1/72 Hasegawa S-3B Viking

"Santa Tracker"

by Thomas Choy

--------------------

Christmas 2006

 

Well, it's been a while since I put anything up so I thought I'd give you all something for Christmas - a Navy bird!!! Sammi and Rusty, take a deep breath.....it's "only" a Navy Bird.

Anyway, I've been working on this one for almost two years now.  I first saw the decals on
TwoBobs, and I knew I had to snap those up right away.  Trouble was, I could never get my hands on a decent S-3B kit (the S-3As were available but there were some external differences, and I couldn't get my hands on a buddy refueling pod) so the decals sat in my stash for a while. Last Christmas season I walked into a Hobbytown and the kit, with markings for Navy 1, were on sale, so I picked up the kit. The plane has almost the same markings (both aircraft are from VS-35, with slight variations in tail art and different BuNo). I started on it three weeks before last Christmas, intending to get it done for the 25th. Unfortunately I never did get done because my family was here and my mindset wasn't in the mood for doing anything, so it just sat in the corner for a while after I had completed the basic fuselage and wings.

I started again three weeks ago after I had moved into my new place. During this time the model had been dropped, and had things dropped on it - a box fell on the port tail, breaking it off, and something else fell on the canopy, leaving a crack on the inside. I have yet to replace the canopy and I was trying to get it finished for the club's Christmas-themed group build. The crack's barely visible but I'll definitely need to replace it if I want to make it presentable for a contest.

It's pretty much out of the box, except for the ejection seats (I added pull handles out of wire and also made seatbelts) and tinted the canopy (which turned out to be a good thing since I botched the pull handles!)

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  

  

I had to repaint it several times, due to the weathering being too dirty, and then too clean, and then too dirty again - I wound up having to reshade the panel lines, and have the lines barely show through the top layer of paint. After the usual gloss coats and decals (which were tricky by the way, because a lot of the decals on that sheet were multiple pieces, which also meant a lot of touching up was required) I put on the final gloss coat and weathered the panel lines by putting in a thick coat of oil paints, let them dry, then wiped them off perpendicular to the direction of the line. The final wipe was done in the direction of the airflow. Any other panel lines that were sanded off were redone after a flat coat was applied, by drawing the lines on with a black drafting pen and then blended into the paint with a cotton bud. The idea is to create an optical illusion that all the panel lines are still intact. The kit features raised panel lines, by the way. The rest of the weathering was done with brown paints (for the streaks coming out of the moving surfaces), brown, black or gray chalks for miscellaneous dirt and smoke stains.

If anyone's planning on building a Hase S-3B with the buddy pod, keep this in mind - the buddy pod's made of metal, not resin. So make sure there's plenty of nose weight, and use CA glue to set the landing gear - the weight of the pod is enough to make the landing gear sag if the glue has not set properly. I also had to drill a deeper mounting hole on the pod, and replace the kit pylon's mounting pin with rods to make sure the pod did not fall off under its own weight.

This is a tough one, despite the simple lines of the kit. A lot of the difficulty came from the age of the mold, and some parts either did not want to line up properly or did not fit as well, necessitating a copious amount of putty. On the other hand you don't see a lot of S-3s built, and this sure has a very attractive and funny noseart on it that is sure to get someone's attention!

Thomas

Photos and text © by Thomas Choy