1/72 Testors/ Italeri Douglas C-47/ R4D

Gallery Article by Micah Reysio-Cruz on Mar 4 2010

 

Greetings from the Philippines! Just dropping by my favorite modelling website to share a few pics of a sentimental favorite - the Testors/Italeri C-47 kit in 1/72 scale.

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This kit and I go a long way back. In the early 80's my family used to go bargain hunting in the shops that surrounded the former US Air Force base at Clark Field, north of Manila. Tons of consumer goods unloaded by base personnel were for sale in large flea-market stalls.  You could buy anything from imported grocery goods to flight suits to American cars in those days. I even have a friend who went home with an ejection seat from an F-101 Voodoo! Being then a plucky eight-year old, I was keen only on one thing - model kits. This was the very first kit I ever felt I had to have. Maybe it was the glaring shark's mouth markings, or maybe it was because there were still plenty of C-47s active in the Philippines back then and I often saw them plodding past my house. Luckily, dad forked over the 50 or so pesos for the kit. I built it as quickly as I could, hand painting it in whatever was available in my small stash of model paints. The goal was always to get it into action with my toy soldiers as quickly as possible. Predictably, though I loved that old C-47, it did not last very long. Thus, you can imagine my delight when I saw it on sale at a hobby shop near my office. (The 50 peso kit was now worth 500 pesos) I quickly snapped it up and triumphantly showed it to my family - a piece of my childhood! they scratched their heads as if to say "When did you actually start acting like an adult?" True, although I'm a lawyer by profession, I'll always be a big kid who keeps his stash of model planes comfortingly close to his legal books and laptop. 

The kit is one of the few kits available for the C-47 in this scale, though many different versions are available. Modellers who have built it will probably agree, it's basic, but a good representation of the aircraft. It doesn't have too much detail inside, but there isn't much to see anyway, once you close up the fuselage. I wanted to add detail where I could, so I used mostly stretched sprue and plastic sheet to recreate the typical antennae layout of the R4D on the box front. I also added landing light assemblies within the clear lenses on the wings.  The original Testors issue of the kit had a picture of the actual aircraft while in service, my latter purchase did not. 

Curiously, while I was unable to find any period pictures of Bu No 50811 on the Internet, I did discover that it has been repainted in D-Day colors and exhibited in a US Museum.  A fair amount of fitting and sanding goes a long way into making the kit look 'right' when put together.  Painting was made much easier by applying a protective coat of future floor polish after every color was sprayed on.  The decals were a bit thick, but settled well after lots of decal softener.  All in all a fun build, and well worth the 24 hours spent in construction and finishing.

Thanks for dropping by to look! Long live ARC!

Micah Reysio-Cruz

Photos and text © by Micah Reysio-Cruz