Lockheed Vega 5b

Model represents the aircraft Amelia Earhart used in May 1932 in the first solo Atlantic crossing by a woman. The aircraft is currently at the National Air and Space Museum. The model was completed as a joint project with Grace Lassila (for a school project on Earhart).

There are no photographs of Earhart actually landing in Northern Ireland, since she was not expected there; her actual planned destination was Paris. I modeled the diorama loosely after the landing scene in the 2009 movie "Amelia". The title for this diorama could be "Paris is that way".

Construction Notes

The MPM kit is more or less accurate and matches the plans in [3] nicely. With some effort the kit goes together, but I did have to do fair amount of sanding and use some putty. Particularly fitting the wing into the fuselage was difficult. Although the kit comes with very nice decals for this particular aircraft, it is more a rendition of a standard Vega. Consequently, I had to modify the landing gear and fill in many of the cabin side windows.

Decals were high quality but getting the long cheatlines to settle down was tricky. Coating the airframe with Future and using MicroSol and MicroSet yielded a good result. We airbrushed the model with Model Master "Italian Red". Final finish was achieved with a micture of Testors Glosscote and Dullcote.

Diorama

Starting point is a 8x10 inch basswood rectangle treated with MinWax wood stain. I picked two trees from Woodland Scenics' "Realistic Trees" range (#TR1504, Medium Green). The diorama has some sheep and a sheepdog from Pegasus Hobbies' "Farm Animals" set. Unlike in the movie (see below), these are Suffolk sheep because they are visually more interesting. The human characters and the sitting dog are from various Preiser figure sets.

Fuselage and wing progress. Note that windows have been faired shut..

My original layout plan for the diorama.

References Used

Obviously, [1-5] are for the Vega, [6-8] for making the sheep look authentic.

1. In the Cockpit (Long et al); Collins Design 2007
2. Luftfahrt international 11/82
3. Revolution in the Sky - the Lockheeds of Aviation's Golden Age (Allen); Schiffer Aviation History 1993
4. Scale Aviation Modeller Volume 11 Issue 7
5. Sky Pioneer - A Photobiography of Amelia Earhart (Szabo); National Geographic Society 1997
6. Suffolk Sheep Society home page
7. Wikipedia article on Suffolk sheep
8. Suffolk sheep images from Flickr

Scene from the movie "Amelia".