Excellent work on the F4U-5N Night fighter Greg .
I agree with Stik that the overall black finish does look quite sinister , I also like the subtle exhaust and gun staining over the wings but I particulary noticed the nice yellow bands around the bomb tips .....Very , very nice work there and the yellow naplam tank sets makes everthing complete .
I think it was you Greg who mentioned a while back about Italeri bringing out some 1/72 F4U-7 corsair's , I picked up two the other day and I'm now thinking of using those two kits as my "WF" F4U-5N birds . Italeri provide different cowl fronts and I have a few wing radomes from other kits to use as well .
Aires have a nice set of 1/72 resin flaps for the F4U-7 , I picked up two sets for my kits as well .
My original High Planes / Italeri F4U-5N kit bash I'll now build as a F4U-5P recon bird . I have cut the wings to pose folded as well as the flaps but it's a little more work than I anticipated but it should work out okay . I haven't had much time for building of late , I'm still really busy on the home front ; Instead I started cataloging my kit , decal and resin/PE stash on the computer . I'm finding so much stuff I forgot I had , including those Wolfpack decals for a RF-51 Mustang and another F4U-4 Corsair from the Korean War . I also found a huge stash of F-4 Phantom decals as well as PE sets , so I've been matching aftermarket decal sheets with various kits .
I'm coming close to 1200 kits in total , for a few seconds I thought about thinning the stash a little but each kit seems to have some historical reference and fits beside other kits to complete different era's and so forth . I also found a nice stash of 1/72 US Bicentennial aircraft kits and decals about 12 in total that I completely forgot I had . They look very , very nice .
I also finally tracked down one of those 1/72 Ace AF-2S guardian kits , it's the fire bomber version but I already have the Airmodel vacuform AF-2W kit so I'm going to use the vacume belly radome on the Ace kit . I have puttied and sanded the Fairey Firefly and she is ready for masking , I guess I'm close to having something near finished along with my second (B-17) PB-1W AEW Fortress which has been sitting in the back room / spray booth for a few months now , there's two builds that are almost done .
There's also the C-46 Commando , where I've been messing around with Squadrons vacu canopy . I might go back and try and use the kit canopy halves on the Commando , the vac canopy is too thin and flex's too much and I'm getting frustrated with it , I just would like to get builds finished , although I still haven't decided on what paint scheme for the Commando . I just remembered the C-54 Skymater build which is about 95% complete . The engine cowl halves on the Mach 2 C-54 kit are an awefull fit and I'm still trying to clean them up to look presentable which is probably why I painted the aicraft and other components and left the C-54 engine cowls for later . Oh and there's the Short Sunderland flying boat which has suddenly surfaced from under the bench and she is about 85% complete and doesn't need much more work before masking and painting .
Anyway I've rambled on enough , I wish I was posting pic's instead of dribble .
BTW , I like your fleet of Korean War builds Greg ; It might be a small fleet but I'm yet to build any of the one's you have , so Ive copied the pic's into the computer for reference .
John .