The research
 
All those questions. Being in love with the DC-3 for many years helped a little. I know what I like about the plane. Looking for info on how to build and what the possibilities and available materials were was completely new to me. But there is a lot of info available. I locked myself in and started reading r/c sites and especially those about war-birds, the C-47 being the military version that started it's career in WWII. I read everything about wood-building, epoxy glassing, detailing, weathering, retractable landing gears, navigation light, tips, tricks, good and bad ideas, paints, etc., etc.
 
I'm glad I spent so much time reading everything there was to read . Slowly an image started to form in my head. I was going for a civilian plane, with as much detail as possible, both inside and out and sheeted in aluminum, with working retractable landing gear, cockpit and passenger lights, navigational and landing lights. I was going for an exact replica of....... The paint scheme. 11,000 planes build, which one to make. That it had to be aluminum for the most part was a certainty. There is a restored Delta DC-3 flying in the US that is polished to a high gloss and it looks awesome and I wanted something like that. But I wanted something European. Why not a KLM DC-3? In all modesty our national airline, the KLM was one of THE pioneers in international aviation with many records and one of the first airlines to buy the DC-3 so that would have been a good choice. Well I'm not that patriotic and the paint-scheme isn't all that beautiful to my taste so I went for something I really liked. there is this fantastic site, www.airliners.net, that has over 5.000 pictures of DC-3's on-line. The place to start looking.
 
After downloading hundreds of pics I finally came up with this plane that has it all. SE-CFP, a C-47 from the "Flygande Veteraner". This is a club that restored and operates this beautiful aircraft in Scandinavian Airways  System colors. The SAS is a cooperation between Sweden, Norway and Denmark to operate their own airline. The stripe on the side is a stylized Viking dragon. For me this paint-scheme is as a DC-3 should look.
 
 
 
 
 
 
So I have made my choice. Now what's next. I collected all the pics I could find of this particular aircraft and of DC-3's in general, thanks again to www.airliners.net and also www.douglasdc3.com, www.ruudleeuw.com, The Douglas DC-3 Aviation Museum and Bob's Aircraft Documentation for 3 views and other drawings.
I went to the Aviodrome in Lelystad, Holland and meticulously photographed the 3 available C-47's both inside and out.
 
I was now armed with enough information to start building.
 
 
Please Email me at:
dc3@propellor.tv