Fairchild AC-119K Stinger Gunship

Finally I have an update on finishing the "innards" of this bird.

The figures were completed and added to the cockpit along with some other minor details. I am still working on the fourth cockpit figure (the navigator) but he should be there soon to finish it out. I am still debating on adding seat harnesses. The photo shows the internal sub-assembly sitting in the fuselage (it is not glued).



Keeping with the nose of the aircraft, I decided to reshape it to the traditional nose cone as the one in the kit was far too pointed when compared to the actual aircraft. I simply stacked layers of sheet plastic in decreasing radius then used a Dremel and a lot of sanding to shape it into a more accurate nose. 

actual


model


corrected


Back in the cargo / gun bay I finished adding the guns, figures, painting, details such as ammo cans in storage and by the 7.62 guns, ammo feeding tubes to the 7.62 and flex link feeding shutes to the 20mm. I also added discharge trays for both the 7.62 and 20mm. Numerous other additions have also been added such as larger ammo cans for the 20mm, larger and more accurate electrical boxes on the fuselage, decals. etc. I was debating on adding some of the white electrical lines either by paint or very fine solder, but 90% of that work would be laboreous and not seen when sealed.

One person is manning the NOS sight while another is monitoring the guns, and another monitoring the firing computer. There is still one more to add that will be in the rear manning the illuminator. This is as far as I can go till the replacement barrels arrive for the 7.62 mini guns.





I will still have to add the ram air cooling tubes for the 7.62 guns, the flare dispenser, illuminator, all the windows, and a couple more little things before sealing this up. Till then, please share your constructive thoughts or critiques....

Ben

Wow!  That is impressive work!  

This is really amazing with all of that detail in there. 

Is there a possibility of adding a PICO LED set to the inside of this bird to show it off?

Thanks EagleCash867 and Mike (Brindos). As for the LEDs that may be something I will do to my 1/48 C-130 as I will be detailing it much more. This one will be in flight on a stand. My hope is when peaking through the windows or various doors, you will be able to see bits and pieces of what had been done thus adding interest and credibility to the build.

To All.... Please let me know if I bore everyone with too much chatter and incremental updates. I desire for these updates with pictures are to both entertain and inform for others wanting to build this kit eventually. Please let me know if would prefer I make the talk and photos shorter and less frequent.  

So with that said, I'm finalizing the things mentioned in the last post and moving on to the engine nacelles while waiting for the mini-gun barrels. 

The individual engine assemblies are made up of only three pieces each. The back half shows only half of the rear cylinders molded into a flat solid backing. The other main part is the entire front set of cylinders. To complete the assembly is the propeller shaft. 



There is a square slot in the back half of the engine with a corresponding male slot within the engine nacelle for alignment. When the back half of the engine is inserted it looks like this.



From that photo I can see why the model does not have any great detail on the rear engine. Once the front half of the radial engine is added you will not see much of the rear half anyway. Actually once the prop is added, you will not see much of any part of the engine.



So the next item I looked at was the engine cowling. As molded the ends of the rear vents on the cowling would've been around 1 foot thick in scale, so I made the effort to thin them to a more respectable thickness. 



Here are some photos of the engine vents on actual aircraft.





Since I really did not want to make the individual vents from scratch and redesign the mounting points for the engine assemblies I simply thinned them while ensuring the alignment pins and mating surfaces were retained. Here is how they look now, if you look closely there is open air space between them and their wing mount.



I did finish the navigator to complete the last cockpit member. I initially thought I had a problem as I did not have a pilot type crew member remaining from the Hasegawa purchase. Good thing I also bought the ESCI NATO ground crew which has several pilot figures, but none sitting. To solve the problem I used the last remaining figure sitting from the Hasegawa set, modified the sitting position to work in the cockpit, and then lopped his head off. YES, I decapitated him in favor of a replacement head from one of the soft plastic ESCI figures. After some careful manipulation of the parts I managed to fix the last figure without loosing my head (see I made a funny). After the modifications he was painted and added to the cockpit crew (photo coming).

I've also decided that since the bird will be in flight, I will not correct the wheel wells. They will be closed with internal reinforcements to retain their correct position. The same decision was made for the control surfaces on the wings and tail. If I was building the kit on the ground with the clamshell rear doors open I would most likely pose the control surfaces.









Not sure why I showed those photos other than to indicate how they would've looked if the plane was grounded. Perhaps somebody else who might build a 119 can use them for reference (?). Another critical step in the assembly is to ensure the proper pitch and alignment of the main wing. The 119 boxcar has a unique main wing shape. 



The lower section of the main wing that ties the wing to the fuselage did not have any good alignment pins so I decided to align the leading and trailing wing edges. I was fortunate that this worked as the spacing on the fuselage and the wing angles came out OK. There will still be some minor fill between the center and outer wing sections, but I'm OK with that. So with the help of my little buddy I was able to complete the main wing assembly. In the photo the rear tail section is sitting in their positions and not glued to the main wing. Likewise the main wing is sitting on the fuselage as the internal assembly and other items have not been assembled. I need to give a special shout out to my son, Jarrod, for his help in the build process.



