Lisunov Li-2D - 1/33-scale paper model

Several years ago, I started repainting FlyModel's C-47 kit as a World War II era Lisunov Li-2. The US provided hundreds of C-47s to Russia under Lend-Lease. The Russians built C-47s under license. The Lisunov Aircraft Factory built a near-identical knock-off, and never acknowledged that it was an American design. The Li-2D I'm modeling was a WWII paratroop transport and glider tug. Some of the Li-2s were fitted out as transport/bombers or photo recon ships. Like the DC-3 in the US, the Li-2 became a mainstay of post-war Russian civil aviation.

After I finished repainting and printing the kit for my father's C-47, I went back and looked at the Li-2 repaint. It was nearly finished. So I have now finished it, except for a few bits that will have to be repainted during the assembly process, and my plan is to build the two in parallel. Together, they should make an interesting display.

"Repainting" the two kits was done in Photoshop Elements. For the C-47, that meant painting out the invasion stripes and changing the squadron and aircraft markings. For the Li-2, it involve all of that plus adding camouflage and Russian insignia, and modifying several components to match photos.

Printing will be a tedious process because the original sheets are 16x11 inches and my printer can only handle letter and legal size cardstock. So l'll have to use Photoshop to slice up the pages and rearrange parts to fit my printer.

My Father's "Bird"

 It took me a week of scanning, scaling, repainting (in Photoshop), and printing the FlyModel paper kit, but I finally have a 1/33-scale paper kit of my father's C-47. Now it's time to start building.

The C-47 "Argonia" depicted in the FlyModel kit was the plane of Col. Charles Young, whose hometown was Argonia, Kansas. Young was CO of the 439th Troop Carrier Group. My father flew as a copilot in Argonia with Col. Young when Dad first arrived in England. The Argonia is preserved at the D-Day museum in Normandy, France.

Removing the invasion stripes was the most tedious part of the repainting process. My father and his plane arrived in England two weeks after D-Day and never got the stripes. Repainting the kit also involved changing the squadron and plane markings. Printing involved first scaling the scans by comparing their dimensions to the printed kit, then dividing up the parts (in Photoshop) to print parts from 16"x11" originals on letter-size and legal-size cardstock -- a lot of fussy work.