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The "Super Connie"
Chapter 1 THE BEGINNINGI guess the beginning of this project would have to go all the way back to 1967 when I flew on one of these as a crewmember with VW-1 flying out of Agana, Guam. We chased Typhoons all over the Pacific and deployed to Chu Lai, Viet Nam. There, for two weeks at a time, we flew up and down the Gulf of Tonkin for twelve hours every other night. It has been a dream of mine for a long time to build and fly a large model of the plane I flew on back in the sixties. So some time around Sept 1999 I bought the Don Smith plans, knowing it would be a long time before I would ever build this plane. The money was an issue, and still is, really, but I have decided to do it and... "When a man decides where he is going, the world has a way of stepping aside and letting him go." and so O N W A R D !I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so I will certainly do that here. The first thing I picked up for this project....... was a wife who would let me be myself whether she understood what I was doing or not. Too many times in my life I have heard guys saying "My wife won't let me........" whatever it was. That phrase is in neither of our vocabularies, and for that I thank her. I bought the Don Smith plans and used his added drawings for the lengthened version. By the way, the picture above is from the 1/72 scale Heller kit of the "Warning Star".
The next step was to have a kit cut. I chose Lasercut USA. Pat did a great job. The parts are exactly like the drawings. One of the benefits of laser cutting is he does not cut up your plans, you get them back fully intact. Here's his contact information: Patrick Fallacaro Lasercut USA 44 Guernsey Dr. New Windsor N.Y. 12553 (914) 561-7662 fax (914) 569-7973 Here are the ribs for the left side of the fuselage. Beautiful!
I actually started building on March 22nd as you can see in the first picture. Each picture has the date and time below. The fuselage plans are laid out and the first piece of wood is in place.
Sheeting about to become 1/2" strips for
planking. They were cut at an angle to allow them to fit together at the
outside seam.
You can see the pile of "planks". There are 72
rows around the fuselage and two and a half planks per row. Many of the
planks on the top half of the fuselage had to be cut tapered as well.
Two days later I had the left side of the
fuselage almost sheeted. It sat until the next weekend when I finished
up the rest of the sheeting and started on the right side.
Looking into the fuselage from the tail By the end of the weekend I had the fuselage
shell done. A little time in the evenings this last week has produced
the start of the horizontal stabilizer.
That's it for chapter one. And always remember, |
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