Alaska Coastal Airlines Vega model 5 Floatplane

 

 

 

the Alaska Coastal Airlines Floatplane version will get the Full Monty with a seated interior, cockpit detail, opened side door and the cockpit windows sawed up to get a sliding section for the tracks on the wing..... 

The Vega had this unusual door between the cockpit and the passengers.....shorter at the bottom so it would fit into the fuselage when raised up. The MPM kit bulkhead piece has the outline of the door molded in and cutting it out and bending it up into position worked well.  

.These seats from Valom are a good match for the Vega seats...turns out the Valom seats are too tall...cutting them down like the seat on the left seems to work....thinking this will be a three seat aircraft (and pilot) 

...about ready to seal this up after some PE work....paint will still get attention....the red thing in the cockpit is meant to be a fire extinguisher....only the bottom half of the pilot seat is seen here...the back is part of the door into the passenger compartment.... 

....assembled fuselage with interior showing....in all, satisfied with the look...the seatbelts are a big boost.... 

....this was the easy part....the gold layer....lots of masking to come for the dark blue layer..... 

....while deciding if the box art color was right (yellow/dark blue) or the instructions (orange/dark blue) a photo was found of an actual aircraft in service in Alaska...this one was actually gold and dark blue....question answered....and the kit decals are not based on this aircraft....replacements will be made...

.....check the struts...the kit pieces don't match this and scratching the structure will be needed....and the ladder on the side goes all the way to the float, not hanging in air...later i found out there were planes that almost exactly matched the kit....so there were many variations 

...a little Photoshop work and a web search...and an Alaska Coastal Airlines logo is done..... 

...the results with printed decals after some touch up using closeup goggles.... 

...by golly...it worked....drilling holes the answer for all the struts...1mm rods used for the smaller struts and 1.2mm for the larger.... 

 

 

.....canopy installed....cowling in place.....rudder and stabilizers attached.... 

...repainted the wing with the original AK Extreme Metal Gold and gave it an overcoat of AK Gauzy protective varnish before doing any masking...the stabilizers turned out OK with the AK Gold paint... 

.....the little door was a challenge to install...its attached by not much....the ladder is from a later model RAF plane....
...very close now...... 

....all done .....full interior....open cockpit and all...a good ending to the Vega series...... 

...yes...they wouldn't be roaring along like this taking off....with the door open! hey...the dio had to break down at some point...its actually from a Testors PT-20 model... 

 

 

 

....shooting little details like this can send a person down rabbit holes that aren't really there....i saw this "gash" under the canopy window on the left....went to "fix" it...and could hardly see it at all even if i looked very closely.....and decided my modeling time was better spent on a fresh project....