Jarrod and I say bye for now but we will be back with more progress soon. Comments are always encouraged.

Ben

I bought one of these to build off eBay a couple weeks ago because of this thread. I think it's pretty cool and enjoy reading about your progress. Especially with you sharing this with your son! 

Awesome build so far!  Nice bike by the way......I love mine. 

Keyda81, I like yours too, brilliant minds tbhink alike (smile)....

My other bike is a factory custom 2016 Harley Dyna Street Bob.

DRUMS01 (Ben)

Well, what have we done since the last update, let me see.....

We finally installed all of the little portal style windows (15 total). We also began cleaning up to internals and cockpit making it ready to sandwich them between the sides of the fuselage. Before we go that far, I mentioned I had to modify and add the last member in the cockpit, the navigator. Here is a view of the cockpit ready to go in the fuselage:





I finally got the 7.62 minigun barrels just to find they appear way to small when compared with the kit parts. I was hoping for more detail in-scale but received something only half the size. Worst yet, I had already removed the kit barrels and lost one of them. With Jarrod's direction and motivation, I had a try at making my own barrels out of fine solder. What you see in the photo below are the original kit barrels in the black plastic, the after market parts in the gray resin (yes they are even smaller than they appear in the picture), and the barrels I made in the middle. After some trimming and barrel bands, the barrels Jarrod and I made look better than either of the others (IMHO). 





I also started on the engines and props while waiting for the gun barrels. As previously mentioned, there will be little to see of the engines once in the cowling and behind the props. At this point here are the painted engines and propellers:





I still plan on adding the silver detail on the black leading edge of the props like the picture below:



I added the flare launcher to the right rear door in preparation of sealing the fuselage. The next thing to finish off is the illuminator to the left rear door. Before I do that I wanted to detail it closer to the actual unit as seen below. If you look close it also shows the control stand for the illuminator just inside the door:



This is what the extra detail looks like before I paint it flat black (note the numerous wires on the face of the illuminator. Once I dry paint the illuminator and dry brush the details we will paint the electrical lines in testers rubber and bend them to resemble the photo and send them to the control stand (photos of the completed process later).



I also received the stand I am going place it on. Originally I ordered the Special Operations crest in the stand but they are sold out. My next choice was for the U.S. Air Force shield; here is what it looks like:



I'm beginning to think about how the Camouflage paint will be applied. Looking at the hard lines between the colors in photos and considering the scale I may hand paint the scheme versus airbrushing it. On the other hand I may mask the hard lines and air brush it anyway. I believe the air brushing will allow me to bring out the raised panel lines better, I guess we will see.

Lots more to come, so stay tuned.....

Ben and Jarrod

This just keeps getting better and better. Fantastic!

It's a shame you'll lose sight of so much of it, but you'll always know it's there. I believe that counts. Otherwise I wouldn't do half of what I sometimes do as well lol.

Keep up this most excellent work!

I would not be able to stand covering up all of this detail! Although much of it will get covered up, this is excellent work that you should be very proud of. 

Hey John, I was thinking about cutting the roof so it could lift off, or making a clear left fuselage, but both would take more time than its worth. I know its in there. If somebody looks through the windows and openings with a light, they can see it too. Besides I have a couple group builds coming up and theres only 24 hours in a day.

We have been very busy trying to close up the big bird. One of the last items to finish before buttoning up the fuselage was the illuminator. Here it is painted, detailed, and fixed in the left tail door of the AC-119:



And here is the aircraft glued, de-seamed, gap filled, ready to prime and paint. The engine nacelles are pressed on so I can paint them prior to adding the engines. The canopy glass is also just sitting in the fuselage as I still need to paint the overhead control panel prior to attachment:



Here is some of the detail I hope to keep through the canopy:



Overall, the main components fit rather well, only needing a slight bit of putty in just a couple spots. Now comes the fun stuff... painting camouflage! I told Jarrod that he gets to help with the airbrushing and he is very excited.

Till next time!

Ben and Jarrod

That's looking really good!!!! I can't wait to see it finished!

That piggy is sprouting a lot of guns!  I was not aware that the AC-119 had an all-Gatling gun armament. Those gunships are so cool looking.

Thanks DDM1795 and Real G. I hope it will show well with my 1/72 AC-130 when it done. Perhaps sometime later I will add a couple other gunship aircraft in 1/72 to complete the set.

UPDATE:

Jarrod and I masked the windows and door openings. He does not like the masking part at all as he was already ready to P-A-I-N-T!. So after some time we mixed (thinned) the Model Master enamel paints and sprayed the initial FSN coded dark green, medium green, and dark tan as called out on the painting diagram. Because of his lack of fine motor skills I had to assist him some but he enjoyed it all the same. Like the masking, Jarrod does not like cleaning the airbrush components after each spray, but he sure does like the airbrush painting of modeling. 







You may have noticed that since the last photos we also posed the plane in an attack vector / angle on the stand. 

