29 Jun 2014

U.S. Civilian Airport Tractor / ROK Navy Flight Deck Tractor Model

This vehicle was manufactured in the U.S. by Eagle company as an airport tractor tug. It can be seen at airports – mainly local ones in the U.S. and Canada – towing carts, ground support equipment or small aircraft up to business jet size. The tractor is light and thus it is not capable of handling airliners and heavy military aircraft. Its compact size however has appealed to the Republic of Korea (ROK) Navy where it is in service as a flight deck tractor. A number of such tractors currently serve on the amphibious assault ship Dokdo (LPH 6111) moving UH-1H and UH-60P helicopters around the decks. They will probably serve on the following ships of this class too.
Interestingly, this type of tractor has also been sighted recently on some of the U.S. Navy's shore stations: photograph.

This 1:72 scale model kit is from F4Models (cat. # 7013). The kit contains resin and photo etched parts, decals and instruction sheet.
Some photographs of the real vehicles: ROK Navy (scroll to the middle of the page there), civilian.

This tractor kit can accompany your model of a small private plane - say, a Cessna or a Beechcraft being towed to a hangar for parking, or it can sit next to a model of a regional jet or turboprop with a train of baggage carts brought for loading.