PACIFIC CARRIER AVIATION GROUP BUILD

The obsession with the Hellcat begins............................

Picked up one of these bad boys today!

Thanks Joe and Mustang.  If you guys have any advice of what I could do better, feel free to say. 

Mustang... This is an Academy TBM kit.  I have been told that it is the same mold as was used on the Accurate kit.

Joe: Very cool. That will be a sweet addition to your Hellcat. I've eyeballed the same detail set for my SB2C Helldiver. I will be quite interested to see how it goes together.

Steve: The only suggestion I have for you would to add seat harnesses. Unless, of course, you were already planning to add them.

Steve- Looks sharp.  I really like the weathering of the black box gear.

Mustang- Looking forward to your Hellcat build.  I'm sure I will wish I started mine after you.  I'm  working with some small stuff this evening.  It's really aggravating.  I've lost 3 or 4 PE parts to the carpet so far.  I'd like to meet the guy at Eduard who builds their PE cockpits and such for the web photos.

Craig

Thanks Flyerduke.  I appreciate all of your support.  Joe...you are correct.  That will dress things up more.  I have a pilot to paint and fit as well.  The pilot has the belt molded on.

Steve

Prop question.  What color?  Flat or semi-glass? (for my Hellcat)

Also, I bought some Testors rubber color.  Will that work for the tires?

flyerduke, Prop should be flat black. The Testors rubber will likely be just fine. Another paint that's great for tires is Tamiya NATO Black.

Thanks Joe.  Another paint question.  Eduard calls for the exterior colors of the Hellcat to be white, navy blue, and inter. blue.  I have Tamiya white, and Humbrol intermediate blue and navy blue.  Will they work?  The Humbrol paints look more gray than blue.  Suggestions?

Thanks for the encouragement and kind words you guys. I'll be gathering stuff for this Hellcat build for sometime I don't know if I'll be building it for this GB but by the time I get all the things I need for it I'll probably either be building this one in another similar GB or in a WIP coming up next year. I have this Corsair that I'm building and my Bf109 GB that kicks off in a few months and I'm REALLY stoked about that one. I've got the Hellcat itch though and I'll be adding more AM stuff along the way and obtaining all of my references.

Bakster:I thought it was and yeah Academy is from the same molds. Interior looks awesome and with some seat belts added and weathered a little bit it'll set the work you've done off.

flyerduke:For what its worth I'll throw my your way.I like staying with like brands of exterior colors so if one of the colors (particularly in the case of two tone blues) isn't exactly what I feel it should be, then I can mix up a color that's more in the acceptable range. I had this same problem with my Dauntless build I built last year. I used Vallejo Intermediate blue, Dark blue and White for it. My Intermediate Blue looked more like the "Dark Blue" used on the upper surfaces of the plane instead of the transitional color of "Light Blue" on the sides of the fuselage.  I used my Intermediate Blue for the dark upper surfaces and acquired some Vallejo Sky Blue which was a really light blue and mixed it with the Vallejo Intermediate Blue to get the color I wanted for the sides..

 Here's the paint results on the Monogram Dauntless I built:

 Hope this helps you out some regarding your paint issue, Joe

Todays update consists of gluing in the landing gear strut mounts into the lower wing assy. I had some help with the angle positioning of the strut( thanks Joe Rix) and have them glued in proper position. Being that this model was built as a toy more than a display piece, it had retractable landing gear. The problem is that I want to permanantly display the landing gear in the retracted position and there are two bosses that stand up on the strut mount to facilitate the gear staying in the lowered position on this "toy".

This interferes with the fit of the upper inner wing assy as such:

I clipped both off on the starboard side of the aircraft and now the fit looks like this:

I'll be working on the other side today and getting everything lined up for painting the landing gear wells and the proper "bodywork" and seam filling for mounting the tops of the wings................hopefully today!

Managed to shoot a coat of flat black primer on the inside of the upper and lower wing sections today and spray a thin coat of zinc chromate over as to create a shadowed effect with the paint.

First the primer:

and then the zinc chromate:

Mustang...I like how that looks.  Nice technique. I will have to make a note of that one.

Steve

Mustang - looking great so far, I hope you're enjoying that kit more than I did!

Is the Bf109 GB you mentioned here, or somewhere else? I'd love to get into that, but I don't see any threads for it.

Raven728

Mustang - looking great so far, I hope you're enjoying that kit more than I did!

Is the Bf109 GB you mentioned here, or somewhere else? I'd love to get into that, but I don't see any threads for it.

The 109 GB feeler thread is in the Aircraft section buddy! See you there!

Thanks Bakster for the encouragment. I think I'm gonna need it!

