Aaron, the F9F is coming along great! And yes you are right about the compactness of that bird. Not much bigger than many late WWII fighters. At a local park here they have one that was donated by the Marines that kids could play on when I was growing up. Unsafe as all hades by todays nanny state standards, but lots of fun for the young boy with the active imagination. These days it has been covered in concrete and now all those slippery surfaces and sharp edge issues have been addressed...

John, you continue to amaze me with your amount of work! I really love to see the Sea Fury. My favorite prop job I have ever seen up close in the air and on the ground. The engine sound is just amazing- so much power in it. I cant wait to see that one built!

As for me, yesterday I was able to get a few coats of liquid cement on the turret and used a stiff nylon brush to replicate the cast armor surface. Then I cleared up the lower hull motorization hole issue with a single sheet of thin styrene. Much quicker and less measuring and cutting rather than filling each hole individually. (especially since I really doubt that anyone but me will see the hull bottom)

kit turret before texturing

and after

and the hull bottom fix- so easy even an ex grunt can do it...

Your tank is coming along nicely stik ; Someone mentioned earlier about naplam tanks on aircraft ; after seven attempts to scan a pic , I managed to get this pic..

HTH

                          John

Thanks John!

Those are great scans. It brings up two points about napalm tanks-1) in this particular case, the tank is painted yellow, 2) the fuse protruding from where the filler cap normally sits.

Now that I have the turret textured (which did not show up as well as I had hoped in the pics) it will proceed quickly with the rest of the turret. I need to add the cables and linkage boxes for the smoke grenade launchers, and the scratch build a rack and replace the kit jerry can that goes on the turret rear escape hatch.

I resolve to do more model building this week! (right after this afternoon's AMPS meeting)

Here's a closer pic of the F-80 and naplam tank , I've about given up trying to use the scanner , so I used my digital camera instead ..

Here is another interesting pic for anyone who might be thinking of building something different ;

A F6F Hellcat , Pilotless Drone

I don't think there any 1/72 scale Hellcat kits that come with wing folds , otherwise I think would have been tempted to build one ?

                           John .

stick i was wondering if i could jump onboard with a 1/48th sea fury? ive been lurking around these parts for a while and finally decided to plug this one. i bought an academy f86 from hobbylobbie to do for this one, but i think ill try something simpler to get back into the groove.besides i herd nothing but bad things about its decals thanks

                                                                                    S.A.R

heres a couple of pics that i just took.  first the decals   then the box top and finally all the goodies still bagged

                                                                                                                  thanks

Helo H-34

A F6F Hellcat , Pilotless Drone

I don't think there any 1/72 scale Hellcat kits that come with wing folds , otherwise I think would have been tempted to build one ?

                           John .

Question: what were these pilotless drones for? I've never seen one, in person or in a photo, and I'm curious

The drones were basically primative cruise missiles, they were loaded with bombs and flown by remote control into heavily defended targets. The US did the same thing with worn out B-17s in WW2 against rocket launch sites and submarine pens.

Oh, I see now. ( Man, what a waist of a perfictally good aircraft) Mabe I out to give this a shot. I don't know, since I'm not too sure if my hobby shop has any 1/72 scale models, but I may be able to find one.

Stik the target is shaping up nicely!!!!

SAR Looking forward to seeing the Sea Fury come together!!!!

Some Assembly Required, you are added to the roster.

While the putty is drying on the Invader and P-51's , I decided to take a closer look at the Airfix Sea Fury kit .

The kits plastic is a little soft and slightly grainy , if I'm not mistaken this looks a lot like a PM model kit in a Airfix box ?

Anyway I started to put together the cockpit , you just get a seat , floor and rear bulkhead , so I went to the trusty spares box to see how I could make things look a bit better...

I added a front consol and two side consol panels and found a control stick , this should fill in the cockpit void . I filed and drill out for the fuel tanks and rockets on the wing and glued the top and bottom wing halves together but I must say apart from the great decal sheet this kit is a little disappointing .

It's my birthday in a couple of weeks and the family gave me some money to buy a couple of kits that I would really like ; So I searched  around a few online hobby stores and saw the Trumpeter 1/72 Sea Fury FBII ,

The kit comes with the option of folding the wings , so I ordered one along with some Royal Australian Navy decals for the Korean War .

I also saw this kit ..

I had just enough money left for the B-29A Super Fortress "Korean War" , so I ordered this one as well .

I also saw the Revell Privateer that gregbbear has his eye on getting , I'm sure his wife will let him buy it , so I went for the B-29 instead

The Airfix Sea Fury should go together okay , there's not that many parts and the decals will sure spruce up a rather average kit .

                               John .

Great! A B-29.  I was just wondering right before I read John's post, if anybody would build a B-29.  I was going to go by the hobby shop today, but the wife is in a fowl mood.

The interior of my Corsair is really sparse it detail.  I'm wishing I would've ordered the True Details set for it.....

Everybody's builds are looking good!

Cheers,

Greg

The Airfix Sea Fury goes together quite quickly and there are no fit issues .

