Please which are the (dark) colours used by EC-121 Warning Stars? The Don Color website (http://www.jpsmodell.de/dc/shemes/ec121_warn67.jpg) says it is FS26081 (“euro I gray”). I saw several photos where the Warning Stars appear to be dark blue (FS25042). Was the dark blue color used on EC-121s?
Or, is there possibility of the EC-121 have a FS35042 (dark blue) painting, during some era (period)? For example, when the type was painted with the top of the fuselage white?
Wings/Airpower just did a photo layout on the 121. I believe the caption was dark gray. The blue appearance could be photo printing quality or lighting.
Is it Air Force or Navy? The older Navy ones were in Dark Navy Gray or Dark Sea Gray which Tamiya and MM and Poly Scale all make. Don’t confuse it with British dark sea gray. In photos, even in color, it can look like Sea Blue. But during the Vietnam era, these planes were almost all in aircraft gray, which is FS 16473. I believe they were glossy, but I’d use semi-gloss on a model. And, if it’s a pre-1956 Navy machine, it will, of course, be overall Sea Blue.
A former roommate of mine had a commission to build one of these for the children of a man who had flown them in the Navy, and he was charging them a pile for this Father’s Day gift. Well, he got the Heller civilian Super Connie and went to work, creating the radomes, shaping and molding with his hands, and ended up with two big blobs on the dorsal and ventral fuselage that looked like a beast of the field had stopped there to take a dump. He simply ignored the prodigious antenna farm these things carried.
Well, the punch line is, I kept saying: “Heller makes this thing as an EC-121 kit, radomes, markings and all. Why are you doing this to these people?” He had no good answer, but he was not good enough to be scratchbuilding this stuff. He told me to leave him alone after I looked up the dark gray color for him in the Monogram Navy Painting Guide, Pt. III. The day he was to give the thing to the family, it was finished. While the customers looked at the thing sitting there on the table, the lower radome simply fell off with no prompting whatsoever. Just, PLOP, like the plane had taken a…well, anyway, Moronius quickly stuck it back on somehow, took their $250 bucks and shuffled them out the door. That night, he saw the Heller EC-121 in the Squadron Catalogue. I didn’t say a word. But I smiled a lot. You just can’t tell some people anything.
Tom
Hi, I did exactly the same thing, but my radomes did not fell off (lol). I did not find an EC-121 Heller kit, so I converted an 1/72 airliner L-1049 Heller to be my EC-121; also, I think the radomes provided on the Heller EC-121 kit are too small, so I made new ones, larger. Long time ago, I saw the instructions sheet of the EC-121 Heller and they said to use Humbrol paint no. 25 (Humbrol 25 is actually navy dark blue); I painted my kit with an overall dark blue colour (FS25042) with the top of the fuselage white (it’s a navy machine, pre-1956).
Now, some guys had told me the correct EC-121 colour was “seaplane gray” FS26118 (“gunship gray”?), not dark blue. They say the seaplane gray is, for example, the same colour used on Martin SP Marlins. And the jpsmodell website (“Don Color”) says it is FS26081.
If neccessary, I can repaint my EC-121 easily. The question is, should I repaint it with some type of dark gray paint (FS26118? 26081? Which gray colour?), or should I let it dark blue FS25042? I would like to put my kit on a contest, so the right colour is important…
You are right. I misnamed it. It is usually called Seaplane gray and I just checked. I did not snap that it was the same FS No. and realize that it was merely a gloss version of gunship gray after all these years. Yes, if it is white on top, it should be gray below, as on the Marlin and the older P-3s. But that is a post-1956 marking. It would not have carried the white reflective upper surfaces in the old paint scheme of all 15042 (that’s on the real thing, if I’m not mistaken, as in the tech order, but FS 25042 would be more appropriate for a model.
Tom
Tom
Thank you for your help Sharkskin. Well, I like the white top fuselage, so I think I will repaint the “seaplane grey” over the dark blue. And the plane will be post-1956, so.
Interesting, pre-1956 Navy aircraft were (gloss) dark blue, not grey?
Cheers!
