1/48 C-130J C5 by Italeri Conversion to AC-130H Gunship?

[Salineated Michigander]

I recently purchased this Italeri kit as mentioned above and would like to attempt to convert it to a gunship.  

 

Has anyone done this?  What would I need to do a reasonable conversion, 'reasonable' in the sense of reasonable cost for AE stuff and actual modifications necessary?

 

Any info available would be greatly appreciated.  

[A-10 LOADER]

I think you'd be better off trying to find the Italeri gunship model instead. A quick search yielded really nothing, you'd have to do a ton of scratch-building.

Steve

[Dave Williams]

IIRC, the Italeri AC-130H kit is not their own C-130 kit.  I believe it’s the AMT/ERTL kit, which isn’t as good as the Italeri C-130, especially in the cockpit window area.  Your best option might to get the AC-130H kit and use the gunship specific parts to convert a normal Italeri C-130, but even then it’s not optimal.

Edited August 10, 2023 by Dave Williams

[Trojan Thunder]

On 8/11/2023 at 8:46 AM, Dave Williams said:

IIRC, the Italeri AC-130H kit is not their own C-130 kit.  I believe it’s the AMT/ERTL kit, which isn’t as good as the Italeri C-130, especially in the cockpit window area.  Your best option might to get the AC-130H kit and use the gunship specific parts to convert a normal Italeri C-130, but even then it’s not optimal.

Dave,

You are talking 1/72 , SM is asking about 1/48.

 

Brengun had released T-56 engines in 1/48 for the H model C-130 to convert the J. If you find them then you are part way there.

 

Italeri has also released 1/48 AC-130 gunship kits, A and U models. Scale mates has details on these and itstructions for the kits so you could download them and see what you need to do modify the kit you have

 

Here is a link to the AC-130U instructions

[Niels]

And here is the link to the AC-130A; 123104-16-instructions.pdf (scalemates.com)

 

The AC-130 isn't specifically marked as such, but is an AC-130A, with the original 3-blade propeller. Many of these were over time upgraded into later versions with new enginges and props. Italeri later released the AC-130U refered to in the previous post, which is fairly different from the earlier AC-130's wrt armament.