No sweat, Pard... IIRC, there's two sets of US insignia for that one... Either set will work on the Bearcat since it was in service before 14 January 47, when the red bars were added to the national insignia...
Now, boys & girls, have some progress to report on the "Hurricat"...
I've finished up with the cockpit (almost)... I got a little crazy on the amount of interior detail I added, since once the pit's closed up, most of the sidewall detail will be impossible to see without actually handling the aircraft..
The tubular aluminum framing of the foreward part of the Hurricane lent itself to some unique mounting points for the fuel selector and flap/gear controls, so I added the "A" frame-pieces for that stuff , since the kit parts are molded flat onto the cockpit sidewalls as 2D detail, and I wanted 3D in order to show it off more accurately. I started by sanding off the seat-pans's molded-on harness detail, which was pretty poor anyway... Here's the 'pit with the naked sidewalls and it's 2D landing gear, flaps, and windscreen de-icing controls and the start of the masking tape seat harness.
I drilled a series of holes in a straight line across the back of the seat-pan, then cut them into a slot to pass the shoulder-harness through.
I made some stretched-sprue tubing for the oxygen supply lines, added "garage-sale sign" sheet-styrene O2 regulator, lamp rheostat with a "salami-sliced" piece of sprue for the knob, the cockpit lamp, etc, on the port side, and an epoxy putty map case, some switch panels, and a GNDN (Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing) wiring harness on the starboard side, as well as other fiddly-bits, just to busy things up a bit more. The fuel selector switch goes onto that frame on the left side... I also added some flattened solder buckles and hardware to the seat harness:
I added a padded headrest made from Sculpy Clay. Since the kit is an RAF Mk IIC, but the "Hurricat" is a Mk IA Sea Hurricane which is catapault-launched, we needed the headrest to keep our hero from crackin' his gourd on the rear bulkhead during a launch. Since the photos were taken, I've also added a hand-hold forward of the throttle quadrant (to keep the pilot from inadvertantly pulling the throttle back on launch), which was re-done as well to a little higher degree of detail than the kit's.
I didn't like the way the paint on the seat turned out though (I skimped and tried to get away with brush-painting Tamiya.. Dummy), so I stripped and repainted it with Testor's MM Enamel, as I should have in the frst place...
It's a mix of Model Master Olive Drab and Testor's Yellow Zinc Chromate, which I also used on the rudder pedals and side-panels. The rear bulkhead, floor, and interior sidewalls are an RAF Interior Grey-Green from my own mix of MM paints, and I gave the floor channels a wash of thinned black to pop out the relief detail, with a little silver here & there to wear them and the rudder pedals...
I test-fit the cockpit to make sure that I didn't have sprue sticking into the joints to cause a fit-problem later, and I also finished up the instrument panel. I usually do these big Revell fighter-panels another way, painting them white first, then coloriing them with a black Sharpie. After the ink dries, I remove the ink on the raised detail and reveal the white by using an alcohol-dampened (not wet) paintbrush, but this kit's panel had a decal, so I opted to use it instead. I just "Sharpied" the panel black, then applied the decal with some vinegar (my prefered decal setting-solution) to snuggle it down, and then shot some Dullcoat over it to seal it in place. The Sharpie leaves a gloss finish, so no clear gloss-coat was needed for decaling the panel.
I just need to finish the detail painting now, and add the fuel and flap control panels to the A-frames on each side of the seat, an O2 hose (I made one by wrapping thin wire around a drill-bit of the appropriate size), and the cockpit will be finished... Then I'll start scratchbuilding the gunsight and the catapault spools.
BTW, speaking of catapault spools...
ANYONE know what th' hell they look like? Or where they're located?