Lockheed reinvented commercial aviation with their series of monoplanes.  One that I've always liked is the Orion and Tom Nallen designed a wonderful model that, I think, he's still flying.   

 As larger, multi-engined aircraft came along, the larger airlines they sold their Vegas and Orions to smaller airlines.  Alaska Star Airlines (to become Alaska Airlines) this one and I fell in love with it. 

 

I printed two copies of the plans, cut one up, and created my own printwood kit using restickable glue stick. 

 

 

 

 

 

I built the flying surfaces according to Tom's plan.  He designs a good airplane and the structure is solid but sufficiently light.  At this point I was planning on doing the Swiss Air racer, which is the same variant as Tom's Shell racer.

 

 

Framing the fuselage is pretty straight forward.  I didn't cut former notches prior to assembly, preferring to use a file to open them up as I was installing stringers.

 

 

I temporarily glued popsicle sticks to the keel pieces to provide a 'straight' set of supports for the half-fuselage.  Using some double-sided table, I stuck 1x2s to a piece of scrap particle board and went to work adding formers and stringers to the other side.  There are fancy jigs to do all this approach accomplishes the task.

 

 

The cowling is a stack of formers sheeted with 1/32" balsa.  I really like this approach as it provides a really solid nose and I always need weight up there anyway.

 

 

 

I carved a mold from balsa, covered it with 3 coats of dope and pulled the canopy for the Orion.  I keep telling myself I'll build a vacuform system someday but every time I pull one of these canopies I wonder why.

 

Sometime near the end of the framing process I came across the Alaska Airlines photos.  At this point I noticed that this variant was the later, 9F variant and the stabilizer is considerably different from that of the early variants.  So, I printed this 3V to a wingspan of 24" to match Nallen's plan.  

 

 

Then it was a simple matter of "designing" a new stabilizer over the new stabilizer outline.  Note that "designing" was done with Tom Nallen's help .  I just put structure everywhere Tom did on his stabilizer.  Only the outline changed.  Designing model airplanes is easy if you have enough plans (grin).

  Using glue sticks, letting it at least mostly dry, and then using alcohol (cheap rubbing alcohol) to activate it while covering, makes covering a pleasant, listen to your favorite music kind of time.  Tissue color is Testors Acryl sprayed lightly onto a framed sheet of orange tissue.     

  I apologize for not having photos of the window-making process.  What I did, however, was: 

 

1) Suck Tom's window template into Photoshop.  Add a fourth window and print to some balsa-colored paper. 

 

2) Cut out the window holes, retaining the black outlines (window seals of course). 

 

3) Then I backed the paper with a very thin plastic.  The result was glued directly to the fuselage. 

 

  

 

Note the logos in the previous photo.  These were printed on plain photocopy paper.  I then sanded the back to thin the paper and then cut out the logos.  Using glue stick these were attached directly to the tissue and, once the clear coat is sprayed, they look like decals.  Registration numbers were printed using a cheap Epson C86, which uses waterproof Durabrite inks.   

  Sadly, I've discovered after the fact that I must be dislexic as this aircraft should sport the R/N  NC230Y.  I goofed.  A better marketeer would suggest that I "personalized" my model :-) 

 

 

 The black color is Testors Acryl flat black sprayed on framed black tissue.  The cowl ring was sprayed directly. 

 You'll notice that I've still got a lot of work to do on this model as it lacks fillets, prop block, canopy framing and other trim details.  So many airplanes, so little time.