1/48 Revell Ju-52 3/m

TC-RUH Turkish Airliner

by Tayfun Gerdan

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  Turkish Victory Day 2004 

 

In 1943, 5 Ju-52s retired from Lufthansa were sold to Turkey. They served as passenger planes in the inventory of Devlet Hava Yollari (former Turkish Airlines) for about 5-6 years and decommissioned. When Revell released this outstanding kit of Ju-52, I decided to build one of these five planes. Despite the lack of documentations and any additional info I managed to finish the kit with the help of 4 pictures.

Since we are having our Victory Day on August 30th in Turkey, I thought it would be meaningful to submit my first entry to ARC for the memory of this day.

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No putty was used during construction. After the wings and the horizontal stabs were applied, it was time for painting.

The overall green of the model is a mix of several Tamiya Acrylic greens and greys. After the general painting was done, I applied some post-shading.

All the markings on the plane were masked and painted. The masks were drawn with Corel Draw and printed onto tracing paper. I applied them onto the model using 3M's Spray Glue. The usual masking tapes were not good to cut, sticker paper had a too strong glue on its backside and after a couple of try and fail operations the solution was there. It took me a couple of weeks to find out the "tracing paper-spray glue" combination. The tracing paper was thin enough for a clean cut and the spray glue wasn't strong enough to harm the paint. The uneven surface of the model was another reason to choose the thin tracing paper.

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Only decals were used for the small "Devlet Hava Yollari" (State Airlines) markings on the both sides of front fuselage.

If you think the 1/48 Ju-52 is a big boy with its 24,21" (61,5 cm.) wingspan, you should see MPM's 1/48 Me-323 Gigant. The #12 picture gives a hint for comparison :). The Gigant is built by one of our countries best modelers, Ozkan Turker. ARC Fellows should remember his name with the MPM's 1/18 Me-262 model. As far as I could see on internet, they both are the only accomplished models of these MPM kits. It's a great honour for me to be able to work with Ozkan, I have learned a lot from him.

The kit was really outstanding. So, I decided to build another one, before the TC-RUH project was even completed. In these days, I am building another Ju-52 as Goering's private aircraft: "Lufthansa's Rote Tante - named Manfred von Richthofen". I hope to send its story to ARC as well.

Tayfun

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Photos and text © by Tayfun Gerdan