Profile Aircraft Kits from the 1970's - Anyone got info on them?

The three bladed prop with seperate spinner in the set of chrome parts were from the Airfix P-40E. I just used two of them for a couple of Yak-11 conversions. Cut down slightly they work fine, too bad that I had to sand off the chrome. This Yak has a P&W R-2000 with a modified prop from a Grumman Tracker and seven exhaust stubs on each side. The original Yak-11 had two exhaust stubs under the fuselage at the aft end of the cowling.

This is my first attempt at doing chrome. The canopy frame, panel behind the exhaust stubs, landing gear doors, forward 1/3 of the cowling and edges of the prop blades are chrome. The rest of the plane is gloss black. I'm doing one basic model for the owner and one detailed model for myself. The Aeroteam kit's interior is pretty crude, so I'm using etched metal Entropy and Interavia detail parts, Elf wheels with rubber tires and a vacuform canopy from my own MAI kit #001, long out of production. The engine is from a Revell Grumman F4F Wildcat suitably altered and detailed for both models.

Markings are quite a variety. Personal markings (BLYAK with a Bullwinkel Moose on the left side of the cowling) and registration NX242IX are complicated red/yellow reduced from color photos and printed on decal stock. Large yelllow 711 on tail is done in the same manner. Yellow outlined red stars from CAM, red lightning stripe outlined in yellow on fuselage side made from Microscale red stock and yellow strping from one of their HO RR sheets.

Last details are Pratt & Whitney decals for the cowlng and Hamlton Standard decals for the prop. These are really tine. Any suggestions? I have hundreds of after market decals, so I probable have them.

Just goes to show that one never knows when a seemnigly useless part such as the chrome stuff in the MPC/Airfix kits can come in handy.

Cheers,

Tom

Reply to
maiesm72
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yeah, sounds like. i built the sm79 as a frieghter. it looked like one and you could bash it to look ok. some of the kits weren't bad, if you got real decals. never had a chromer. was it good chrome?

Reply to
someone

The carrier film was very thick and wouldn't allow detail to show through no matter how hard you pressed down on the decal while it was drying. On the upside, they were flat finish which was good for military aircraft. But they were so thick that they looked like peel-and-stick markings used on toys. Airfix's decals were so bad that they would drive kit reviewers into fits of rage during the late 60's and early 70's in Scale Modeler magazine, and might well have had something to do with the development of after market decals due to their complete unusability on the finished model. People who tried to use Solvset on Monogram decals back then were in for a surprise also, as it dissolved their pigments.

Particularly the two-in-one box kits that contained only national markings...minus swastikas of course.

Pat

Reply to
Pat Flannery

As in, a 'customised' airplane? Yup! The SM.79 came with psychedelic decals and custom parts. As Tom says below, the parts were good to fill up the spares box, chromed or not. I used some of those props on vacforms and other parts have been used in a lot of places MPC probably never considered. I'm guessing MPC tried that as a way to entice kids to buy more airplane kits that they wouldn't have otherwise.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

One of those 9.5%-ers.

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

"We all live in a trimotor torpedo bomber, trimotor torpedo bomber, trimotor torpedo bomber. As we fly across the Med, we suspect Il Duce's dead. But we fly on anyway, in our Sparviero, come what may." :-) I'd been trying to forget that period of model kits, but now it returns. Yes, I saw one of those goofy SM.79's at a grocery store back then. "Hey, you Mod Modelers! Dig this Fab Fascist Fun Flyer!" The Vietnam War had made military models about as salable as rusty razor blades, and the model companies were trying anything and everything to keep from going bankrupt. It hit some sort of apex here:

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you are riding inside the liquid hydrogen tank, it's bound to be interesting. ...and here:
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the notorious "Saturn's Ring" mob which used to raid unsuspecting space stations from their secret rocket base...inside of a extinct volcano no doubt. Leader of the mob, and pack also:
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does "R.F." really stand for? In this time period it meant "Revell's F**ked". :-D

Pat

Reply to
Pat Flannery

I remember that. Maybe that's why the B-17 decals were opaque, they tried something different to do them thinner. I think some worked, some didn't. I remember a tip in one of my first mail order catalogs, Miniature Aircaft, from Indiana, maybe? Anyway, the tip was something like, "If you're having trouble getting MPC decals to stick to your model, mix a few drops of Elmer's Glue in the water."

Reply to
frank

Pat typed out:

A friend in the secondhand kit biz had me check his for any missing parts. It was surprisingly detailed for a kiddie kit.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

Those were handy for using up some of those extra decal sets. :)

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

First time I learned that trick it was from our Richard Marmo in his column in the short-lived (hope I remember this title rightly) "Popular Aviation". He was reviewing Monogram's 1/72 Skyraider.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

It wasn't a kiddie kit to begin with, you get your hands on one of those and you are looking at a particular and fascinating part of American history - the after-effects of the Werner von Braun articles in Collier's magazine. "Solaris" was originally the "Helios" Moonship that used a nuclear upper stage to land a astronaut crew on the Moon, protecting its crew module from the radiation of its engine by dragging it along behind it from around 1,000 feet ahead via cables:

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Pat

Reply to
Pat Flannery

I learn something new almost every time I log on here. Thanks!

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

The "Space Pursuit" one had the Krafft Ehricke Convair space shuttle design in it:

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well as the top section of the XSL-01 Moon Rocket:
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landing skid on the model was retractable; once retracted, it was virtually impossible to lower it again without breaking it. I contacted Hawk Models, and they say if they can find the molds they will reissue this model:
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was a serous proposal on Convair's part, and the company made a very large model of it which they showed to the Air Force, there's some details of it here:
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Pat

Reply to
Pat Flannery

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