1/48 Vacuformed Maintrack T-2E Buckeye

Gallery Article by Dimitris Savides on June 9 2009

 

Hellenic Airforce colours

This is my latest model, that took me over 3 years to complete. It is my first attempt to make a vacuform kit. It is the old Maintrack kit from the Golden Wings series in 1/48 scale. The model includes a pair of resin ejection seats with poor detail, metal landing gears, wheels and resin intakes. It offers decals for two planes, both in US Navy markings.

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I start building my model cutting all parts from the plastic sheets. I scratchbuild the cockpits from plastic sheet and rods. All details were added from plastic and wire of 3 different diameters. I used the resin seats of the kit but I added the safety harnesses. The 2 instrument panels are coming from the RF4 kit of Hasegawa, they are not 100% correct but its hard to tell in the scale. I made the main landing gears from plastic rod and wire. The front landing gear is the metal of the kit with added detail from wire and plastic. The landing gear wells and covers are also made by plastic sheet with details from plastic and wire. I also scratchbuild the arresting hook and the the gunsight of the Greek T-2E birds. Before to assemble the model I scratched the rivets which were missing from the kit.

After I completed the assembly I sprayed a grey primer to check the joints. I pre-shaded the model with acrylic matt black from Tamiya. I sprayed the SEA camouflage scheme using the Xtra colour paints No X102, X110, X116 and X140. The Greek markings came from Icarus Decals, the rest of the markings are from various decal sheets. I weathered the colours with different tones of the basic colours, and I washed the model with oil paint. A final coat of semi gloss varnish and my T-2E was ready to take its place in my collection.

Dimitris Savides

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Photos and text © by Dimitris Savides