1/72  Italeri C-47

"Band of Brothers" 

by Victor Küster Tavares

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This is my 1/72 Italeri "Band of Brothers" C- 47 kit. All panel lines are recessed, but I think the scribing is quite heavily done. Most of the pieces fit well with only a big gap between the wings attachment point with fuselage halves, which was filled with 0,2 mm plastic strip, and sanded. The kit was basically built out of the box with some extra modifications. The cargo section includes basic benches moulded on the slick floor, so, I cut away the cargo floor, and replace it with a new one, donated from old ESCI DC-3 kit. Also instrument panels, seatbelts, centre console, throttles and knobs, were made, with very fine electric wire, which is now completely invisible, but I know it´s there!

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There is no stringer or rib detail on the fuselage sides, so I have to scratchbuilt all these details, with evergreen plastic strips to represent internal structure.  The exhausts ends were carefully drilled out, doing this really makes a convincing look of them. By the way, make a hole in the roof, near by the cockpit area for the astrodome, because there is no aperture for it.

All transparencies are quite good and useable, but instead of using them, I chose to make a new ones with a 0,05 mm acetate sheet.  A new windshield  and an astrodome as well, are home-made vac-u-form acetate copy. The rest of the model was usually assembled.  No big deal.  The painting job includes a pre-shading panel lines with flat black enamel and airbrushed " L4" nose code and " E"  tail code as well, with Tamiya acrylics  XF-2 Flat white.  Neutral gray for underside, and Tamiya XF-62 olive drab with a two drops of  XF-10 Flat brown was used to paint the model.  Hope you like it! Many thanks to Heliandro Abreu Rosa MD, for the amazing photos.  Thanks Doc!

Victor

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Photos and text © by Heliandro Abreu Rosa and Victor Küster Tavares