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Waco CG-4 Glider Build for the Cavalcade of Wings
The Cavalcade of Wings display at the
Fort Sumner matchbook
cover, front and back from the war
Back to the model.
Here is a photo of the old model.
As you can see, the
fuselage, which is made from some solid black cast material, disintegrated, as
if it had taken a direct hit!
This was not due to physical mistreatment but internal stresses finally tearing
it apart. Usually I can
salvage/repair models for the Cavalcade of Wings, but I decided to just start
over. I don't know how old this
original was but it has raised lettering on the under surface of a wing, so it
was an old kit. Fortunately Italeri
made one in 1/72, a 1975 mold, and I snagged one on eBay.
It has a rudimentary interior (seats along the wall) and a basic cockpit.
Since this is for a museum, and most patrons would likely not understand
why the glider's nose was "broken," I built it with the swing-up cockpit down so
there was little reason to doll-up the interior.
You could drive a Jeep into one of these!
I would have done more with the cockpit had I realized how visible it is
with the greenhouse windshield - painted with Future!
The actual build was
simple right out of the box. While
the Wacos we see in the D-Day movies have the invasion recognition stripes, the
trainers did not have them (preserving my stash of black and white trim film).
I resisted filling the wing-fuselage join since these had a big gap.
They were kit planes with removable wings.
The Italeri decals
disintegrated on contact with water, so I had to use some stars from my stash.
Since the stars on the demolished models were the early ones without the
"paddles," I removed the paddles with a little surgery.
They are not quite right, since the tips of the stars should go all the
way to the edge, but since the viewers will be feet away, and unaware of this
detail, good enough. Apparently,
some trainers didn't have numbers or they were painted out, so I didn't worry
over the disintegrated tail numbers.
Here's a photo of a training wreck with numbers painted over.
You can barely see the old numbers under the paint.
One final thing about these gliders is that while
there are landing gear, there are also skids for when the wheels tear off in the
soft soil of the farmer's fields in
So, here's the final product.
You can see the skids under the cockpit.
See what I mean about the visibility through
the greenhouse windshield?
Oh, and there's a window in the top of the
fuselage as well as small portholes in the side.
I invite all of you to build for the Cavalcade of
Wings. Museum builds get far more
"views" than they do on your own shelf.
Webmaster's Note: The last 3 pictures of the model were added into Mark's article by the Webmaster after the March 2022 contest.
A
I first learned of Major Fisher, who retired
from the Air Force at the grade of Colonel in 1974, from a Caracal 1/48
decal sheet on the A-1E Skyraider, which had markings for his plane.
Wanting to know more, I read Colonel Fisher's 2004 autobiography,
"Beyond the Call of Duty," which was a highly readable and enjoyable
book about Colonel Fisher's career, Skyraider operations in Vietnam and
the circumstances of the famous rescue. I was hooked, so had to build a
model of his plane.
When it comes to modeling options for 1/48
A-1E Skyraiders, there's only one game in town, the four-decades-old
Matchbox kit, re-released by Revell in 2013. It was very much a creature
of its times, with toy-like folding wings and rudimentary
representations of ordnance. But the good news was, it was generally
accurate in shape and the cockpit was OK, at least with the canopy
closed. So I got to work. Since I wanted a completed model I kept AMS to
a minimum but still made some basic fixes and corrections for the sake
of accuracy. One thing I didn't do was effect the suggested wing swap
surgery with a 1/48 A-1H Skyraider kit; that was never going to look
right and was more trouble than it's worth. Here's some of the work I
did to the kit:
* Added seatbelts to the kit's non-ejection seats, correct for this plane
in 1966.
* Added a reflector gunsight to the instrument panel coaming.
* Added a prop, wheels and wing pylons from a Monogram 1/48 A-1H Skyraider
kit.
* Added "iron bomb" ordnance, mostly 500 pounders, from the spares box.
* Added a variety of antennas to the aircraft spine, to match period
photos of A-1E's.
* Shortened the landing gear legs to give the
model a proper "sit."
* Scraped and sanded the heavy side braces off
the windscreen, which were not present on the real plane, and added
internal braces.
* Added a scratchbuilt windshield wiper.
* Added a correct centerline tank
and pylon from the Tamiya Skyraider kit.
The
biggest job was closing the folding wings but the task wasn't too bad,
just tedious. When I got most of the work on the kit finished, I painted
the model in an overall gray color, similar to USAF ADC Gray, which was
correct for this early batch of Skyraiders, and added silver leading
edges to the wings and horizontal stabilizers. Painting the "Blue Room"
canopy was fun and easy.
The Caracal decals went on nicely, and were
accurate for the plane, but make sure to check photos of real planes
from the period to get placement correct.
I was proud of the model when I finished it,
not because it's a contest-winner, but because I had to put some work
into the model to get a nice replica, to honor a great aviator and
American hero, Colonel Fisher, who passed away in 2014. With each year,
the Vietnam War passes further out of human memory, and as modelers we
can do our part to make sure history isn't forgotten. If you get a
chance during the coming year, check your shelves for that Vietnam War
model subject you overlooked, and like me, take a chance to learn
something new about the story of the war and the men who served in it.
North Korean Prop Fighters in the
Korean War
By Mike
Blohm
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This article covers
the model builds and a short history of two Soviet-built propellor-driven
fighters that saw service in the North Korean Air Force in the Korean War. These
include the Yakevlov Yak-9, NATO-reporting name "Frank" and the Lavochkin La-11
"Fang." Model kits involved include the 1/72 scale Encore Models Yak-9D and the
MPM La-9 / 11. These models were intended for ASM's "Korean War 80th
Anniversary" display at the 2020 New Mexico State Fair, which unfortunately was
a victim of the covid virus situation that shut down all of our planned displays
for 2020. Since I did get both models eventually built for our club's
Virtual Contests, I decided that doing an article on them would be a good
counterpart to the "F-86 Sabre Aces of the Korean War" article that I did at the
beginning of the year.
The North Korean Air
Force - the Korean People's Air Force (KPAF) - had Yak-9s, La 9s, and La-11
aircraft in its inventory during the Korean War. This article includes short
histories of the aircraft, their operational history during the war, and the
builds of the two kits.
Aircraft
Histories
The Yakovlev Yak-9 was a single-engine single-seat
multipurpose fighter aircraft used by the Soviet Union in World War II and
through 1950. It was the last in a line of propeller-driven Yakovlev fighters
that included the Yak-1, Yak-3, and Yak-7. The Yak 3 was the favored mount of
the French Normandie-Nieman Escadrille that flew with the Soviets during WW II.
The Yak-9 started arriving in Soviet fighter aviation regiments in late 1942 and
played a major role in taking air superiority over the Luftwaffe's Focke-Wulf Fw
190 and Messerschmitt Bf 109G fighters during the Battle of Kursk in the summer
of 1943. The Yak-9D was a long-range version of the Yak-9. Further development
of the design included the Yak-9U in 1943 and the Yak-9P in 1946. which was the
most advanced. Some sources state that the Yak-9 was the equivalent of, or
superior to the P-51D Mustang. The Yak-9 remained in roduction from 1942 to
1948, with 16,769 total built (14,579 during the war). Many of the surplus
Yak-9Ps were supplied in 1949 to satellite nations in the Soviet bloc, including
North Korea.