Nice Bearcat ,68GT!  

Neat little Tigershark RRB! I agree with vetteman , your skills are improving. The pic of the Corsair shows this. The USN tri-color scheme can be tricky to pull off. I do see a little paint bleed under at a couple panel lines aft of the cockpit. Remember , the air brush gives you much more control over the spray than rattle cans. Give a light coat at first , let dry a few minutes , then follow up with another slightly wetter coat.  The airbrush takes practice and honestly , I'm not the handiest with one. 

 Apologies for not posting sooner . Lots going on in my little corner of the world keeping me from getting to the bench as often as I would like or need to. I do finally have color on the Bulldog. Here's the pics.

This first pic shows some checking of the white base coat . a case of too much paint too quick, trying to get paint on the inside of the wing struts. Sanded down a bit and recoated those. 

Base coat of white.

Tada!!! Red!   Since I can't find any color pics of the original Bulldog , have to go with paintings of the racer for color reference. Most seem to suggest a bit darker shade of red. Mixed one 1/4 oz bottle of Testors gloss red with a 1/4oz bottle of Testors dark red to come up with "medium red?" .

The kit comes with patterns to mask off for spaying the black scallops and swoops. Next step.

 Howard

RRB: New work on the corsair! The smallest insignia I'd have would be about an inch/3cm in size which I'd figure would be too large for most 1/72nd kits though. Decals for a Corsair shouldn't be that hard to find I'd think though.

Daddy: I have no idea if that's the right shade of red or not but she looks ready to rock n' roll! The black scallops are going to look really cool.

ooweee, daddy1, thats a sweet lookin little racer you got there. She'll look real sharp once she's got all her markings on!

Howard - that is a cool little plane, can't wait untill its done!

Gamera - so the decals, are they 3cm from one end on the band to the other end, or is the  ircle 3cm in diameter? I appreciate your help!!

My corsairs dimensions are - length - 13.8cm (138mm) wingspan - 17.3cm (173mm). 

Ok Owl and guys- here she is. Still not crazy about how the panel line wash worked out. She's painted and decaled for a hypothetical aircraft from VF-41 'Firebirds' (the actual aircraft never got beyond tests). The only aircraft built was scrapped in 1947.

hey,, I like that.. sweet build.. !

Very nice Gamera! Ill get the front page updated.

That looks very good Gamera!

Ready for that fight?

Owl - my p40 on the front page, it says p41 not p40.

Gamera a great example of an unusual subject well done I too have tried to bring out panel lines on dark base coats and it seems almost impossible to do. IMHO you should be proud of this build she looks great. I also think it would have been very clean because the aircraft never made it out of prototype.

P38: Thanks!

Owl: Thanks and thanks again for a great GB, this has been loads of fun.

Baron: Well, if I get to use the hypothetical aircraft. As an experimental machine the real plane didn't carry any guns! 

Vetteman: Thanks, I enjoy something off the wall every now and again. And I debated some weathering but decided to skip it since she's not a real plane even if I painted her as an operational aircraft.

Ok, I'll bend the rules a bit, you can have one 22. Machine gun.

Sounds fair - seeming my P-39Q only had - 1x 37mm cannon, 2x 20mm cannons & 2x 12.7mm machine guns.

Have fun'

I guess I'll call the Bearcat done.

Ohhh, another blue plane!

Very clean little bear you got there!

She looks fantastic 68GT!

I love shiny blue planes

Thanks, the more I looked at that gloss blue the more I loved it!

I did a coat of Future after the decals and did a black sludge coat on it.  As I wiped the dry acrylic paint off the shine started to come back leaving just a hint of grime.

68GT -  

Hi Miss Owl, I've decided to do that Grumman Martlet Revell kit I bought as a Wildcat. It has both Martlet and Wildcat decals in the box. I like the paint scheme for the US version. So if it's OK it's a Revell 1/32 F4-F Wildcat for this build.

Cheers

Casper the Chihuahua

Hi Miss Owl, I've decided to do that Grumman Martlet Revell kit I bought as a Wildcat. It has both Martlet and Wildcat decals in the box. I like the paint scheme for the US version. So if it's OK it's a Revell 1/32 F4-F Wildcat for this build.

Cheers

your wildcat is welcome! I'll update the roster. Im looking forward to seeing what your gonna do!

Very nice builds Gamera and 68GT. 

I've got the scallops and swoops on the Bulldog. This kit you have to paint a portion of the graphics with the actual scallops being decals. Decals are nice and thin ,but a bit on the brittle side. They do settle down well with Microsol, although a few spots required some coaxing with addtitional Microsol. 

The kit decals come with white striping for the scallops on the cowl and swoops on the wing but since the strips on the other decals were slightly off register , I'll paint them on with my handy 18/0 liner brush and a (hopefully) steady hand. Fresh pics tomorrow.

Howard 

 Here's the pics. 

I still need to finish the white outlines, then shoot a couple coats of Glosscoat.

The prop blades came out well. Only a couple of blemishes.

Done with standard kitchen foil and Microscale foil adhesive,although you could use leafing adhesive. Just make sure everything is smooth under the foil. 

Now to detail the hub and paint with Model Master aluminum to give the hub a subtle contrast.

Howard

This is looking so good!! The black and the red really makes it stand out, and the white outlines just makes the effect better! 

The prop looks good I see no imperfections

Thats looking real nice Howard!

wowee! Excellent little bulldog, daddy1!!

Thats looking real nice Howard!

Howard:

That's some beautiful work! Gosh now I want to build a racer!

Anyone anticipating to get new kits over the Holiday season? My mom's been hinting that she got me lots of fun little things! Hee Hee, cant wait!

Though I don't celebrate christmas, my parents are going to buy me a new brushless engine for my R/C car, it used to go 60kmph, but I burned out the engine, now, with the new engine it will get around 100kmph, more or less. This is infact a dune buggy, not a road race car. So I jump it a lot!

The wait is over! The Bulldog is complete!!! Here's the pics.

 This kit , while easy to assemble , is very challenging from the shaping and sanding around the wing roots and various fairings. If  I were to build this kit again , I'd   tack the wing struts in place , do all the shaping around the fuselage fairing , then gently cut the struts loose till after paint and decals. Working the paint and decals around the struts and between them and the fuselage, wing  was difficult. Still , I'd recommend this kit , if from the subject alone . Especially in this scale. 

 I normally build in 1/48, but these old racers weren't much more than tiny airplanes with big engines, so 1/32  gives the model more presence on the display shelf without taking up a lot of space.  This racer is about the size of a 1/48 P-47 , just a bit taller. 

 With the Williams Bro.s  Wedell-Williams racer in the stash , I'm looking forward to the reissue of the Laird Super Solution racer due out this upcoming year. Love the nostalgic look of those old racers, wheel pants, tail skids, and all.

Howard.

Howard - you've just convinced me too do a air racer!!!!

welldone 5 thumbs out of 5.

Ok, this is my first entry for this GB. I'm turning this old Revell Martlet kit into an F4-F Wildcat in Navy colours.

For it's age this must have been a dynamite kit in it's day. Despite being all raised panel lines, the quality and detail is excellent. It will be helped with the cockpit fit out helped by the Eduard PE set.

This will be my first task though, grr..........

Removing the date stamped into the fuselage. It does show the year, almost as old as I am.

Cheers