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Description
I've submitted a number of WIP progress photos of this customized Testors/Italeri C-119 kit over the last several years and here it is....completed at last!!! This kit has quite a story and history that I'd like to share if I may....

While I've submitted pictures of it in progress over the last couple of years, this kit has been one of my longest in progress projects. I first started this kit way back in the fall of 1997. Yes, it's been in the works off and on for 18 years or so now. Like a fine wine it's properly aged now. It was never supposed to take as long as it has, but it did mostly because there is so much that I wanted to with this kit that I am both uncomfortable with and even afraid of that I have stressed out every step of the way on this kit and have wound up setting it down for several years at a time in not being ready or able to deal with each next step towards getting it done. This kit is a very important one to me in that it is for my great father and I really wanted to showcase my skills well here and really didn't want to screw it up (and there is sooooo much here to screw up that could have ended this project).

The things involved here that I was not comfortable with and that I HAVE screwed up with in the past are white paint jobs, bare metal paint jobs, decals, clear parts, very old and super fragile decals, scratchbuilding parts, and casting parts. As you can all see though, it all worked out and came out well at last. Though not a contest level model, it is what I and my father wanted, a well done, professional level display model. I have never seen a J model C-119 built and there wasn't much reference available (especially where a straight top down view of the plane was concerned or good views of the cargo door/wing root area were concerned. I had to make a best guess at the contours here.) Of course good photos and reference became available once I was past the point of no return on being able to change or rework some contours of the special J model cargo door.

What makes this model so significant and important to my father and I is that this plane is the version and in the colors and markings of one of the planes he worked on while in the U.S. Air Force when I was young and the Aurora 1/72 scale model of this plane was one of the main inspirations in me getting interested in airplanes and building models in the first place. So it is built as a return tribute to him for the wonderful world of art, modelbuilding, and aircraft that he started me on and encouraged throughout my youth. He is very pleased with how this model came out.

The model is a composite and best guess from talks with my father and photo reference of similarly painted C-119Gs of that era. The plane was originally stationed at Hamilton AFB, CA. in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Description
I've submitted a number of WIP progress photos of this customized Testors/Italeri C-119 kit over the last several years and here it is....completed at last!!! This kit has quite a story and history that I'd like to share if I may....

While I've submitted pictures of it in progress over the last couple of years, this kit has been one of my longest in progress projects. I first started this kit way back in the fall of 1997. Yes, it's been in the works off and on for 18 years or so now. Like a fine wine it's properly aged now. It was never supposed to take as long as it has, but it did mostly because there is so much that I wanted to with this kit that I am both uncomfortable with and even afraid of that I have stressed out every step of the way on this kit and have wound up setting it down for several years at a time in not being ready or able to deal with each next step towards getting it done. This kit is a very important one to me in that it is for my great father and I really wanted to showcase my skills well here and really didn't want to screw it up (and there is sooooo much here to screw up that could have ended this project).

The things involved here that I was not comfortable with and that I HAVE screwed up with in the past are white paint jobs, bare metal paint jobs, decals, clear parts, very old and super fragile decals, scratchbuilding parts, and casting parts. As you can all see though, it all worked out and came out well at last. Though not a contest level model, it is what I and my father wanted, a well done, professional level display model. I have never seen a J model C-119 built and there wasn't much reference available (especially where a straight top down view of the plane was concerned or good views of the cargo door/wing root area were concerned. I had to make a best guess at the contours here.) Of course good photos and reference became available once I was past the point of no return on being able to change or rework some contours of the special J model cargo door.

What makes this model so significant and important to my father and I is that this plane is the version and in the colors and markings of one of the planes he worked on while in the U.S. Air Force when I was young and the Aurora 1/72 scale model of this plane was one of the main inspirations in me getting interested in airplanes and building models in the first place. So it is built as a return tribute to him for the wonderful world of art, modelbuilding, and aircraft that he started me on and encouraged throughout my youth. He is very pleased with how this model came out.

The model is a composite and best guess from talks with my father and photo reference of similarly painted C-119Gs of that era. The plane was originally stationed at Hamilton AFB, CA. in the late 1960s and early 1970s.