Update 62
And the journey continues�
Thanks for the nice words Nicolas and Captain pugwash. I appreciate it. And yes Captain I stay pretty busy, but my work is cyclical and since things are slow, and we�re in a drought so I can�t collect data. to keep from going crazy, I�ve been doing a lot of modeling recently. Of course, some would say that that ship has sailed and the fact that I�m modeling as much as I am proves it. Well, good for them.

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In the last post I failed to show the paint job on the underneath side, but I did paint it.
I started the day with an outside inspection as an arachnid of some sort (we always called them wolf spiders, but definitely harmless) who gave Puff quite the looking over. She (probably) also helped and once when I was cutting decals a small piece shot off and she went after it. When I shooed her off she raised up on her hind legs ready to stand her ground. Too big for her breaches I would say.
But I digress and as you will see I have finished building Puff, and this little unexpected side project turned into a lot of fun. The little model was a joy to build and once again I learned many things I did not know previously in the process. Before getting to the model itself, I�m going to give a brief glimpse of history. Some of what follows, I knew, some was new to me.
As I�ve said in previous posts, My dad flew AC-47�s in Vietnam. He was with the 4th Air Command Squadron and was there from Jan. '66 to Oct. '66, when the Red Cross brought him home early because my mom was in the hospital with a collapsed lung. Here's a brief chronology of his tour, as best I can tell:
January, '66 � Bien Hoa - Very short stay
Binh Thuy - He was co-pilot for Major Waller's crew.
February, '66 - Tan Sun Nhut AFB, Saigon
Still co-pilot with Major Waller, but he was checked out as AC and flew and shot on some missions.
March 1-14, '66? - Tan Sun Nhut AFB, Saigon
On the 14th, he was serving as OIC and was notified that one of the planes in Da Nang didn�t return. The co-pilot Bob Passekoff was with dad at CCT in Ft. Walton Beach and ate Thanksgiving dinner with my family (I was in school, so I stayed with my grandparents in McAllen, Texas, where we lived when dad was gone) and he, my brother and my dad went red snapper fishing the next day.
March 15 � October, 66 - Da Nang AB
Elevated to Aircraft Commander to replace the lost pilots (another crew had been lost on March 9). His co-pilot was Ron Haren. While there, dad�s detachment commander, Lt. Col. Carter, had him design and fabricate plaques for the whole squadron.
According to dad�s memoirs of his time in Viet Nam, the natives often referred to the AC-47�s as dragons because of the tracers that looked like a fire breathing dragon. The Air Force Times even called them Dragonships, so the guys called her �Puff� after the kidsTV show �Puff the Magic Dragon�, and were hoping that their call sign would be �Puff�, but for some reason SEA came up with Spooky. The nose of my model has Puff, as shown above, rather than the Spooky ghost seen on some AC-47s.
Mid tour dad was asked to investigate the loss of an AC-47 from Udon (Either S/N 43-49546, Spooky 10 or S/N 43-48925, call sign unknown?). It�s a long story, but in short the Commander of that particular aircraft was an industrious sort of guy that wanted more punch than the mini-guns offered so he put a 50-cal in the aircraft and was testing it. When the plane didn�t come back from a mission, there was speculation that perhaps fatigue stress was more than the air frame could handle. Dad and engineers at Douglas Aircraft both calculated that the stress would be too much, but we will never know if that played any role in their disappearance.
October, '66 � HOME!
January 8, �67 � His crew, in the plane he flew, only with a different pilot, was shot down. If mom�s lung wouldn�t have collapsed, I might not have a dad. The Serial Number of that plane was 43-49124, and since AC-47s had the last three numbers of the S/N on their tail, 124 was added to the tail of my model, both to honor those who perished with her and because it was the plane dad flew.
In looking at numerous photographs of AC-47s, I noticed that many had two letter codes on their tail as well as the number, but in my brief search I have been unable to determine if 124 (the call sign is unknown) had letters and if so, what they were. So, falling back to the tribute theme, I decided to put RD on the tail as it is both of our initials.
All decals were generated in AutoCad and printed on Testor�s white decal paper (since I can�t find white ink), except for the numbers, that came with the Trumpy kit. I also added mini-guns using cut up gun barrels I had left over from the Missouri kit, and antennas. The straight one (it�s supposed to be askew) is stripped 38 gauge wire, the horse shoe shaped one was made from the extra landing gear strut provided with the little model kit. I also ran the wire that runs from the tail forward to the fuselage. I took David Griffith�s advice on this one and found some cheep nylon rope from, in this case the OU IT store and took it apart, to get a single thread, I drilled a tiny hole in the fuselage, glued the thread in place and when it dried, I put a dab of glue on the tail and pulled the thread fairly taught and held it the glue briefly and TADA, it was up. I trimmed it and stll had a smidge sticking out of the glue on the tail side, so I just flicked a lighter at it and it burned flush. SWEET! Last was the incense to tighten the line and some small touch up painting. I�m really happy with the results.






Okay, I am more than happy. I am thrilled with the way it turned out. The problem is that I put it in the hangar to see what it looks like�
�And I think it looks cool, but now I don�t know that I want to hide it in the hangar. As of 22 minutes ago (as I�m typing this) my dad is 80. I was going to surprise him with it in the hangar, but now I�m thinking maybe I should just give him the little model and get another one for the hangar or just jettison the plan. One thing�s for sure, I don�t have long to decide.
Any thoughts?