AREA 88: Cessna Skymaster

Not sure why, but I really like this box. 

There's the spures. It's neat that they give you options for the fuselage. Seeing the window holes for the O-2 option nearly gave me a heart attack at first, until I saw there were three fuselage halves. 😉 

A quick dry fit to get an idea of where we're going. 

Let's get to work on the cabin. Some sink marks need to be handled. 

Not perfect, but I doubt you'll be able to see much at all through the cloudy and thick windscreen. 

Seats and controls now in place. Looks pretty good from here. 

Now for the fuselage. Tricky to line up along the seam... a few sink marks... and the rear tails seem to be a bit warped. Perfect! 

Nothing a ton of putty can't cure, right? 

That's looking better... well, relatively speaking. 

Don't want a tail-sitter, so let's slide some weight into the nose. 

I opened up the air intake on top by adding a bit of styrene square tubing around the edges. Windows masked, let's get some primer on this baby. 

Well, it's white. And no one can say any different! 

Just a bit of masking for the black on the nose, added the propellors, the lights, and the antenna. 

You can't really tell, but it's now got a clear coat of Future and ready for some homemade decals. 

And there we go. I used homemade decals for the numbers (based on the scene from the manga), but then I decided to add a splash of colour you don't find in the B&W pages. I took the easy way out though and cut up some blue/blanc et rouge stripes from my many Academy Spad XIII leftover decal sheets. A couple of flags on the tail, and we're done. Thanks to Doc's Decal Solution for keeping them snugged down on a raised panel line surface!