Siddley Hawker

Congratulations on a fine job Tracy.

What I use to simulate grey anti-skid paint is Humbrol Matt 1 primer, or if you're in a hurry Tamiya XF-80 Royal Light Grey. They're both about the same colour as grey Dek-Tred but Humbrol takes longer to dry, hence the caveat. :D

The front - the leading edge - of the pylon would be duller than the rest because of erosion from the slipstream. The top of the pylon would probably have a grey strip of anti-skid paint. If you don't plan to weather the model forget the first part, the eroded leading edge.

Trevor, yeah I'd forgotten that one. I'm going to build a model of a Nordair DC-4 - CF-IQM - later on this year, I'll check that out.

Thanks Rich. The F-27 was a great airplane, reliable as all get out. It was one of - if not the first - aircraft to use glue in the construction. They called it redux bonding and it was an epoxy they used on various skin doublers and also between the skin and the interior framework. For 25 years we trained at what was then Allegheny Airlines - later USAir - in PIT, and Piedmont did some heavy maintenance for us, namely a wing pull where the attach fittings for the outer wing panels had to be replaced. That was done at their facility in Winston-Salem, and to get to the maintenance hangar you

The Fairchild F-27 became a FH-227 by the addition of a 6-foot plug added to the fuselage ahead of the wing. There was no plug aft of the wing. The nose was also lengthened by 16 inches ahead of the front pressure bulkhead to accommodate the airborne weather radar. The elephant ear intakes on either side of the aft fuselage below the dorsal fin were eliminated and replaced with a nostril intake mounted in the dorsal fin where it joined the vertical fin. Other than that and the extra portholes in the plug, there were no other obvious changes to the aircraft. The engine power was upgraded to han

I seem to remember the Nordair blue was Royal Blue. In any case the closest colour match I've found is Tamiya X-3 Royal blue. Here's an example. (The model is the 1:72 Williams Brothers C-46F, modified to a C-46E by the addition of a stepped windshield instead of the greenhouse. The decals are Whiskey Jack.)