And it's a biggie.
First let me start by introducing him.
The box.
And the sprues.
With, despite there is a civilian version on the box, a group off para's.
Some detail.
The glass.
And the book.
Only thing missing now, is the stickers.
Since the set that came with the kit was unusable, old and yellow, I started
looking around for something else. US and Royal Airforce were easy to find,
but have all been done before (also by me), so I wanted something different.
Then I found these.
Very colourfull and something I had never seen before.
It's nice to find a set like this, but it's also nice to have the story behind
this. So I went looking on the WWW and I found 1 website with the story, including
a whopping total off 3 pictures...
It's a bit off a long story ,so I'm going to give you the short version:
In the early 50's, communism came running from China towards and into countries
like Korea and Indochina (Vietnam). The Americans, who did not really like that,
decided to call upon the good people off Korea to stand up against this.
Seeing a lot off people were living in the jungle, where they had no radio or
television, the Americans used airplanes and helicopters equiped with powerful
loudspeakers to achieve their goal.
The French gouverment, in those days the boss in Indochina, saw this, thought it
was a good idea and decided to try the same. After some failed attempts with
a JU52, which was to slow (easily shot down) and to loud (nobody could hear the
speaker), found out they did not have the right equipment.
In 1952 they asked the Americans to lend them one off their specially equiped planes.
The Americans agreed and send them one off their C-47a's, called "The Speaker"
A plane which had done allready a lot off missions over Korea.
There only were some comditions:
- They could only use it over Indochina.
- They could never use it for transporting American crew or staff.
- It should bear French or Vietnamese signs.
They received the plane on the 3rd off december, The first mission was on the 4th
off December and the plane was returned on the 20th off december.
In this time, the plane had flown 14 missions.
As you can see in this picture I found (the only one), the French painted the underside
and part off the sides Black, and put French markings on it. Also you can see some off
the Vietnamese text.
On the right, you can just see the rack with the speakers, just like on the next picture.
Here you can see the speakers clearly, with on the left the "tub" that went over it.
And here the last pic I have. It's the inside off the plane during a mission.
In this picture you can see a guy talking "live" into a mike. Later they changed to
recordings, so there would not be any bacjground noice from the plane into the mike.
The whole story you can find here:
http://www.psywar.org/voicesfromheaven.php
So, it flew in Vietnam, but does it qualify for this GB? I don't know, you tell me.
I'm going to build it anyway.
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Enough talk, time for some action.
Started by cutting all the parts from the sprues, that I needed before glueing the
body shut. Oh, and also the enginecovers (No, I don't know why...)
Scribed the lines between the small flaps (sh#t, I'm bad at naming parts) to make them
stand out a little bit more, and rounded each corner a little bit to give the illusion
that they are loose from each other. Later found out that in real, these things are
dead straight. Hey, just call it artistic...
The whole shabang ready for some primer.
But first a little dryfit off course.
Looking not to bad on first sight.
Some Vallejo primer.
I forgot, before primer I glued in some bulkheads.
After drying, some interior Green.
Well, something that looks like it anyway. Unfortunately I don't own the complete range
off colours off any brand, so I have to make do with wat I have.
After that, I added soem yellow to the green and started to brighten up here and there.
Very difficult to see on the pictures.
Some flat black.
And because I have no decal, I used a silver pencil for the gauges. Looked nicer
in real life....
After some chipping and a wash.
On teh picture off "the Speaker" I discovered some extra small windows just in front off
the side windows. So with the help off some drills and a small file, these were created.
Im going to fill these with woodglue later, to create glass (my first time).
The tubs were the wheels go in. Decided I'm going to display this one "in flight",
so with the wheels up, so I'm not going to detail this much.
Oh, almost forgot these pics, some extra colour in the interior.
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Sorry, I don't have so many pics off the interior. Sometimes when I'm building,
I forget to take pictures.
Untill next time.
Peter.
Looks like quite a big thing. Hoping to see more of the build.
, for size look a few pictures up. You can see it lying on my cutting mat, there's inches on it, and for the more educated people centimeters 
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). As you can
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