The Pilatus PC-7 was the
replacement for the S.A Bulldog as the basic trainer aircraft of the RMAF. They
arrived in Malaysia in the early 1984 and were posted to 1 FTS. A small
selection wore tactical camo and flew with 3 FTS in coin attack role. A total of
44 aircraft were purchased by the Malaysian government. Today the Malaysian
PC-7s are supplemented by the PC-7mk II.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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The kit is the
Aeroclub offering. It is a very basic rendition of the PC-7. Building the kit
takes a lot of patience and time and lots of putty and sanding to get the wings,
stabilizers and the fin to sit decently. Other points to note is that the engine
intake, gear mounting holes and the nose gear well needs to be cut out from the
plastic. Plastic card is needed to build the nose gear doors. I also added the
various antennas present on Malaysian PC-7s.All in all this is a testing kit,
which requires a lot of time and patients to get right.
I chose to model my
PC-7 following the standard colours of the RMAF training school at Alor Setar in
the mid 80tees to the early 90tees. The original scheme was the red/orange with
white. Due to the extreme acrobatics and demanding flying training, the Pratt
and Whitney engines on the PC-7 use to develop a lot a residue making the
orange/red finish very dirty indeed. It was then painted with a black strip to
overcome this problem. In fact it made the aircraft more nicer looking to me.
Today the PC-7s of the RMAF use a very different scheme with white and
orange/red again.
Paints used were
gunze and revell :
Red H 23 (Gunze) 70%
Orange H 14 (Gunze) 30% ratio
White Revell 04
Brian
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