am doing them.  I figured the view through the window was not good enough to see the seat belts well, so I did not paint them.

I have finished all the front end sections, so am ready to add the seats now.  The paint on some of the formers is not the greatest, but I think one will not be able to see those sections very well anyway.

Looks good. 

I suggest you test fit fuse halves over that assembly before you go too much further. This would be time to shave down any bulkheads if needed.

Yep, I am certainly  checking that. With the inner fuselage panels it would be extremely hard to narrow anything.

I am considering a radical change to the normal build sequence.  The windows are sort of ovals and look very difficult to mask.  I am thinking of painting (Alclad) the fuselage halves before I put them on.  Of course, I will then have to work on top and bottom seams afterwards.  However, with Alclad I like to make some panels different shades that others, so I think I can mask along panel lines and do those seams afterwards.  I'm also thinking of doing painting of fuselage/tail and wings seperately.  I will see how good the fit is when I come to the point of putting wings and fuselage together.

Looking at AA DC-4 photos, the windows do sit in a NM area. On other liveries I've done the following.

Paint the window stripe before installing the glass. Then install it, and mask over it. Then glue the fuse halves together etc.

I suppose a version of that which you might try would be to paint various panels on each side to include the area with all of the windows, install them and then mask those panels before final assembly, putty, paint.

I don't want to sidetrack the thread, but since we are on the subejct of windows: mine will have all of the cabin windows blanked out because it was a flying refridgerator.

References show the particular aircraft was a USAF C-54, which I would assume had windows. Then it went to Santa Fe Skyways, and the windows disappeared. After Santa Fe Skyways went under, the aircraft went through the typical downward trip of smaller aitlines, curious incidents (a hijacking) etc. where it got it's windows back.

In the SFS livery, theres a broad red stripe down each side, and the few photos I have from the railroad don't show an outline of windows in any obvious way.

So I wonder, since it was a non-pressurized a/c, was it simply rebuilt each time?

That is quite a production line on those seats.

The fabric headrest covers surely bring back some memories. They really make the seats pop, and I'll bet they were not called out in the painting part of the instructions?

Greg

That is quite a production line on those seats.

The fabric headrest covers surely bring back some memories. They really make the seats pop, and I'll bet they were not called out in the painting part of the instructions?

 

Actually, the white was called out.   I followed the instructions on the seat except for the beige seat belts.  I didn't believe they would be visible enough to go to the effort.

Got the left side inner panel on.  The fit was great!

Don Stauffer

Actually, the white was called out.

I'll be darned. For some reason, that surprises me.