I still have much more to do including the painting of the black, gloss coating, decals, pencil panel lines, marking control surface points, another gloss coat to seal the detail, flat coating the top surface, adding the engines and props, adding the small antennas and misc. parts, weathering, rigging the antenna array, final dull coat to seal the weathering, removal of the masking, gloss coating the windows, painting the nose cone, detail painting (exhaust, chipping, stains) and touch-ups, on and on, etc, etc.  

We are glad you are following our build. Please share your thoughts and critiques...

Till next time...

Ben and Jarrod

One more step forward, OK perhaps a couple more steps.......

1) I think I mentioned this much earlier in the build, but this kit has raised panel lines (RPL). I thought that since it was 1/72 it was not a major issue (not as if it were 1/32). So there are no recessed panel lines and no rivets, fabric, or anything but those RPL's. When I was assembling the kit in order to clean up the seams some of the RPL's were removed. Perhaps a better modeler would've kept them while cleaning up the seams (?). Since I am not a fan of RPL anyway, regardless of scale, I was not worried. Prior to the camouflage paint I sanded down most of them to a more acceptable small bump as they looked out of scale anyway. 

So, how will I show the variation of panel lines in 1/72 without looking further out of scale? I decided not to pre-shade them by airbrushing over each RPL as that would be to large in 1/72. My solution was to use a straight edge and a extra fine lead pencil. Once I had them drawn I lightly airbrushed the same color over the lines but not to obscure them, but rather tone them down. Once again Jarrod got bored quickly watching me draw all the panel lines, but he did like using the airbrush to lay down the ghost spray over the top of them. 

While it was drying we looked at more photos of the black paint treatment.

lazy ripple waves


tall even waves


erratic waves up into the cockpit glass


busy even waves:


So the next question is which style do we want on our aircraft? My choice was to merge a couple together. We are going for the lazy even ripple wave in front and something similar but a little busier in the rear. 

Once the camouflage was dry we began masking for the black camouflage. Next was helping Jarrod spray black on the lower fuselage, lower wings, jet engines, and tail. Now we need to let it dry a day or two before we gloss coat it for decals. So, after several hours drawing panel lines, painting over them, masking, and painting the black, this is where we are at the end of the day...

Hopefully, if you stand on one leg, close the left eye, and tilt your head just right, you can see the panel lines in this picture. Oh, and sorry for the cluttered dirty hobby table. I'm getting a new cutting mat as that one is several years and many models old:



And here is a picture of some of the black camouflage. And yes, that is a very old Testers airbrush cleaning station behind the model; then no, there is nothing in the Sprite can except Sprite:



Well, not much more to do at the moment than wait, so we say good bye for now.

Ben and Jarrod

What an awesome build. Every time you mentioned not super detail this i staarted giggling! If this isn't super fetailed I'll be watching closely for your C-130 build  Jarrod always looks like he's having fun! Must love modeling with you!

Thanks Mongoose.... I had no intention of going the distance I did on this one. I just see things or research stuff and feel the need to include it in the builds. And TES to your comment that Jarrod does indeed enjoy modeling with me. The more I can figure ways to include him in the builds, the more he enjoys being part of it. 

Jarrod and I finally got the flat arylic laid down on the model, pulled the masking, added the little tid-bits, touch-up painted, chipped some of the surface, and added exhaust marks. Other than the painting the nav and landing lights we are calling this DONE. 



He is very proud of the result although I would call it a three footer.....















Thanks everyone for following us through the build. Now, what should I build next(?), I have a good idea. Until then here are some bonus photos of the real thing in action:







As always, your comments and critique are welcome.



As always, your comments and critique are welcome.

Ben and Jarrod

That turned out great!  Half tempted to do one myself, but I'll have to stick to the AC-47. 

Thanks Keyda81... Jarrod really enjoyed building it with me. Actually I was more satisfied with his reaction than the build itself. I like the idea of the AC-47. I need that one to complete my set:

I know they have extra details for the 1/48 AC-47, but I'm not so sure if there is anything for the 1/72 version, do you have one already?

Here's an AC-47 in action:

Ben

I do have the AC-47 already in the stash.  Just completed the AC-130A a few weeks ago.

That is an awesome and spectacular build log! My youngest is on the autistic spectrum, and brilliant, like Jerod probably is. 

I wish he showed any interest in my hobby. Lucky dog.

Until this build I knew nothing about this aircraft. Fascinating subject and a great finish. I loved watching you build up the details. Nicely done sir.

Fantastic job on this build and what a great father/son project!

Mike

And what scale is the AC-47 Keyda? I saw your 1/72 AC-130 along with the 1/144; now all you need is the 1/48 version!

Thanks Brindos and Buckeye2 for the kind comments. You are right in that I am lucky to have a son like Jarrod who keeps things "real".

Ben

DRUMS01

And what scale is the AC-47 Keyda? I saw your 1/72 AC-130 along with the 1/144; now all you need is the 1/48 version!

Thanks Brindos and Buckeye2 for the kind comments. You are right in that I am lucky to have a son like Jarrod who keeps things "real".

Ben

 

It's the 1/48.  I don't have room in my house for another 1/48 Herc!  They are huge.  That kit has gotten hard to find, and rather pricey when you do.

Nice picture GM...

Now, is it Dien Bien Phu?