Minicraft 1/144 FAA DC-3 N34
By Thomas Solinski
As always, I have attempted to build this kit straight out of the box so that you may see what you get. But, in this case there were areas that needed filler to cover some rather large gaps.
Well hot on the heals of the in-box review I began building “my” airplane, hoping to have it ready for the IPMS region 6 convention in Grapevine TX. I did get it done an entered in the OOB category. I like to think my model contributed to someone else placing third.
This was my first actual effort in building one of the 14 Minicraft DC-3/C-47/R-4D kits I have in my stash. On the whole it is an easy build.
N34 has a 1960’s vintage oxblood-brown leather and tan naugahide interior, so I started with painting the fuselage interior areas visible through the cockpit windows with Testors’ Model Master Rust. The fuselage was then glued together and set aside to dry. One of the little oddities in this kit; the tail wheel molding has a long vertical extension that appears to be designed to fit into some retaining or alignment hole. But there is no corresponding fitting in the fuselage for it to mate with.
Next on the agenda; the wing. I’ve looked at other online reviews and I was a bit surprised to see, or rather not see, any reports of my first problem. If you place the wing upper surface on the lower surface, and get good contact all along the leading edge, then the front edges of the slightly thickened areas that form the trailing edges make contact before the rest of the wing. This leaves a 1/32 inch gap all along the trailing edge of both wing panels. I may try to glue the trailing edge together first on my next build. On this one, I sanded the bumps in the trailing edges until I go a reasonable fit. I really needed to do a little more work before I glued everything together, I still had a bit of a gap at the T.E. a the wing tip.
Back to the build. Glue lines on the fuselage cleared up well. For the N34 paint scheme I had to join the wings prior to painting. This resulted in some significant gaps on both the upper and lower joints. For the first time in a long while I applied filler. I use a technique I learned from the folks on the WW-I modeling page (https://www.wwi-models.org/) apply your favorite masking tape to either side of the gap in question. With your finger putty in your favorite filler. Then soak a q-tip (cotton bud for our true English speaking friends) in alcohol and wipe the still wet filler off of the join until everything is flush. Remove the tape and let the joints dry. You get a nice clean filler joint without the hassle of sanding off the excess. On this kit some of you may want to take more time to minimize the gap formed by the flaps sitting below the surrounding fuselage.
The last item that took some time was cleaning up and installing the rather frail landing gear. As much detail that Minicraft has invested in many of the other airliner kits, I’m surprised how clunky the gear looks on these kits.
The plane was painted with a gloss white top of MM Classic white and allowed to dry for two days. It was masked and a coat of Xtracolor coroguard was applied to the lower surfaces, this too was allowed to dry for another two days.
I expected a real challenge with the full length body decals. Starting around the cockpit windows and anti glare shield then moving aft along the fuselage, the decals went on quite easily. Minicraft even makes a little point of painting much easier. The orange lightening bolt stops a bit short of the cockpit and that area is painted white in the 1:1 airplane. Minicraft made this area of the decal white saving us the grief of figuring out how to mask and paint these ourselves. The black decals simulating the deicer boots went on with a little more difficulty because they have to line up with the landing lights on the wings and I couldn’t really figure out where to start them on the stabilizers. This resulted in gaps at the curved areas of the outer edges of the stabs.
The only decals I couldn’t use were the rings that were meant to replicate the colored rings around the leading edges of the cowling. My set would just not lie down. I ended up pulling them off and discarding them. On my next build I’ll attempt slicing them in pie shaped cuts to help them wrap around the curve of the front of the cowling.
So there you have it a copy of my little plane. It pases my usual standard, it looks like it is supposed to.
A couple of years ago I did a comparison of the Minicraft DC-3 molds against the full scale thing and came up with this https://www.internetmodeler.com/2007/november/first-looks/dc_3.php. In it I listed 7 items that other folks thought weren’t quite right with the molds, the three I couldn’t address in the in box review were:
1. Props that hit the fuselage
2. Nacelle angle-of-incidence
And 6. Oversize windows and framing in the cockpit
Now that I’ve actually finished one I can comment on each of these.
1. Nope props, long or short don’t hit the fuselage, at least on the right side with the P&W engines and cowling. On the left side the whole nacelle is canted inboard slightly and the long thin blades of the early issue kits will hit the fuselage.
2. The nacelle angle of incidence CAN be a problem. On my build one engine came out right the other came out high. A #58 or #59 drill bit can be inserted into the prop shaft hole on each engine to check alignment with the fuselage and the other engine.
I reported that the cowling is too long in the other article. Most of this can be corrected by sanding off the back of the middle cowling, the accessory cowling by 0.050 of and inch. On this issue the cowl flaps were poorly molded in the aft edge of the front cowling. Also, for most DC-3s the cowling is open on the ground, this will take a quite a bit of effort to replicate on this kit.
6. On this build the windows looked right to me. They are not the clearest of moldings, possibly a coat of Future before building would help.