C-17 and AC-130 Completed

[ajlafleche]

Her e are two recent commission projects: Revell’s 1/144 C-17 and Italerie’s 1/48 AC-130U. The gunship has a custom made decal for the nose art. The design was requested by my customer. He will be showing this gear up and in flight, so I made acetate “spinning” props.

[TRM]

Wow Al...aircraft? Sweet!! Fine looking birds you have!!! Well done!

[Deleted]

Looks great. Awesome work.

[dupes]

Home-grown props and decals? Very nice!

I DO really like the look of the acetate spinners. Hmmmmm.

[ajlafleche]

Thanks, guys.
Marc,
This was my first attempt at this. 
The spinners are tedious but easy. I have an industrial strength locking compass/divider from a yard sale. I drilled a small hole in a piece of acetate larger than the prop. I measured the radius of the prop and slowly rotated the compass until it was cut through. A sharper tip would have made faster work. I made an extra and taped a prop to it and airbrushed a sample prop then used that on the others. 
I was afraid I'd mess up the location of the prop spinners when I attached them to the circles, needing to center them on the circle and align them with the engine housing. There'd be one shot at each. Failure meant a lot more work. 
I replaced the kit prop axles with 1.5 mm aluminum tube, though brass rod would work, too. I filled the spinners from the back with Miliput and lined them up with the new axles so there was a central locator hole. The I sanded the spinner smooth removing the prop bosses then painted them the same color as the rest of the plane. . 
Pop the acetate on, align the prop shadows and attach the spinner with a bit of Zap-A-Gap. DONE! 

[JimD]

These are some cool big uns.

I've been in the C-17 a couple of times at airshows and it's an impressive aircraft. I'd love to build one some day. even in 1/144 its a monster. Great work.

[ajlafleche]

Jimmy, the engineering on the kit is kind of weird. There's an interior set of walls as well as the outer fuselage making for extra work to little use since even if the cargo doors are opened, you'll see very little. There is a decal for the entire floor. Ah, the decals! A club member who's much more of an A'C guy than me recently brought one of these to a meeting. Serious silvering. That told me to use extra gloss and trim as much carrier film as possible. Still had some silvering. A couple door outline decals have film over the door windows. Even after a good layer of Dullcote one of formation light decals on the wings lifted off. I reattached it with thinned white glue. The main gear are a real PITA to attach.

They went to their new home today to the delight of their owner. 

[Leon]

Awesome finish on the pair of birds AJ!I'm with Dupes on the acetate spinners,they look great.

[wetsellery]

Very nice !