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


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Agreed with everyone else, that cockpit is awesome. Looks nice and busy. Never knew the seat cushions were black, always thought they were red/orange but I'm certainly not the Herc expert.

Keep up the good work!

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Still looking for cockpit photos--none digital.

I really appreciate your taking the time to look for those photos, Rich.

If you had scale TOs you wouldn't need nose weight!

Lol, ain't it the truth!

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Agreed with everyone else, that cockpit is awesome. Looks nice and busy. Never knew the seat cushions were black, always thought they were red/orange but I'm certainly not the Herc expert.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the good words, 11bee! As for being a Herc expert, neither am I, my friend. However, I've found pictures of many different color schemes and this is just one. I don't remember the actual color scheme in the Clamp aircraft but I figure this one would be more likely for a covert aircraft since they would want to use subdued colors in the cockpit to reduce the chances of being seen at night.

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Well, I finally finished the left side cockpit detail and went to my PE kit for the steering wheel assembly. To my dismay, the Flightpath PE steering wheel was way too small! It needed to be about 3 mm in diameter but it was less than 2 mm in diameter. I had already found that many of the console parts and the rudder pedals are also undersized. I can only suppose that this is due to the way Italeri designed the cockpit. They weren't too careful with measurements and Flightpath made the PE parts to fit the kit parts.

 

Anyway, I hurriedly scrounged through my spare parts but could not find a steering wheel that small so I was faced with creating one. Is pent a very tense half hour cutting the wheel out of .010 in/0.25 mm clear PETG sheet plastic with a very sharp Xacto blade. The result is shown below next to my finger and to a pin head (my hands are still shaking...).

 

bieTP7.jpg

 

Once I had a fairly clean flat steering wheel, I built up the outside ring of the wheel with super glue until it was reasonably round on both sides. The wheel is so small that I could only do some very light sanding to try and clean it up. At least painted, it doesn't look too bad. It sits a little bit high in the cockpit but it was such a trial getting it in place that I'm not going to correct it.

 

lhkhiq.jpg

Edited by striker8241
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I just stumbled on this thread. Lots of good info and I like how you've done the cockpit. I flew on 571, the Rivet Swap aircraft when it was flying out of Wright-Patt. It was modified for weather research to support the AFGL out of Hanscom AB, where I was stationed. Sorry, but I believe that all Combat Talon had at least one extra crew station (maybe two) in the flight deck for a second navigator. So you would need one extra seat facing the the back wall and would not include the bunk bed. This is from my memory. I don't know if it would be worth the trouble to fix your cockpit. I believe that 571 had a pilot. co-pilot, Nav, FE and AWRO (Weather Officer) in the cockpit area.

Grant

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The MC-130E Combat Talon 1 had 2 pilots, 2 navigators and a Flight Engineer on the flight deck and the Electronic Warfare Operator and Radio Operator were at a console in the cargo compartment with the 2 Loadmasters. The bunk was removed from the flight deck.

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On 5/29/2015 at 4:32 PM, gmat said:

I just stumbled on this thread. Lots of good info and I like how you've done the cockpit. I flew on 571, the Rivet Swap aircraft when it was flying out of Wright-Patt. It was modified for weather research to support the AFGL out of Hanscom AB, where I was stationed. Sorry, but I believe that all Combat Talon had at least one extra crew station (maybe two) in the flight deck for a second navigator. So you would need one extra seat facing the the back wall and would not include the bunk bed. This is from my memory. I don't know if it would be worth the trouble to fix your cockpit. I believe that 571 had a pilot. co-pilot, Nav, FE and AWRO (Weather Officer) in the cockpit area.

Grant

 

Welcome, gmat, and thanks for the comments! I may be on shaky ground here since it's been 44 years and I was never on the Rivet Clamp flight deck. The planes I worked on pre-dated the Combat Talon 1 and the MC-130s. There was a special compartment walled off at the front of the cargo bay and, as I recall, there were two rows of consoles. The front row had a single long console where the LLLTV and infrared operator sat and beside him sat the ground sensor operator. The second row had two consoles, separated by an aisle in the middle. The left side console (I believe) was for the  ECM operator. The right side console was for the spec ops radio operator.

 

I believe the second nav position was moved to the flight deck with the Talon I modification. A lot of the ECM gear was improved and automated and some was also moved to the flight deck; same with a lot of the special ops radios, so the second row of consoles went away when the planes were upgraded to Talon I. I've tried to confirm this early configuration with the Stray Goose organization, of which I was a member for awhile, but never got a reply back, so if you know for sure that the Rivet Clamp aircraft had two navigators in the crew compartment in 1971, please let me know. I don't have any problem restructuring the nav area to make it correct.

 

Cheers,

Russ

Edited by striker8241
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The MC-130E Combat Talon 1 had 2 pilots, 2 navigators and a Flight Engineer on the flight deck and the Electronic Warfare Operator and Radio Operator were at a console in the cargo compartment with the 2 Loadmasters. The bunk was removed from the flight deck.

Welcome aircommando, and thanks for the info! Roger on the MC-130E, but the planes I worked on were configured differently before they were modified with the Talon upgrade. I'm just not sure if the Rivet Clamp configuration actually had two navigators on the flight deck or not.

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Hey!

Still can't find my film pics---must be buried somewhere.

Meanwhile, I went to Airliners.net yesterday and found 3 good photos of the Nav position on 2 different H's (cargo) and a Brit K.

Each was different.

Looks like the center of the Nav position is parallel to the aircraft center line with the sections to the Nav's left and right angled.

So it's a bit of each positioning.

Interestingly, there's one box of pushbuttons (including number keypad) that appears on each but positioned differently.

You got the circuit breaker panel to the right rear of the copilot right, sitting at an angle.

My guess is that it was for the convenience of the FE who sits behind and between the pilots.

Reminded me of DC-4s through 7s with the FE position which was curious to me because Constellations had a separate FE position -- Lockheed had it both ways.

There were 304 cockpit photos on Airliners.net yesterday so here are the photo numbers of the large views:

C-130H 74-2133 10/9/2009: 1805653

C-130H 92-3288 8/27/2005: 0952283

C-130K C3 XV303 9/22/2013: 2325498

I've got it "on my list" that next time I get in a C-130 cockpit I'm getting photos of the Nav position and behind the pilot.

Rich

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I dressed up the ceiling of the cockpit a bit since it's going to be removable. I added the overhead panels and some other details. I decided to go with the simpler E-model OHP configuration since I don't have any pictures of the Rivet Clamp overhead.

 

d2LPRy.jpg

 

A few more miscellaneous details to clear up in the cockpit then it's on to the Talon compartment!

Cheers, and thanks for looking!

Edited by striker8241
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Thanks, Joel. I had to guess at a lot of the dimensions. All the pictures I could find of the panels were at an angle or were only partially complete. Fortunately, at this scale most of the errors are not obvious.

Cheers,

Russ

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