Hi, all!
(Fair warning: I started writing this piece 9 or 10 months ago. I’m busy at work—as always. Well, maybe busier—our Senior Technical Writer retired early last year, making me “it” when it comes to dealing with our largest customer...)
I’ve been busy at the real job of late, but I’ve almost managed to dig myself out of the workload. I have an article just about ready for Prime Time on Paco Four Zero, so look for that to hit the interwebs shortly.
Meanwhile, I’ve still managed to keep some hobby-related work going...
Back in the mid 1980’s, FineScale Modeler ran an article by Ron Lowry on scratchbuilding a Pilatus PC-6 Turbo-Porter. At the same time, I had discovered an offshoot of Project Gunship called Credible Chase.
Credible Chase was started to explore the use of armed light utility short takeoff and landing aircraft in Southeast Asia. The program was designed to add mobility and firepower to the South Vietnamese Republic of Vietnam Air Force (RVNAF) in a relatively short time within a small budget. The United States Air Force settled on two aircraft: The Pilatus PC-6 Turbo-Porter and the Helio HST-550 Stallion. Several examples of each aircraft were leased and entered into a trial program called PAVE COIN. The Pilatus aircraft was designated AU-23A and the Stallion was the AU-24A.
The AU-23A was based on the Fairchild-built PC-6/C2-H2. Powered by a Garrett/AirResearch TPE 331-101F turboprop engine, the aircraft was modified with four hardpoints under the wings to carry stores such as rocket pods, bombs of varying size, SUU-11 gun pods, napalm canisters, or propaganda pods. The cabin could be fitted with a pedestal mounted, manually aimed General Electric side-firing 20mm 3-barreled M197 electric cannon – the same cannon used in the later AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters. An XM93 Minigun mount was also tested. In short, it was envisaged as a “mini-gunship”.
PAVE COIN revealed problems that should have been evident from the start. The aircraft was susceptible to damage from even small arms, had a slow operating speed and low operating altitude, and lack of crew protection. Despite that, 14 AU-23A’s were ordered for further testing. The final aircraft from the initial order was delivered in July 1972. By that time, the situation in Vietnam had changed. President Nixon’s “Vietnamization” plans meant U.S. troops were being sent home. Instability withing the South Vietnamese government put their military in a shambles. As a result, the surviving AU-23A’s, still in the United States, were put into storage until it was decided to sell them to Thailand for their border police. An additional 20 aircraft were ordered, and delivered by 1976. Of the 34 aircraft delivered, 14 of them are still in use in Thailand.
So, with the research done, I decided that I “needed” an AU-23A in the collection. This was back in my strictly 1/48th scale days, and of course there was no kit of any type in existence. As I read the FSM article, I realized that I could scratchbuild a model. I made several copies of the included plans (which were published in 1/48th scale—Ron’s model was in 1/24th scale) and began my quest. I managed to get as far as having a nearly complete wing and fuselage before several moves made me shut the project down and put it away. I will always remember the advice I received from John Alcorn at the 1999 IPMS/USA National Convention as we were chatting about our current projects. Knowing it was my first fully scratchbuilt models, he was full of advice. He asked about my progress, and I described my attempts at making the wing. “How many tries did it take?”, he asked. “Three”, was my answer. “You’re just about on schedule, then”, he said with a grin. At the time, his second book, The Master Scratchbuilders, and just come out, where he detailed how many attempts he made before he arrived an an acceptable wing for his DH.9 project...if memory serves, third time was the charm for him, too…
Just when you think you'll be resigned to scratchbuilding or using a crude limited run kit, every now and again the modeling Gods smile upon you. That was the case with 1/48th scale Turbo-Porters when, in 2009, the Ukrainian company Roden Models announced a series of 1/48th scale Pilatus Porters. The kits hit the store shelves in 2010, and I bought not only the AU-23A kit (actually, two, but one was later donated to a show raffle), but also the Air America PC-6/C2-H2 and a PC-6/B2-H2 kits as well—another interest in Southeast Asian air operations happened to be Air America and the other small airlines associated with the U.S. Government (in this case, Continental Air Services, Inc., or CASI). And, in a state of delerium after finishing Paco Four Zero, I started building all three kits. Concurrently.
All three are complete now, which means an article on them is also in the works.
