This
is my second entry with an IPMS Austria resin kit. The kit was a limited kit sold
by the Austrian branch of the IPMS and shows a trainer aircraft that serves at
the Hinterstoisser airbase in
Zeltweg,
Austria
in the colours of 2003.
The
Pilatus PC-7 “Turbo Trainer” is a Swiss-made military trainer aircraft that
is fully capable for aerobatics. The two-seated aircraft has retractable landing
gear and a 650 hp turboprop engine from Pratt & Whitney. The PT6A-25A pulls
the bird up to 425 km/h and makes it easily carry additional external loads
such as cameras, guns and missiles. The fist flight of this bird was back in
1966, but serial production did not start before 1978. So the plane had a bad
start, but since that time it is a quite beloved aircraft among civil and
military instructors all over the world.
Click on
images below to see larger images
The
Austrian Airforce has 16 Pilatus PC-7 in service at the Hinterstoisser
airbase in Zeltweg. They use it for basic and advanced training at the
local military flight school Center. Corresponding with their
possibilities of armament the aircraft are also involved in tactical
operations and airborne surveillance.
The
kit was built quite a while ago but I remember that it was the very
first multi-media kit I built. There was a vacuum-formed canopy, resin
parts for the fuselage, wings, rudder and interiors and some metal parts for landing
gear etc. Beside the fact that the bird turned out to be a tailsitter (yes, I
milled out the nose to fill it with weight, but…) the quality of the resin kit
was outstanding. I put a tiny piece of a two-sided adhesive film under the nose
wheel and still after all those years it is sticky enough to keep my PC-7 in
place.
I
built another PC-7 with a special paint scheme last year - I will present this
bird on my next entry.
Enjoy
the pictures – greetings
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