Hello everyone,

I found these interesting dimensions from Wikipedia, and compared them to the (expensive!) Trumpeteer 1/48th kit:

C-47 OAL: 19.47 M.

Span: 29.41 M.


Li-2: OAL: 19.65 M.

Span: 28.81 M.


Trumpeteer 1/48th kit: OAL scale lenght: 19.48 M. (406 mm)

Scale span: 28.99 M. (604 mm)

Trumpeteer discrepancy with C-47: OAL: near zero

Span: 8.7 mm short on model. (16.5 " actual)

Trumpeteer discrepancies with Li-2: OAL: 3.54 mm too short. (6.7" actual)

Span: 3.75 mm too long. (7" actual)

For span, it seems the Trumpeteer kit is much more amenable to make a Li-2, with the Airwaves cowl conversion.

Amazingly enough, the DC-3 had completely different dimensions from the C-47, which was a complete re-design... The Li-2 and Japanese copy were also full re-designs, but closer to the DC-3.

The Trumpeteer kit has the exact DC-3 span, a whopping 16.5 inches (8.7 mm) shorter than the C-47... And the kit matches the C-47 lenght exactly, so is 6.7" (3.54 mm) shorter than the actual DC-3 which has the same lenght as the Li-2... You follow?

I have added a sizeable 3.5 mm fuselage extension just ahead of the big C-47 side doors, whose good fit helped greatly in making them disapear for my Li-2 conversion... I have re-scribed a similar-sized upward-swinging door ahead of that, englobing two of the passenger windows, and the hole for the turret is now done as is the turret smash mould... Another small door is to be scribed on the right rear fuselage...

The nose had some putty re-shaping going on near the windshield, which I made a bit more vertical, but Trumpeteer's face job should be plenty good enough for most people...

I will trim 1.7 mm off the base of each outer wing section, to get the 7 inches off and hit the Li-2 span, as doing that at the wingroot might get the engines too close to the fuselage...

This is the first 1/48th Trumpeteer WWII kit that has really charmed me, as I did not like their Wellington's canopy or their Mig-3's spine...

The Trumpeteer fuselage has the correct wider cross-section that Monogram missed by 3-4+ mm, something which I have seen corrected successfully under a metal finish (!) in the Magazine Replic in 2002 (#121, build by Nordine Khadir), but this bit of Witchcraft is not for me...

The Trumpeteer error with the cowlings will be eliminated with the excellent Airwaves Li-2 cowling conversion. The only problem is that the Soviet props are still made of unobtainium...

Fascinatingly, some Li-2s had 4 blade props, and that Soviet-style 4-blade could be easier to imitate than the Soviet-style three-blade from a pair of Ki-84 props, or something like that, for an even greater visual difference...

Even though Trumpeteer's intentions did not all pan out (unuseable cowls, slightly short gear...), I absolutely love this kit which has a real special civilian charm... I expect great things from this commendable kit: It captures the spirit of its subject, and it does so significantly better than the Monogram: No mean feat!

Gaston

Hi Gaston

I look forward to seeing some photos - this sounds a fascinating conversion!

All the best

Rowan

Thanks Rowan!

It will be some time for progress pictures, as the 1/48th B-26B "Hard to Get" and 1/48th B-29 "Lucky Lady" are in the front burner now, both with resin correction cowlings and the B-29 with massive other corrections elsewhere (tail lenghtening/reshaping etc). But within 4-6 months the first pictures of the Li-2 in progress should come up...

Thanks for your interest.

Gaston