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Fast forward to the present: there is another project already in work: a trio of 1/48th scale P-51D Mustangs. I had a pair of the new (well, they were new back in 2017 when I bought them) Airfix kits on the pile, and after watching Jen Wright at Jenesis Designs and Modelcraft build the kit for her YouTube series “More Modeling for Beginners” (and which I had intended to build along with Jen, but the Turbo-Porters got in the way), I decided to have a go. One will be Don Strait’s “Jersey Jerk”, and the other will be “Miss Miami” (which is often said to have been the mount of Ernest “Feeb” Fiebelkorn, but was actually assigned to Carp. R.D. Jones).
And, in a weekend session of spring cleaning, I came across a first-issue Tamiya P-51D from 1995. I bought it new when it came into the shop along with the also new Kendall Model Company (KMC) Merlin Engine. I had initially intended to build it out of the box using thre kit decals for Col. Leonard “Kit” Carson’s “Nooky Booky IV” and place the Merlin on a stand next to the airplane. In the 30 (!) interceding years, that plan has changed. I’m still going to put the Merlin on a stand, but the airplane will be one of the P-51D’s assigned to the Florida National Guard in 1947.
I’ll build “Nooky Booky IV” in the near future with Part 2 (or maybe Part 3) of “Mustang Madness”—I have two P-51B’s to build (Howard’s “Ding Hao!” and Don Lopez’s “Lope’s Hope), and an F-6 (“Li’l Margaret, maybe) and a P-51K—you guessed it, the P-51K will be “Nooky Booky IV”. It will replace an Otaki kit I built in 1984 using Microscale sheet 48-39 back in the day. Yeah, it had accuracy issues, but back in the day many modelers “in the know” either didn’t know or didn’t care—I certainly didn’t. Anyway, Eduard’s P-51K has the markings in the box, I’ll probably use them if they behave…
And I have one of the initial release “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” kits that I’d like to build, too...
So yeah, by the time “Mustang Madness” is over, I should have seven or eight Mustangs done in short order. Stay tuned.
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I’ve been keeping up with the hobby on YouTube, too. There are a lot of talented folks out there producing content, and I manage to look at quite a bit of it. And, of course, there are some things I like, and some I cringe at…
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Using a big word where a small word works better
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Using the wrong word or nomenclature
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Not understanding what you are speaking about.
The worst example of the first two points is the use of the word fitment where the presenter means fit. From Mr. Webster’s book:
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fitment (noun): furnishing, fixture, cabinetry
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fit (noun): the degree of closeness between surfaces in an assembly of parts.
So, when describing how well the parts go together (or how badly they don’t), the word is fit.
And yes, I understand that some folks who use this don’t count English as their first language, but it seems to come most often from folks in the UK—and the definition for fitment listed above even noted it was “chiefly British”…
Another violation of the second point (and the third point entirely) is calling something a “thingie” because you can’t be bothered to try and learn at least a little bit about your subject matter. That “little bent thingie” under the wing is a pitot (pronounced PEE-toh, not PIT-ot) tube, and it is part of the aircraft’s air data system that provides altitude, airspeed, and rate of climb information to the pilots. It’s no secret, the answer is out there—just take a few minutes and find it. This grates with me because ask any scale modeler and they’ll tell you that they are the most detail oriented people on the planet.
An offshoot of this? “I attached the tail wings”, or “I installed the front nose landing gear”. Unless you are dealing with a canard-type aircraft, “tail wings” do not exist—and even at that, they’re still simply “wings”. And unless you have the goofiest airplane in the world, the nose is *always* at the front of the airplane.
Oh, and there is a difference between a canopy and a windscreen, too…
Incorrect nomenclature? There is a huge difference between an F4F, an F4-F, and an F-4F. One is the Grumman Wildcat, one is nonsense, the other is a variant of the McDonnell Douglas Phantom. I covered this topic a while back in an article for the IPMS/Mid-Carolina Newsflash.
What brought this on? My second career as a Technical Writer. I write aerospace maintenance manuals where each and every detail—no matter how large or small—is important. Leave out a critical detail, and the technician using the manual might find the job is more difficult, if not impossible. Leave a step out of a test procedure, or incorrectly identify something in the results, and we will hear from the user. So we strive to get it correct the first time, every time. And as I said, scale modelers claim to be the most detail-oriented people on the planet—we should make sure we live up to that claim, shouldn’t we?
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That’s all for now. I will make an honest effort to drag out the photographic equipment and get photos of all the projects from last year ready for posting in the next few weeks. Stay tuned...
Thanks for reading. Be good to one another, and, as always, I bid you Peace...