1/72 Hasegawa Lockheed S-3B Viking

Gallery Article by Rodrigo Rendon on May 18 2010

 

When my good friend Tom "Witts" Janowitz told me his favorite jet was the Lockheed S-3 Viking I thought of the kit that had been sitting in my closet for the last 5 years. I decided to dust it off and see if I could surprise my co-worker. The kit is pretty easy to assemble. Kudos to Hasegawa for giving the option of positioning the flaps in the deployed position. I cut and positioned the slats with plasticard. I painted the aircraft with Model Master acrylic light ghost grey. Weathering was done with pastel chalks. Nothing brings out a good weathered navy jet like pastel chalks and a little creative ingenuity. The canopy comes in clear so it was blasted with Tamiya's smoke. After lots of thinking I decided to go with the kit's decals. VS-21 CAG colors are really eye catching! 

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The display base is a wood base I bought at Michaels art store and retails for about $10.00 USD. I used Mr. Hobby's Mr. Surfacer 1200 to simulate the anti-skid coating on the flight deck. I prefered to use Mr. Surfacer 500 as it is thicker and looks more course when it dries, but 500 product is getting more difficult to find in my local hobby store. Simply brush it on to replicate the anti-slip coating applied to carrier decks. The aircraft tie-down pad eyes and chains are from White Ensign Model's and I highly recommend this brass set to bring out the accuracy in your model. The deck was painted with Tamiya's German Grey and weathered with white pastel chalk. The white landing stripe was weathered with black pastel chalk.

Overall this is a good kit, Hasegawa even provided a lead buddy re-fueling tank. My friend Tom and a handful of my co-workers were pretty impressed with the final product. Tom expressed a look only a woman can see in a man! 

Rodrigo Rendon

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Photos and text © by Rodrigo Rendon