Roden 1/32 Stearman PT-17

JimRice · June 26, 2020

I was really excited about this release seeing as how I've long been a Stearman fan. I put two other projects on hold to jump in and run though this build, using the other two projects for filler when I had to wait on this one for paint to dry or glue to cure.

I grew up around Stearmans. My dad had Stearman dusters before he sold and moved into airplane built for agricultural aerial application. In the mid-70s, we began restoring old crop duster back into stock two seat military trainers from WWII...the same as my dad trained in. We rebuilt three complete Stearmans and did many partial restorations or components for them.

As a teenager in the later seventies, I can remember Scale Modeler talking about Hasegawa possibly releasing a 1/32 Stearman and AT-6...I was so excited. Little did I know I'd wait almost 40 years for it to happen. So when the Roden Stearman was available, I ordered two...to go with the two Silver Wings Stearman I have but haven't yet built. I'm already like a kid waiting for Christmas for the ICM release about to come out.

I started this kit mid-May and have had it mostly completed when I began the push to finish my Aeroclub Pitts which I just posted in another thread. It was one of three completions that all pretty much happened about the same time. Quarantine has given me a bunch more time to build than I normally have.

When I began this build, the idea was to build it to appear as my dad's primary Stearman duster would have appeared when it rolled out of the factory in 1940. I was well along in my build and doing some research when I found out dad's old duster had been an Navy N2S-1, not a PT-17. Oops. So, I chose marking to represent the first Stearman I actually flew...I wasn't old enough to have my license to fly the ones I helped restore and was gone away to school when the last one was built and sold. This is the one I was checked out in, by my dad in 1985 while home on leave from the Army.

Rigging is 0.015 steel piano wire. Kit decals for the most part except the red circle in middle of star. Kit supplied "meatball" was too large and touched the blue field. I used center from some Yellow Wings extras I had from my Boeing F4B-4 build going on at the same time. The white 498 on fuselage sides and accessory cowling were masks cut using a Cameo cutter and Studio software...my first foray into painted markings, which was a trail run for my Aeroclub Pitts.