1/72 Aeroclub, Pilatus PC-7 - Viper

by Juergen Klinglhuber

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Here is my second Pilatus PC-7 entry.  During the last few years’ cooperation between the European community partners and Austria also affected military scopes and more and more airplanes are flown abroad for training purpose and operations.  So the Airforce was looking for an international tactical designation for the PC-7 they have in service.  Finally they decided to call it “Viper”.

Per coincidence 2003 came along with two other events related to the Airforce.  First was, that the PC-7 was serving now for 20 years as a trainer aircraft for the Austrian Airforce and second was the “Airpower 2003” air-show that took place at the PC-7 “home” airbase, the flight school Center Hinterstoisser in Zeltweg.  So the decision was made to prepare one out of the 16 PC-7 trainers with a special paint scheme to celebrate the anniversary and to have a real eye-catcher for the air-show spectators. Finally the “Viper” was presented to the public on June 23th during the air-show. Since that time the Viper is showing its teeth in national and international airspace.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  

Seeing that aircraft in real made me sure instantly: I want to build that baby with that paint scheme for my model display! I knew that there was once a limited resin kit of the PC-7 from the IMPS Austria branch, because I have already built one. But this was years ago and – of course – the online shop was empty. Finally I found a PC-7 multimedia kit from Aeroclub/UK. Okay, so that was step 1. Now I needed decals with the special markings. Browsing PC-7 sites in the internet I finally found the homepage of the artist that made the design of that Viper paint scheme.  Bingo! I contacted him and instantly received perfect jepg artworks.  With those pictures I was able to create the decals for the fuselage by myself.  I used Photoshop and normal white decal paper to make the prints.  The writing on the wings was the next problem – First there was that tricky fade-out area and second I was unable to find a printer that could print “white” on a transparent decal paper.  In absence of any better ideas I decided to airbrush it. Well, what you see now is the outcome of my 3rd attempt.  It’s still not perfect, but I was not sure if the 4th, 5th, or 6th running would turn out any better. Same as on my first PC-7 project I had to put a lot of weight into the nose section to prevent the A/C from being a Cobra, because the model had a strong ambition to become a tail-sitter.

Finally I think it was worth to spend a lot of time for research on internet and in front of my workbench to create this colourful PC-7 in a “not everyday painting”.

I hope you like it too – best regards

Juergen

Photos and text © by Juergen Klinglhuber