The cockpit opening is quite small and you don't really see all that much , probably a lot less once the canopy goes on . I'll see if I can find a pilot to go in there as well .

I'll add a bit of tamiya putty to the fuselage join and put her with the other three waiting to be sanded .

I'm looking forward to my Trumpeter Sea Fury and Academy B-29 arriving latter in the week

                            John .

Nice sea fury. Airfix kits do go together quickly, mainly because of the lack of parts lol. It looks good though,

The corsairs coming along, sorry for the lack of pics, got it all glued up and putting the white primer down now.

Ill be doing 3-4 coats of X-3 Royal Blue, After Coat 2 or 3 depending on how opaque it becomes at that stage ill run the panel lines in silver just to make them stand out a little. For was extremely good on this kit. Very light puttying along the seams but that was just to sort out a couple sanding issues i had more than anything.

Ill try get photos tonight.

Cheers

Mike

Great work all around guys!

Helo: I'm building the Academy 1/72 B-29 for Vetteman's natural metal GB. Excellent kit overall but with lots of injection pin holes that need to be filled in the interior. I spent all weekend beating my head against the wall trying to get a decent undercoat for the natural metal though.

Aggieman: TBA

Aggieman, your kit is now updated to the roster.I look forward to seeing your work. I also wanna see that  B-1!  I have one in my stash but no where to put it right now once I do build one...

Helo, I seriously can not keep pace with all your additions to the build roster...

Stik,

Nice work, so far, on your Centurion. I'm looking forward to see the progress on yours. I'm doing one for a show in late September. I'll post m progress pics hear, if it's ok. Since you're going to next July, I'd like to try backdating my Monogram 'Tour of Duty' A-1H Skyraider to a Korean War vintage AD-4.

The Centurion seemed to be so much ahead of it's time, considering the 1st mark was built before the end of WWII. 

John,

The Fury is as beautiful a warbird as the Spitfire, but with more muscle. Can't wait to see wait to see how she turns out.

Aurora, feel free to post progress pics of your Centurion here. I love that tank. One where they got just about everything right in design.. Especially when you consider it's design is for all intents and purposes, WWII. And you are now added to the roster with the Monogram AD.

I gotta agree about the Sea Fury- more muscle than a Spitfire, but every bit as pleasing to the senses.

well i cleaned up the cockpit and painted it floquill black with a drybrush of light gray and boy im afraid that when i button up this thing its gonna be a black hole!!  i also dipped my canopy in future to help things along in that dept. ill shoot some pics when ive actually have made some progress.

SAR , good luck with your 1/48 Sea Fury , I noticed that hobbycraft dont give you all that much on their decal sheet ,

Gamera , I was wondering if you had posted a pic of the B-29 sprues on the NMF GB , I was curious as to whats in the box ?

I was also curious about the color of the pilots uniform in the Korean War , I found an article in my aircraft magazines on the F-84 Thunderjet in Korea , there is two pic's of USAF pilots , one seems to be wearing a light khaki flying suit , the other pic show's a dark olive drab suit ?

Is the different color because of the different seasons...Summer/Winter ???

                                      John .

thanks helo 34, your right in that  hobbycraft doesnt exactly burn up the capital on decals!! but a simlpe kit like this will get me moving again to  build more AC. ive got a steep learning curve ahead of me because im primarly an armor guy

auggieman, i was on the squdron site ordering some stuff for my f-86 and they had some f9f decals for $2 bucks a pop.  the min order was $15 but im sure if you are like me that wont be a prob.!!

Ok heres the photo of my current progress. Im brush painting the whole thing because its how i roll

Coming along nicely Mikey! I take it the white will be a primer coat?

Most definatly, The blue im using is quite clear so im putting a white base coat down to not only make it pop but so i know where ive been

stikpusher

Helo, I seriously can not keep pace with all your additions to the build roster...

Sorry about that stik , I'm not trying to make life difficult or anything , It's just these 11.30pm internet searchers I do on Korean War aircraft and I stumble onto another aircraft , I get all big eyed and think , yes I must build one of those ...

Here's an example , I came across this pic in my Air War Korea book

A nice color pic of a U.S.Navy H03S-1 and in the background a Martin PBM Mariner ;

I then find myself over at Hannants in the UK looking for PBM Mariner's .... I just ordered the Mach 2 Martin PBM 3/5 Mariner with 1953 USN markings ;

Just as well I have a whole 12 months to build all these birds  

                                              John .

In fact that's a PBM-5A amphibian, a rare bird. The Mach 2 is a true flying boat, and a "challenging" model too. Good choice of subjects.

Hi Bondoman ,

A closer inspection of the pic I posted does seem to show a slightly different landing gear arrangement to the one Mach 2 offer with their PBM Mariner , it looks similar to what you would see on the PBY Cataliner flying boats ; Here is a link to the Mach 2 kit ...

http://dpalix.ifrance.com/marineg.htm

Squadron.com had the Martin PBM Mariner in action book and the Air War over korea book , so I have ordered both those to supplement by ever growing stash of Korean War bird kits , hopfully the Mariner book should provide some additional info on the different landing gear set up .

                                John .