I'm in for a quick update. I've been at sort of a stand still with this turkey. The kit was found to be missing one of the rear "opera" windows, so now McCampbell's plane, which had them, is off the table. I bought this kit used off ebay and several of the clear pieces were off the sprue, so who knows where it went. You'll have that I suppose. Fortunately the kit comes with fuselage halves that are void these windows for a late dash 5. My options were now dwindled. I was surfing ebay and came across Hamilton McWhorter's #9 which seems to be void the window. He's the first Hellcat ace and one of my favorite pilots......sold!
It was a piece of cake to assemble and I had no issues. The wings fit into a depression in the fuselage which alleviates wing root gaps. I hit the seams with primer and found that I did fairly well the first time. It's my understanding this kit is the only one to get the overlapping panel effect on the fuselage right. It does take some care in sanding though.
I turned my attention to the R-2800. It seems a bit small in scale to my eye. It's also fairly basic too. I used copper wire for the ignition. To see how I do this check out my tutorial here:
http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/149327.aspx
Now that I know which subject I'm going with, I should get to paint soon..