I have completed what likely will be the last (A)C-47 kit I'll ever build. This time it is the ancient Monogram kit that was a new tool in 1955. The particular kit I built was boxed in 1966-1967; I was born in 1967, so about that "ancient" claim I just made ...
It is one of the "blue box" kits that Monogram did throughout the sixties and into the early 70s. I have a fondness for the kits that came in those boxes dating all the way back to pre-5-year-old me, where I have a photograph of a birthday party for me, age undetermined but probably 4, and I am quite happily unwrapping a present that was one of those blue boxes (and in the picture, there is a stack of already-unwrapped Monogram blue box kits in the background). Yeah, I was spoiled rotten.
So here is the kit box that I built.
The instruction sheet is literally a single sheet of paper, printed on both sides, and directs the builder through a sparse collection of parts to arrive at a decent looking AC-47.
I literally started this kit 3 days ago. One day building. One day painting. One day to paint a second coat and tack on the small parts, and do the decals. After the patience-trying work that I did on the three larger scale Gooney Birds recently, I decided I needed a quick and pain-free build. So for that reason, mostly, I opted to leave the airbrush alone and do this one as I would have done it as a child (once I started using paints, around age 8) - I brush painted just about everything. The only thing not brush painted are the de-icer boots, for which I used a steady hand and a black Sharpie. The paints are Vallejo from their USAF Southeast Asia set - USAF Brown, Forest Green, Dark Green, and Black. There is a smidge of Model Master Metalizer Gun Metal for the Vulcan guns, and some Model Master Enamel tan for the pilot's faces.
The kit is 99.9% devoid of internal details. The only thing inside other than the window inserts is a plain cockpit floor, to which you attach two seated pilot figures. No IP, no control columns, no floor in the cargo area. I opted to leave the interior free of paint, as the kit is molded in a dark green and I figured very little would actually be visible, and what is visible will look to be a too dark green.
I did no weathering on this bird, but some of the brush-painting seems to lend a weary look to the aircraft.
I acquired this kit via eBay. It was still in the shrink wap from 1966 to just a few days ago. The decals were in decent shape, given their age and how I had stored them for roughly 5-6 years since I acquired the kit (no idea how the kit was stored previously, but I figure everything inside the box was dark given that the shrink wrap was still in place). Even so, the decals had yellowed. I was more concerned with deterioriation once the decals came into contact with a couple of hydrogen and an oxygen atom (sorry, daughter's science class is starting basic chemistry ...), so I put down a coat of Testor's decal bonder and let that sit over night. The decals survived the water just fine, and look okay on the finished airplane.
This may be my last build for the year. I am currently unemployed as a software engineer with a skillset tied to cretateous level technology (i.e., not web/cloud technology). Tomorrow I am beginning a 16-week coding bootcamp that will give me a lot of that type of modern experience; I have been through many interviews where the interviewers agreed that I am good at what I do but just don't bring the right experience to the table, and am following on the suggestion of one to do this bootcamp in the hope that that company may still be a good landing place for me. It was 1990 the last time I was in a class room for educational purposes, so I'm in the dark as to what to expect starting tomorrow. I'm looking at it as a job, almost, with the expectation of longer hours while I pursue these updated skills, which should not give me time to spend at the work bench. Plus I probably just need time away from the bench.
No idea what I will build next, but I know it will not be a C-47.