1/48 ESCI S-3 Planet Express

Gallery Article by Keith Diamond on Jan 2 2009

Silly Week 2010

 

This is my 1/48 Planet Express S-3 Viking.  So how did a S-3 Viking end up in private hands working as a commercial carrier?  There are two possibilities:

1.  At the beginning of the 21st century, the US Navy decided to sell recently retired S-3 airframes to both foreign armed forces and to private collectors.  Somehow, they neglected to perform background checks on the private collectors, and a time traveling mad scientist by the name of Hubert Farnsworth purchased a single aircraft.  It is believed Prof Farnsworth uses the Planet Express business to fund his mad scientist experiments.

2. A robot by the name of Bender Bending Rodriguez was left behind by the aforementioned mad scientist in the year 1947.  Later that century, or early in the next, Bender (who was well known in the 31st century as a skilled criminal) stole an airframe from either the US Navy or AMARG.

Do either of these scenarios make sense?  Not really.  A more likely scenario is that a modeler was working on a 1/48 S-3 Viking off and on for months before finding it with a cracked wing after a shelf fell on it. 

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I bought this kit off ebay with the hopes of building it into Navy 1.  It wasn't long before I had my first setback when I realized that this particular boxing of the ESCI kit was missing key features of a S-3B.  Some ARC members were kind enough to provide me with some of the missing pieces, specifically Mark Kubes providing wing tip pods, and Kevin Smith providing a spare fuel tank.  Work on the project was sporadic based on time available in between school and work.   One day though, I went to my work bench to find a shelf had fallen and broke one of the wings in half and cracked the airframe.

I tried my best to repair the wing, but the crack was still very noticeable.  So, I decided to postpone my plans for a Navy 1 S-3, and to build this kit into something else.  After throwing around some ideas, I started to lean towards a mail carrying S-3 since the kit included some very nice, and very large baggage pods.  From there, I decided to combine the idea with one of my favorite shows, Futurama.

As mentioned, the kit used is the 1/48 ESCI S-3 Viking, specifically, the COD boxing.  I edited the Planet Express logo to include the outline of a S-3 and printed the decals.  The decals are layered since I had to put a blank white decal underneath to get the tan color to show properly.  Since the decals were layered a little thick, I didn't apply a wash over them.  For the wash I used craft paint thinned with water.  It was my first attempt at a wash, so the results were a little iffy.  The distinctive green color is called "Electric Mucus" on the television show, and I was lucky to find a close enough match made by Rustolem.  After the decals and wash, I added a dull cote, since I felt a flat finish would look better than gloss, which proved to be correct.  The base is from the ESCI/AMT A-10 kit.  I painted the edge gloss black, masked it, and painted the rest flat black.  After that, I scribed the lines, and sprayed the top erratically with a gray paint to give it an uneven look.  After the paint dried, I scribed the lines again to show the black plastic.

So, the wing was cracked, I was missing some pieces, and I worked on it off and on for a long time, but I was happy with the final results.

Keith Diamond

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Photos and text © by Keith Diamond