It’s a funny old hobby sometimes…

I was weighing up another project recently invoving a 1/72 Fujimi A-7E to do as a quick build (in between the Fokker D.VIII, E-50 with Heimdall turret, Leopard I etc etc etc) and while looking at bits for the A-7 I came across ESCAPAC seats and included in the list of aircraft that used them was the dear old S-3 Viking.
Now this jogged my memory of the old Italeri (originally ESCI) 1/48 Viking that I had started a few years ago but abandoned due to the sheer amount of work involved to bring it up to scratch so guess what came out of the loft today?

I originally got the Paragon wing fold set not long after I bought the Viking but since then I had heard a few horror stories about the amount of cutting required for it to fit properly so a couple of years ago I got the Wolfpack wing fold set instead plus the D704 refuelling pod.
The cockpit is by True Details (Formerly KMC=Kendal Model Company I believe) and luckily I found it again yesterday while having a sort out. I say luckily as I was looking at a Wolfpack cockpit set on Evil Bay and very close to buying it because I had forgotten all about the True Details one.
Originally boxed by ESCI this kit is YEARS old (at least 30+) but to be honest it’s still a good basic kit and I’ve seen some beauties made from it over the years. It is billed as an S-3A/B but to get an accurate B you need to add a few bits and delete others such as chaff and flare dispensers, bits to the wing tips and aerials. The biggest challenge is to fill in some of the sonobuoy holes under the rear fuselage from 60 to 16 and make it look decent, fortunately I have an update set from Two Mikes resin on the way which provides a new underside panel plus the chaff and flare dispensers and wing tip bits as previously mentioned.
I don’t know how far I’ll get with this one but it’s been an interesting afternoon looking in the box again and digging out the references and I suppose the point of this post was how modellers (well…me anyway) can go from one subject to another while looking for something else.

Edit; I’ve just looked at the Wolfpack wing fold set and it has all the lumps and bumps for the wing tips included, I suppose I should really check these things beforehand :o)