history

First built in 1959 by the Swiss company Pilatus the PC-6 Porter first flew with a Lycoming GSO-480 340 h.p engine. Two years later the PC-6A 529h.p Turbo Porter was produced.

Built for military use, eventually in the mid 1990’s aircraft were taken out of service and sold off to private sector operators. During military service float plane conversions had been tried with limited appeal but in civil use many were converted to float planes
Great photos may be seen at the Pilatus web site

The Kit

The strong top opening box has a painting of the Pilatus taking off.
Contents:
12 x light grey plastic sprues.
1 x clear plastic sprue.
1 x decal sheet.
8 x pages of construction and painting guide.
Prop blades are on three different sprues so an alignment jig may be required.

Cockpit

The cockpit floor is one piece and requires 12 x 0.1 mm holes to be drilled for the passenger seat mounts and you will have to lay out the locations yourself. Some indication of the controls' locations are marked on the floor but seat locators would have been nice.

Six sets of seats have 6 parts each. The frames so small that this must be close to molding limits. I would liked to have had a PE option for these parts.
The Pilot and Co-pilot seats are made of 4 parts each. The dash is one piece with decal for the instrument panel. The cockpit walls are made up of 7 pieces and have minimal detail moulded on.

clear parts

There are 15 clear parts on the sprue. The canopy could be clearer but the side windows are OK.

Fuselage

The Fuselage is made up of 8 parts and the vertical stabilizer and rudder are also installed at this time.

8 more parts make up the horizontal stabilizer and elevator assembly. There are some large ejector pin marks to clean off the insides of these parts.

Locations for radio antennae 23D(X2) and 23C are not provided. You will need to lay out and drill 0.1mm holes for them to mount into once the fuselage is assembled.

The engine Cover (no engine supplied) and props are made up of 14 parts.
All parts have fine recessed panel lines and there is hardly any flash to clean up.

Wings

28 parts make up the wings into two wing assemblies. Flaps and Ailerons are molded separately but may only be assembled in the neutral position.

Undercarriage

The float assembly is made of 19 parts and the float attachment pylons 10 parts.
I will be building a jig for this assembly, details will follow in the build review. There is no mention of nose weight, but there is plenty of room to add your own in the floats and in the nose. Don't forget to add weights if you don't want a tail sitter.

Decals

There is only one decal option for this build, a Porter operated for the San Jose Sharks (NHL Ice hockey team). The decal density looks good.
I will be using Microscale Liquid Decal Film to head off any problems with decal breakup,

Instructions

Clear instruction printed in black and white on 8 pages. Paint colour call outs are for Model Master only.

related reviews

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Pilatus PC-6C/H-2 Turbo Porter US Army, RAAF, Argentina
Pilatus PC-6/B2-H2 Der Bunte Fredi and build review