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1/72 scale C-130E Rivet Clamp Special Operations Aircraft


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43 minutes ago, aircommando130 said:

Love a Combat Talon 1....the flight deck though had dual navigator stations seated side by side. The bunks were removed from the flight deck. The pipe for the air refueling receptacle fan from the roof and turned to the right and ran above both nav's and through the bulkhead at 245 back into the wing box. Depending on the pilot refueling off a KC-135 could be smooth or like a rodeo ride. Great job so far!!

Welcome AC130 and thanks for the good words!  What you say about the Talon 1 navigators is correct, but the model I'm building is of the predecessor to the Talon 1 modification. However, I never had the opportunity to go up into the flight cabin so I can't say for sure that both navigators were NOT up there. I took a lot of my cues from the Praetorian Starship document that described the evolution of the Rivet Clamp aircraft and the Stray Goose missions. They refer to a second navigator but nothing is said about both navigators being together in the flight cabin. The writing does seem to allude to the navigator sharing one of the consoles in the Talon compartment. Do you know for sure that the Rivet Clamp aircraft had the navigators sitting together behind the flight deck? I would be delighted to find out; I don't have any problem modifying the model to make it correct.

 

Cheers, and thanks for your interest!

 

Russ

Edited by striker8241
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Hello, All,

 

I've been struggling to finish scribing the fuselage and I needed a break, so I decided to work on the engines. The engines in the Italeri kit are not the correct engines for the E model. The engines should be the Allison T56-A-7A turboprop, which is longer than the kit engines. Since I had already purchased a second Italeri C-130E/H kit, I decided to try using parts of those engines to make the longer E-model engines, rather than buying an aftermarket set.

 

I ended up cutting off the last 4 mm of the spare engines and gluing them onto the back of the target engines. I also corrected the shape of the air intake lips below the props and opened up the other various air intakes. Below are pictures of an original kit engine compared to a modified (extended) engine (sorry for the blurred picture).

 

DhHfI6.jpg

 

wg39VM.jpg

 

 

I had to trim away 3 mm of the nacelle roots on the inboard engines to bring the propellers in line with each other.

 

MwJfMf.jpg

 

The last picture shows two modified engines temporarily mounted on the wing.

 

gEC0Qz.jpg

 

Cheers,

 

Russ

Edited by striker8241
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Col Thigpen who wrote Pratorian Starship was my Group Commander at Kadena. I also worked with Russ Tharp and Sam Galloway here and they both flew in the Desert 1 raid. Col Jerry Uttaro was my commander in a JSOC job I was in and he also flew in Desert 1 and was the copilot on the MC-130H Credible Sport aircraft that crashed when the forward firing rockets fired before the airplane was on the ground.

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The configuration in your second comment certainly describes the Talon 1 modified aircraft. It had one console on the cargo deck and the two navigators upstairs. The Talon 1 modifications were accomplished in 1971-72, probably prior to the aircraft leaving Nha Trang and deploying to Kadena. The aircraft that flew in the Desert 1 raid would also have been the Talon 1 modified aircraft. What I don't know for sure, and your last comment doesn't really address, is if the Stray Goose (Rivet Clamp) aircraft, prior to the Talon 1 modification, also had the navigators together upstairs. If you can verify that, then I definitely need to make the correction.

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8 hours ago, aircommando130 said:

Well....looking at my copy of Praetorian Starship on page 20 in that 1967 servicing diagram it has number 6 Navigators seat and number 7 crew bunks. So for the time frame you are building it must be right.  

Thanks for verifying that. My pdf copy of the PS is so bad, I can't read that servicing diagram.

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  • 1 month later...

Hello, All,

 

The plane is together at last. I had to glue the top cover back on so I could paint the camouflage pattern. I've sprayed the model with an enamel primer and then darkened the panel lines with India ink. Then I over-sprayed the plane with a clear gloss enamel. Now I'll apply the paint scheme with acrylics. Below are some pictures showing the aircraft before and after the primer, and with the panels outlined.

 

Thanks for looking!

 

ffWYJz.jpg

 

chSd0O.jpg

 

Edited by striker8241
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Hi, Ray,

 

Thanks for the good words! I heartily agree about the rescribing but it's a long and tedious job on these bigger planes. Thankfully, the model manufacturers are going to recessed instead of raised panel lines.

 

BTW, is that a photo of a model you're building?  Can you post a link to it?

 

Cheers,

Russ

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I have to echo what Ray said it is looking amazing and the time taken to rescribe has really paid off

 

4 minutes ago, striker8241 said:

BTW, is that a photo of a model you're building?  Can you post a link to it?

 

LOL! - just Google Anigrand 1/72 C-17 and you'll find his forever ongoing build quickly enough :D

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Welcome and thanks for the good words, Madhatter!  Lol, I can empathize with Ray - the 15th of this month will be two years working on this C-130 project, and I'm only about 75% complete.

 

Ray, I looked at your build and it looks fantastic! I really like the way you did the front end, and the cargo bay looks to be a lot busier than mine. I'll be watching for future updates.

 

Cheers,

Russ

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Thanks Russ, I have been thinking about finishing my C-17 before the Kinetic Kit release. Might have to make a few shortcuts to get it done. Too many other projects on the bench at the moment!

 

Looking forward to seeing your C-130 finished. I have a started KC-130J that I have mostly rescribed, buried somewhere on the shelf of doom, another project I would like to finish one day!

 

KC-130J_03_zpsf182f886.jpg

 

KC-130J_04_zps2f2b45cd.jpg

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On ‎5‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 6:38 PM, Trojan Thunder said:

Looking forward to seeing your C-130 finished. I have a started KC-130J that I have mostly rescribed, buried somewhere on the shelf of doom, another project I would like to finish one day!

 

 

 

 

Cool, Ray! Have not seen that version before; hope to see yours finished too!

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8 hours ago, Major Walt said:

Bushtiful job Russ. I've been following it from the gate.  You've really put your heart into it. Amazing results. I wish I had your talent and patience!

 

Wow, thanks, Walt!  Now I'm embarrassed...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello, All,

Because of the Photobucket debacle, I'm faced with replacing all the scrogged images in this build or starting a new thread to finish the build. I've decided to move the build to the FSM site where I have all my other builds, and create a shortened build from this one.

 

I want to say thanks to all of you who have looked in and provided support and encouragement along the way. And thanks to the ARC managers and technicians for providing such a stable and reliable site.

 

Cheers to you all,

 

Russ

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