Hekla Aurora

As many folks who follow this blog know, I'm a huge fan of the 757.  It is certainly my favorite commercial plane and pretty close to being my favorite plane period.  I also collect die cast models after I realized I didn't have the patience to build models.  There are some pretty nice models out there.

 A few years ago, I found out about a special 757 that is flown by Icelandair.  I think they introduced it in 2015.  I was also messing with my prism for a bit.

 Anyway, they painted it in a special livery to mimic the Northern Lights.  I think they are fairly frequent in Iceland.

 They call the plane "Hekla Aurora".

 Hekla is a traditional Icelandic girl's name.  It is also the name of one of Iceland's better known volcanoes.

 Aurora is of course part of the name of the Northern Lights....Aurora Borealis.

 I would love to see this plane in person, but Icelandair does not fly to Detroit anymore.  They like to fly this plane around and sometimes she makes it to Chicago but it seems like never on a day when I can go.

 I guess I will have to be content to look at my model and it is a pretty nice model.

 A shot of the cockpit.

 I kind of like this shot.

One more as she gets ready to take off.

The Frankfort Welcome Sign

It has been a while since I've been up to the Frankfort area.  Based on the entries on here, it has been over four years.  I didn't realize it's been that long.  Anyway, I have to make sure I don't stay away as long next time.

 I remember this sign from when I was a kid.  I think they've restored it recently because it looks much nicer than I remember.

 What I didn't realize is that this is an Ann Arbor car ferry.

 It's kind of neat and I'm glad they've taken the opportunity to clean it up a bit.

One more view of the sign.

My Boeing 757-200 Model

A couple of months ago I wanted to get a plastic model of a 757.  I have one of the airport gift shop versions on my desk at work which is pretty nice but I wanted a kit to build myself.  I stopped in Model Cove in Ypsilanti (which is a pretty good model shop btw) but they didn't have one.  I did end up getting a 787 model which is pretty nice (I'll post pictures of that one at some point).

 When I was going to Hidden Lake Gardens a couple of weeks ago, I stopped in the Hobby Shop in Tecumseh (which is also very nice btw).  As luck would have it, they had the Air Force II version of a 757 (VC-32 in case you care).  While I wanted a 757 model, I didn't want to use that livery.

 Then I remembered that there are shops online that sell custom decals.  I stumbled across this company called Draw Decals and I figured that I would try them out.

 I decided to go with Delta decals because that is the airline I see most frequently.  If I had a little more talent I would have tried to replicate one of the Iceland Air planes that resemble the Aurora Borealis.  Maybe I'll try that for the 757-300.

 Anyway, the kit is a Minicraft kit and it wasn't too bad to put together.  I had to do a little putty for some of the seams but it wasn't too bad.  I kind of screwed up the decals on the other side but again not too bad.  Given that I really haven't built a model in a long time, I'm fairly pleased with how this one came out.  Especially given that the decals behaved differently than what I'm used to.

The tail number is N534US is one of the planes owned by Northwest.  This is an older version of the 757.  The newer ones have winglets and two doors over each wing.  At some point I plan on building a 757-300 to go with this one, I'll do a newer one then.