|
One of my favourite teams on the airshow circuit was
the Canadian Ray Ban Golds, flying the Pitts S2B.
The team was started under the original Carling Red Caps, then Canadian
Reds, and with Ray Ban picking up the tab as a sponsor, the aircraft were given
a very distinctive paint scheme.
Then
along came Pete Groves, who got me hooked on doing his Airshowmodels.com kits
and it was a natural to do the Ray Ban’s Pitts S2B…seeing as George
Kirbyson’s aircraft is parked behind mine in a hangar at Langley, BC.
George had been in No.2 aircraft when the team worked as a four-plane,
then became No.1 with the change to a 3 plane formation.
If you were at Abbotsford and saw the Ray Ban Team fly formation with
Canadian Pacific Airlines Boeing 747, you would never forget the low passes down
runway 18-36.
I
photographed George’s aircraft and sent the images to Greg Thompson,
Horizonsnz.com, a master at doing decal layout for models.
Greg did his thing with the decals and the file was then sent to Pete
Groves for approval before going on to Fantasy Print Shop in the UK.
The first run of decals looked extremely good but a problem occurred when
attempting to apply them on the model…there was no carrier film between the
gold lines resulting in a real mess. Using
Microscale Liquid Decal Film over the decal sheet solved that problem and Pete
had the necessary changes made to the decals to make it easier to apply the
markings. The two sheets allow you to build any one (or all) of the Ray
Ban Team, having the civil idents, position numbers and pilots names on the
sheet.
The undersides of the upper and lower wing and the horizontal tail are gold with
the aircraft ident being applied over the gold decal after it has dried. I might add here that Greg’s layout resulted in a perfect
fit for all decals. There was no
silvering under the clear carrier and with a sprayed clear gloss coat of Polly
Scale over the model after it was finished virtually made the carrier disappear.
The upper wing markings consist of six separate pieces and with all of these
markings, I found that a bit of Mother Nature’s setting solution works
best…saliva on a finger…before applying the decal.
After the decals were applied, I used Solvaset to get them to draw into
the surface of the model. This was
very necessary on the fuselage around the cowling and the stripe along the top
fairing.
With the change made to the
decal sheet, I have no problem recommending this product to anyone.
The results make for a spectacular model. Oh by the way, the gold spinner was painted using
Sheffield Pale Gold paint found in the crafts shops and hardware stores in
Canada.
Barney
www.barneysairforce.com
|
