South African Airforce Harvards

made from 1/48 Monogram T6 Texan

Gallery Article by Sinuhe Hahn

 

The SAAF was one of the largest, and certainly one of the longest users of the T6 Texan or Harvard in commonwealth use, with these aircraft finally being retired in the mid-90’s by the new Astra Pilatus PC7 mkll.

 

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In the opinion of SAAF fans, the SAAF employed some of the most colourful schemes for this remarkable aircraft: two of which are shown here.

The first illustrates a commonwealth era machine with the classic Springbok roundels (mid-50’s). The second shows the same aircraft at a later stage with new castle markings as used during the day-glo era (mid-70’s till retirement).

I used the old Monogram kit, which to me is still the most accurate. It is also readily available and very cheap. Numerals and stencils were from the Dutch Decal sheets, while the SAAF markings were from generic SAAF decal sheets. All are available from Flightdecs.  

To simulate the aluminium finish, I used Alclad ll paints, which worked beautifully. Revell day-glo orange was sprayed over matt white to achieve the brilliant effect of this colour, else it tends to give a very flat dull finish (in other words - I had to re-spray the beast). Gunze RLM 4 was used for trainer yellow.

Photos were taken with a Nikon Coolpix 995 and single studio flash. This was my first experiment with a digital camera.

Sinuhe Hahn

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Photos and text © by Sinuhe Hahn