Here is my latest build, one of my all-time favorite warbirds and my favorite USN fighter (by a hair against the F4U Corsair) - Trumpeter's F6F-3 Hellcat.
Right out of the box, this 'cat can be built as either David McCampbell's Hellcat, or Alex Vraciu's. McCampbell was the leading Hellcat ace with 34 kills, while Vraciu chipped in with a tally of 19. As a voracious reader of WWII history, I was well familiar with both men, but opted for Vraci's "white 19" because of the famous photo of Vraciu recounting his big day early in the action that would later be dubbed "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot".
In doing some pre-build research, I ran into some photos of the actual Hellcat that I planned to build that revealed a pretty big problem with the kit.
And then this painting (not necessarily conclusive until I found the above photos):
One final shot of the famed aviator:
These photos and painting indicate that Vraciu's Hellcat sported a big, white 19. Yet, Trumpeter thought it acceptable to sell a decal sheet with its kit featuring BLACK 19s. The kit decal sheet failed to include any of the kill markings, or the Felix the Cat squad logo. I consider this to be a total fail on Trumpeter's part. I almost opted for McCampbell's bird, which seemed to be more accurately represented on the decal sheet, until I found a Techmod release that did include a complete set of accurate markings for Vraciu's Hellcat.
Strike one for the kit.
As for the plastic, I'll give it a second strike for one issue: the plastic primary wheels are far too large for the narrow gauge tires. I had to sand away a whole lot of plastic to get the tires to fit acceptably over the wheels.
But that's as far as the baseball analogy will go. This is a pretty good kit overall. Not Tamiya quality, but I really didn't encounter too many issues in building this beast. The tail wheel is notoriously fragile, and I actually broke it this morning while I was wrapping up construction. Easy enough to repair, but if you have any eye on building this Hellcat, keep in mind that you are forced to install the rear wheel early on, so take steps to protect it as best you can. I kept it wrapped in tape (but this morning had removed that protective tape...)
The wings can be posed extended or folded. Since I built my Hellcat with wings extended, I can't comment on any difficulties in mounting the wings folded back. The extended wings, however, come with some tricky fits. Nothing major, but a portion of the wing is like a peninsula that you should take care in not snapping off (this is the outer portion of the inner wing section forming the wheel well, where there is an access panel that you can display open or closed that butts up to the outer wing section).
My primary paints came from the Vallejo box set for USN and Marine Corps aircraft 1940 - 1945. This Hellcat sported the tri-color camouflage scheme the Navy utilized in 1943 and into the first part of 1944 of insignia white, intermediate blue, and dark sea blue. Everything went just fine for those first two colors, but when I started painting the dark sea blue, I thought it looked rather more like a dark grey than a dark blue. I found an older bottle of US dark sea blue by a manufacturer called "The Color of Eagles" that looked more the part.
I mixed up black, grey, and brown to spray the distinctive exhaust stains, and augmented that with some Tamiya weathering compounds. I lathered the entire airframe with Flory wash, and I used some AK Interactive streaking grime across a lot of the underside. The entire top side got a bunch of ground-up pastels to give her the worn look that I was striving for.
I was purposeful in leaving off both the drop tank and the bombs that came with the kit. Probably a result of that painting that I show above.
Build photos:
The kit comes with a tractor used to move airplanes around on the carrier deck or in the hangar bay. The tow bar does not actually mount to the tail wheel (it's too wide).
I neglected to take a picture of the engine prior to installing the cowling, but I did add a bunch of wiring for the ignition wiring.
Next up is a 1/32 two-fer: Revell's F4U-1A Corsair in a 1960's era boxing, and Tamiya's F4U-1 Birdcage Corsair. I hope that these two will close out my busy modeling year.