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
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