Sunday 7 June 2020

Italeri 1/72 Lockheed MC-130H Hercules

My son was visiting me the other day and I asked him if he could bring the rest of my built up models that were still in the loft at my ex-wifes' house.
I was mainly after an Airfix 1/72 Canberra that I converted many years ago and a couple of other models but in the box was an old Italeri 1/72 C-130E/H that I had converted to a MC-130H configuration about 10 years or so ago using a Flightpath conversion set.
I had completely forgotten about this build as it was one of those I lost interest in for various reasons, mainly due to dropping it after it was painted and breaking a wing off as I recall.  I did glue the wing back on and repainted it but the join was still visible so it got put in a box in the loft and quietly forgotten about.
Looking at the model today I had actually put a lot of work into it originally such as offsetting the elevators and rudder, rescribing all the panel lines, fitting replacement resin engines as well as converting it an MC-130H with the funny nose.
I found most of the kit parts that would finish the model as these were bagged and put in the spares box shortly after shelving the project, what I can't find are the undercarriage doors as I might have thrown them away for some stupid reason. Anyway the shapes of the doors are pretty simple so I should be able to fabricate new ones.
I have just ordered a Wolfpak Decal sheet that features two MC-130H's and may get a resin wheel set as the Italeri ones are pretty bland. The colour scheme I originally chose was the three-tone 'European 1' as I was hoping to do an MC-130 that I saw at an airshow in the mid-90's that featured the well known 'Death Dealer' figure on horseback. Pretty stupid really as there was no decal sheet available and the only way would have been to hand paint it.
The new decal sheet features an aircraft in a two-tone grey and has some artwork on it so that works instead.
I  know the first job will be to clean the model as it is filthy!
We'll see how it goes as I have other stuff on the go at the moment but it would be good to bring this one back from the dead as a few other shelf-queens didn't survive as I had to be ruthless when I was moving out.





3 comments: