Dumas Kit # 317 Lockheed Air Express

[heywooood]

Hello to all at the Guillow's Model Builder's Forum. Hope everyone is doing ok in the current global situation.
In line with all of that I have been keeping myself busy, isolated, distracted, focused, and fairly entertained in my dungeon working on the current project: The Roscoe Turner, Gilmore Oil, Lockheed Vega, Air Express.
I have some pictures of the work to date in the following frames. I hope you will find them compelling.
here is the target aircraft..

[heywooood]

The Gilmore Air Express features a nicely decorated cowling (not installed on the aircraft in the image above) provided for in the kit and some spiffy wheel spats (which are not at all in the kit) which I have fabricated.

[heywooood]

I wanted to have the cowling be removable so I could have either the cowled or non cowled version and display (and photograph) the model either way, however the cowling's shape prevented the motor from fitting in from the back (it is oblong and narrow to match the fuselage firewall shape at the rear and is only fully round at the front) so my plan B was to make the Williams Bro's wasp engine removable using a magnet to hold it - then detailing the motor molded into the cowling to match it and just swapping them as desired.

[heywooood]

so that should work out until I can decide which way I want it to stay..

[heywooood]

tail surfaces and fairings added...



I used cardstock cut to a teardrop shape as the footings for the horizontal stab fairings, then used filler to sculpt the actual fairings and sanded them to shape

[heywooood]

got the wing laid-up and infilled - that took some time and some finagling to get the shape of it just right. It's like an old fashioned straight razor to my eyes..


then I got the parasol wing mounting struts installed and test fitted the wing to check alignments..

[heywooood]

beginning to detail the parasol strut assembly..


and finally the strut assy is done..here you can see some of the details added to the Williams Bro's Wasp too

[heywooood]

some of the details added to the top of the wing. This plane had some blisters all over it. 20 or more all told.


10 on the fuselage and wheel spats - and 10 on the wing with 4 below and 6 on top.

[heywooood]

I fabricated two identical propellers - figured to permanently attach one to each motor rather than have it also be removable - that would have been nuts...not that this is any less nuts


anywho - now the whole thing has been primer painted and final sanded to full smoooothness - all that's left is to apply the colors - then the Callie's Graphics decals and I gotta say - she did a BEAUTIFUL JOB on all of the Gilmore markings - just outstanding.

and with that - yall are caught up to the minute on the Gilmore Air Express project.
If you want to see more - go to my youtube channel and follow along from the start
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbAea8 ... tNr9mQv1Iw

[heywooood]

as always, Thank you for viewing these images - I hope you find them a worthy distraction from the news of the day.
Stay healthy and safe, we'll get to the other side of this thing before you know it.

[42swing]

Truly masterful!

I belong to an Art Deco page on FB that a month ago posted a picture of the Mayor of NYC standing next to a plane in the mid-thirties. An attempt to identify the plane followed with lots of guesses, but I guessed a Lockheed design, probably an Air Express. Looking at your wonderful model, I'm now certain that's what it was.

[heywooood]

There is an excellent book called ‘Revolution in the Sky’ an accurate title for a book entirely devoted to the Lockheed Vega and all of its variants, from the Air Express to Altair, Sirius, etc..
Check local libraries or Amazon. So many key characters from aviation’s Golden Age are wrapped up in the legacy of this most important aircraft. Thank you for expressing interest in the project and for your encouragement.
I hope to be able to post more updates soon

[kittyfritters]

Roscoe Turner used to fly with his pet lion, Gilmore. He had a parachute made for the lion and had a way to "eject" the lion in case he had to bail out. This, of course, all started when Gilmore was a cub and when he got nearly full grown Turner gave him to a zoo. Fortunately, the lion never had to "hit the silk". I can only imagine the reaction of a Los Angeles homeowner in the 1930s to a lion parachuting onto his front lawn!

KF

[heywooood]

funny story about that very thing in the book - Turner had to set it down dead stick in a farmers field after dusk and only decided to do that because he had Gilmore on board and was afraid of the lion drifting down on top of the unsuspecting fellow..

Meanwhile - I have applied the 'Racing White' top coat and will in a day or two be masking and painting on the red accents..

[heywooood]

update - started on the red trim paint..long ways to go yet