Rayforce 9502 Freighter

It all started with a 1/48 PBY Catalina. I'd used a 1/72 Catalina before, but for years I have looked forward to getting one of these new large Revellograms to play with. This one came assembled and painted but damaged beyond repair and thus needed alot of sanding because I was too lazy to Easy-OFF the paint. But then I had a gorgeous base for a ship that I was determined to use and enhance, not cover-up.

Like always, the basic shape got flipped upside-down and backwards. I didn't want to ignore the huge teardrop holes in the fuselage by just covering them over, instead completing the lower curve and shaping it to contain a section of cylinder - A waste of time, considering they DID get hidden behind the Cat's rudder. A miscellaneous blue printer part, the same as on the back of the Dhjeg, connected it to the Cat's wingroot. The next most important addition to the design were Space Shuttle fuselages, left-over from when I used the noses eleven years earlier on the Orange Freighter.

The top, with it's long, flat expanse, tempted me to build-up towers or something, but that would ruin the basic longer-than-high shape that fit the nose. Serendipidously, which is how all the best ships go together, a pair of display-base pieces from the Armageddon space station were just the right width for that part of the top, and just the right height for a couple of rows of Sun keyboard keys (I like these because they're old, thus sturdy, and don't have a center post to cut-off). Finally, a spoon hides the distinctive Cat nose while still replicating the overall shape. Oh, and the pontoons and their supports finish-off the front parts of the Shuttle bodies.

Details and fiddly bits tied-together the major components. Sandable Primer provided that magic moment when the collection of parts becomes a single ship. It also showed that... It needed something abaft and ventral, something attached to those wonderful slab-sides of the ex-pontoons. Something like wings - Er, waveguides. Something like 1/72 F-14 horizontal stabilizers. Yes! Suddenly an ex-Catalina looks like a pointy-nosed manatee.