A tribute to a....*cough*crap*cough*.....movie..

[Cap'n Wannabe]

I present the Minicraft 1/48 Cessna 150, modeled as N9828J, as seen in that ultimate of aviation classics, Iron Eagle. The first one. With the F-16s and stuff.
First thing I did was to reshape the seats - they look bloody awful out of the box, a bit to big and thick for my liking. I sanded off the raised area around the edge of the seat, which thinned them nicely, cut the middle of the seat back to make them look like two separate seats, and cut the backs down to 10mm high - think I took around 2-3mm off them. Finally, I shaped the corners on the top of the seat backs. I reckon they look about 97.6% better now, and probably a bit more to scale.


All the C150/152s I've flown have had carpeted floors, which is definitely not represented on the kit. After some head-scratching, I found a roll of self-adhesive medical tape in my box of tricks. This stuff is very thin, and very sticky. Laying a piece over the floor, I teased into the nooks and crannies with a toothpick, then cut off the excess. A bit hard to tell from the photos, but there's a definite texture on the floor now, which should come up alright under a coat of paint.


And the two of them together..

[timmay]

Another way to do the carpet is to use a photo of carpet. Use samples from catalogues or even make the photo yourself. Old model railroader trick. Timmay!

[Cap'n Wannabe]

Thanks Timmay...I'll give that a shot on my 172

[Cap'n Wannabe]

Painted the cockpit floor today - really happy with the result. I think the medical tape worked really well!

[Cap'n Wannabe]

After mucking about with the front seats, I figured ol' Dougie Masters deserved leather upholstery for being forced to be in such a godawful movie (I firmly believe that he had his character killed off on purpose in the sequel..). With that in mind, a google search turned up some nice patterns, so I set about painting the seats to match..

I got a bit of bleed under the masking on the RH seat, so I'll cover that with a map, or seatbelts, or something..
The kit comes with a rear bench seat - something I've never seen in person, but found plenty of pics on the interwebs - so they got the same treatment. Dunno if I'll put them in or not, though..

Once the paint's properly dry, I'll tone it down with a semi-gloss clear coat..

[Cap'n Wannabe]

IP with bonus overscale throttle and mixture controls..

[Mofo]

Looks cool.

Another option for carpeting, FWIW, is model car flocking. It's sort of like static grass, but in different colours. Paint your base coat, brush on some PVA, then pat on the flocking. When dry, brush/blow off the excess. It's a messy job, but preserves detail pretty well, and it's probably the thinnest way to add a fabric texture. I've even played around with it trying to add the sheepskin texture seen on some bang seats.

[timmay]

He said sheep,,,,,snicker. Timmay!

[Cap'n Wannabe]

First attempt at seatbelts....a little too big - gonna have to shrink 'em down a bit..

[Cap'n Wannabe]

Bloody hell...must be over 2 months since I've done any work on this...all kinds of other crap getting in the way!
Anyhoo, all that time to make 4 sets of seatbelts. Note the Melbourne VTC folded on the RH seat


Did some dry-fitting - the floor doesn't butt up to the fuselage side - there's a small gap on either side. After a bit of head-scratching, I decided to button up the rear fuselage, then slip the seats/floor assembly in through the front, then drop everything else in through the top. Should work...