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Passing through
Halim Jakarta in 2000, I saw this Buffalo and took a solitary picture of it. I
was struck by the attractiveness of the scheme and thought it would make a nice
model one day. Not so long ago surfing one of the many modelling sites I
stumbled across reference to a 1/72 Buffalo kit, I searched the photo album,
found Liberty models on the net and ordered the kit. While waiting for the kit
to arrive I started on the decal designs starting off with enlarged scans of my
photo.
Click on
images below to see larger images
I'd never built a resin kit
before so it was with some trepidation (well founded as it proved) that I
started the construction. The fin and tailplane were made in two thin
halves, being resin they had a bit of a warp, the relatively flat tail
plane was reasonably easy to straighten out, the fin less so and if I was
building this again I would make a balsa replacement. The prop blades were
no good either so I clipped them off the spinners and made plastic card
replacements.
Lots of filling and sanding
was required, the canopy fit to fuselage was quite tricky.. I almost
pulled it off but if you look little hard it is a tad "skew- iff".
Actually if you hold a straight edge to this model..it aint all square!
Whilst
my build is
not great, the attractive scheme, reasonable paint job and my home made decals
make it a shelf "favourite". I am fairly sure there ain't too many
Indon Navy Buffalos gracing fellow modfellers shelves around the world!
Wally Civitico
Click on
images below to see larger images
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