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Lockheed C-121C Constellation "Columbine III" [Revell 1:144] - Complete


Alex

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Having spent a fairly intensive 3 weeks on my GB P-51D, I decided that I needed a short break from scratchbuilding tiny details.   So I'm going to give in to the airliner frenzy that Kev's started and do a quick OOB project.

 

The C-121C is the military version of the L1049 Super Constellation.  On Kev's suggestion I located a copy of the Revell kit rather than doing the Minicraft one.

pmo03n09j

 

This kit comes with two schemes - the general purpose military transport shown above and Dwight Eisenhower's personal Presidential transport, "Columbine", which I will be doing.

 

Four sprues of weird silvery plastic, plus some clear parts.

 

poMAjWfpj

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This is a used kit, and the guy I bought it from let me know ahead of time that there was one broken part.  Fortunately this broken prop is still attached to the sprue, so I was able to nudge the blade back into position and hit it with a drop of extra thin cement.  I'll let it harden off for a couple days and then *carefully* cut it loose and hope...

 poD0Ij2Vj

 

First order of business is to delete some windows.  The kit was designed to build the civilian L1049, so it has all of the passenger windows.  DDE's plane had a number of them blanked off.  To fill them I cut sections of the clear plastic window strips that came with the kit, and CA glued them in.  I then applied more CA over the outside to seal the edges and build up past the fuselage contour.

poptbSSSj

 

It's not easy to see in the photo above, but about half of the windows need to be eliminated this way. 

I'm counting this as still "OOB" since the kit instructions tell you to do it ;-)

 

A quick shot of accelerator and they sand down pretty easily.

pmZMAxSbj

 

The windows that remain as windows I'll do with Krystal Klear at the end of the project.  For that to work well the edges of the window openings need to be quite thin, to avoid a sunken appearance to the final window.  So I need to do something about this:

 

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A quick hit with a rotary tool burr:

 

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And you get this:

 

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Which should work better.

 

The kit supplies a rudimentary flight deck, which I'm not going to use (I'll paint the inside of the cockpit transparency black before gluing it in), so now I just need to add some lead weight and close the fuselage up.

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Nice choice Alex (I always blame Kev...it's normally his fault anyhow! lol :) ); I look forward to watching your progress. I will probably join this madness later this year with my old Revell 1/115 scale P-3C Orion kit once my long-term commitments are out of the way.

 

Cheers

 

Derek

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2 hours ago, easixpedro said:

I like it! 

I did an internship at Pima many years ago, and Columbine was on display there.  Being a Coloradan, I had an affinity for her and that wonderful nose art.  Looking forward to seeing it come together!

-Peter

I believe that Columbine (which my memory says is Columbine II) is now on the east coast being further restored.  

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Memory does serve.  Columbine II was flown from AZ to VA in 2016 (after a pretty serious airworthyness refit) to undergo complete restoration.  It's very nice to see people keeping these old machines flyable.  Here's a spectacular shot from the flight east:

 

pm5cFqOEj

 

Unfortunately this isn't the exact plane I'm doing (Columbine III), but great to see nonetheless.

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  • Alex changed the title to Lockheed C-121C Constellation "Columbine III" [Revell 1:144]
3 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Good to see this one hit the bench so quickly, Alex! Glad I could inspire you in some way.

 

Kev

I’m now trying to resist getting sucked into completely grinding down and rescribing the vertical tails to get something approaching scale thin trailing edges...

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Some good news is the the wing-to-fuselage fit on this beast is really pretty good.

pnHVbYXqj

 

Plus I've managed to get the fuselage seams pretty much cleaned up and rescribed.  I need to hit it with a coat of primer to make sure I'm not missing anything.

 

However, the central vertical tail on the kit is just unacceptable.

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That's got to be a scale thickness of 3-4 feet!  

 

By way of comparison the side tails are not as bad.

 

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So I scribed over the features in the center tail to make them much deeper (and I should have tried to do it more precisely than this...) 

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So that their location would not be lost as I filed, sanded, filed, sanded to reduce the thickness.  I had to be careful because it does have a small hollow inside - it would not have been good to break through...

 

Afterwards - much more comparable.

pmpbSNcNj

 

 

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My kit was missing one of the little stub antennas so I built a replacement for it.

 

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This bird had a lot of little antennas, pitot tubes, etc decorating it.  In addition to the one I had to make, I did the four antenna standoffs on the underside out of 0.5 mm brass rod, because I was sure that the tiny styrene pieces that came in the kit would never survive.

 

poKF2aXtj

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Also good is that the tailplanes are a clean enough fit that I am going to be able to paint them separately and install them later.  Any shape complexity that I can eliminate gives me a better shot a clean gloss black undercoat for the NMF...

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I took some photos of the tailplanes and used them to whip up masks on the Silhouette that make the curved leading edges easier to do.

 

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It worked pretty well.

 

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A very Presidential propellor.  This was *fiddly* to do but I'm sure I could not have gotten as good a result with the kit decals.

 

potoY3Qqj

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