1/109 Aurora C-141A Starlifter

Gallery Article by Tony Granata on Feb 2 2010

 

For my first submission to ARC, I chose to feature an aircraft that surprisingly has not yet appeared on these pages, the C-141 Starlifter.  This is the boxscale Aurora kit that was released in the late 1960's.  This is actually my second attempt to build this kit.  I purchased my first attempt on Ebay for a hefty price and then proceeded to ruin the kit with my at the time modest modeling skills.  After my skills improved, I snatched a second Starlifter on Ebay.  As expected, this kit is very difficult to build due to the poor fit and the brittle plastic.  The seam that results from joining the two fuselage halves together was extremely difficult to remove but I did the best I could and I'm happy with the result.  For some reason, this plastic does not sand very easily.  

Click on images below to see larger images

  

Detail is also lacking with bare wheel wells and no panel lines at all.  Doors and flaps are deeply engraved.  For painting, I initially sprayed the aircraft with a primer coat of Testors Flat Dark Aircraft Gray.  This helped me clean up any remaining seams.  I then masked off the gray (which the instructions incorrectly state should be white) portions on the wings and tailplanes and sprayed the aircraft overall with Testors Metallic Silver.  I'm not too picky with my NMF's.  Spraying overall silver is usually good enough for me, but if I were to build this kit a third time (which isn't going to happen given the high price of this kit!) I would try to put on different metallic shades over the aircraft.  For the black walkways, I used masking tape and a Sharpie.  The decals are a combination of the kit decals and some from the spares box.  The MAC tailbands, US flags, serial numbers, and MAC emblems came from the kit, but I had to use Microscale Liquid Decal Film in order to make them usable. I then brushed on a few coats of Future.  I believe the fuselage just behind the wings should be painted black.  I'll get around to that eventually.

On a historical note, this particular Starlifter (63-8077) met a sad fate.  It crashed August 28, 1973 on approach to Torrejon AB, Spain with the loss of all hands save one. 

Overall, I was pleased with how this kit turned out and I would recommend it to anyone. It's definitely not up to today's standards, but it's the only large injection-molded Starlifter out there.  The DML/Testors/Italeri 1/200 kit is a bit too small for my liking.  My primary reference for this build was Warbird Tech Volume 39:  Lockheed C-141 Starlifter by Frederick A. Johnsen.

Tony Granata

Photos and text © by Tony Granata