Seven years ago i looked at my stash and noted that I had…a lot of Jugs, there was M’s, N’s, D’s and razorbacks and bubble top’s aplenty. I especially noted a horde of Academy N’s and I had a thought about it and it occurred to me that if I built them one at a time as usual, I would probably complete one or two over the next few years and then other interests would most likely doom the rest to the stash until the day I died. So I decided to build them all in one go, that way they would likely see the light of day before my toes turned up. So I duly unpacked my four Jugs and away I went. I got up to this point and for some inexplicable reason the whole project was packed away and all but forgotten about.
In the interim I had moved from Johannesburg to Durban - about 600 Km away and my stash languished in boxes in a friends ceiling for four years. I eventually got my stash back about 4 months ago and started unpacking. It was quite exciting to see some old friends again. I then remembered about the four Jug project and I singled them out, determined to complete the project from so many years back, and three weeks back they found their way to the building desk and so the project commenced. I made the decision to build in relays. In other words I would take number one up to a certain point then put it aside and bring each individual air frame up to the same point before progressing with number one again (hope you get the picture)
My first step was to strip out all the cockpits because my standards had moved up a few notches compared to 7 years back, and using Eduard colour etch and some scratch building, I completed the pit’s first on all four.
The next step was to get the air frames complete with wings and canopies (I must just mention here that I think Academy make the thinnest and clearest canopies of any manufacturer - they have an almost vac formed feel about them - simply gorgeous)…
Next up the engines. The P47 shows a lot of cleavage up front and the Academy kit engine is OK but rather sparse in detail so I decided to at least add some plumbing. The first step was to drill holes…many holes, actually a shit load of holes 137 per engine to be exact!!!
…and added some copper wire.
…and some paint especially to tone down the copper leads.
Up to this point I had not really thought too much about schemes as such so I started looking around and it appears that the N is not a favourite of the AM crowd at all. I had already sort of decided on two schemes - both off an Aeromaster set I had bought back then specifically for this project, they are both Hawaiian air national guard schemes - although quite different. After trawling the internet it became quite apparent this the last two may well have to be kit schemes even though they were rubbish because there just isn’t anything out there for the N! Eventually I tracked down a set of Monogram decals which had 3 various National Guard options on it. Only one option really appealed to me and I really wanted to include at least one WWII plane as well. After seeing a colour picture of another plane on the internet, I measured up the decals for it and had them made for me by MAV decals here in SA for the cost of R90 (about 7 USD).
So with the schemes now sorted out it was on to the individual aircraft. I decided to achieve about 80% completion on each aircraft as my next set point. I used Alclad Polished Aluminium with an Alclad primer and various shades of Grey and Black as the under coat in all cases.
Number 1
Number 2
So this is 1 and 2 together at this point.
Number 3
…and that is the story so far…I have two weeks left to finish this for our annual MOY!