I've got the wing tops glued on after positioning and re-positioning until I got the best fit possible. Lots of alignment issues here and way too many parts at this section of the build. Could have been done with two parts instead of three. The air intakes are gonna be a bass terd to blend into that gaping hole there at both wing roots.

Joe, Regardless of the issues you are encountering, you are whipping that bugger into shape extremely nicely. Your chromate green over black primer has produced an excellent effect. Very nice.

mustang1989

Yes.............this kit sucks very much bad!!

As much as that kit aggravated me - and you only have to go a few pages back to see me threatening to toss it in the trash - it's actually one of my favorite completed builds. Partly because I love Corsairs, but I think I also appreciate it more for how difficult it was, if that makes sense. You just need to get over the hump with the build and fit issues.

Just as I feared!!! The fit of the air intakes is very bad:

I puttied 'em up and set this whole thing aside to dry for a while:

Good grief....................................

Now.....I just want to know who the wise crack at Revell thought these were?

They sure as HELL aint gun barrels I'll tell you that! Grenade launchers? Toilet paper guns? I dunno!!

I hacked 'em off here:

and will countersink the holes to create a cavity. Then I'll install these gun barrels cut from a syringe:

I have to keep in mind when this kit was initially released and it wasn't targeted for someone that was aiming for accuracy. Really...............I have to keep this in mind!

I actually had a little unforseen time for modeling today and managed to drill/ countersink the wing guns to make cavities, drilled all the way through and inserted the barrels. I'm happy here going from this:

to this:

Feel free to zoom in as I didn't zoom in and save it on my camera. In all the haste to post this I forgot. lol

Looks like you're doing a pretty good job fixing this kit up Joe

Mustang..nice effort on your part. That really enhances the look of those guns.  I have to hand it to you for sticking with this kit.  Great job!

Thanks fellas!!! I got alot of modeling in between yesterday and today and I still have one day left before the week gets kicked off. I usually have about 30-45 minutes from Mon-Thurs and about 2-3 hours a day from Fri-Sun. I try to squeeze all I can into those three days lemme tell ya! Hopefully I can get the wing roots somewhat finished tomorrow morning. (crossed fingers)

Edited on 19 Oct: I got the wing roots sanded down. Still need to apply putty here and there but both air intakes are about as sanded/puttied in there as I feel comfortable with without sanding completely through the plastic on the bottom sides of both wings. I got the wing machine guns modified the same way as I showed you all in the pics above for the other wing and am on my way to fixing the kit flaw of the big gaping hole/ rectangle in the wing at the folding point. Since I will have one wing displayed down and one folded I felt the need to fix this.  Here's what it looks out of the box:

Again, there aint NO way that's gonna be left like THAT! I found my little rectangle piece on the sprue in the form of a part number identifier:

Cut it from the sprue:

Then trimmed it up, squared it off to the dimensions of the "hole" and sanded down the thickeness. Then I lined 'er up and glued into place with Tamiya thin cement. I'll cut the overhang off and clean it up when the glue dries.

I've still gotta fill in all the rocket mounting holes in each lower wing as I'm not displaying these ate up things on this build. Still dont know what I want to do about the bombs. I still have a little left in the budget for AM bombs. I may go that route.

Mustang and Raven- thanks for all the build progress photos and running comments.  I've got this old Monogram kit in the stash and plan to build it eventually, even after all of your horror stories!!

Thanks for giving due notice to all!!!  If (okay, when) I borrow heavily from your 'lessons learned' it will be a compliment to your hard work at making this Corsair model presentable.  I too, am a big Corsair fan....ever since Baa, Baa, Black Sheep!!!

Keep up the great effort!!

TAD

Drew: The Wildcat's looking fantastic! The weathering really sets it off! Mind telling me what you used to create that subtle chipping? Any pic you'd prefer to see on the front page?

Steve: She's coming along very nicely!

Joe (Rix): Your 72nd builds are always very impressing and this one is no exception! I'm looking forward to seeing some paint on this beauty!

Joe: Oh man, you're way braver than I am. That ancient corsair looks like a real PITA to assemble but I'm sure you got this! Progress is looking great so far! Regarding that Hellcat: Mine came in a couple of days ago as well (we seem to be ordering pretty similar stuff - seems like a bit more than mere coincidence). It looks like Eduard improved on a few areas compared to the older Hellcat kits... Do you maybe have a link to that wing-fold set? I plan on building at least one of my Hellcats with folded wings and that set looks very nice...

Clemens: Thanks my friend. Sure looking forward to your Hellcat.

Joe: Really sound and excellent work on the wing scoops and guns. Your little patch job appears like it will be just fine. Great work Joe. You're doing just fine with that ill molded critter.

Thanks Dave, Clemens and Joe!  Dave I'm lookin forward to seein what you can do with this "gem of a kit" down the road here.

Clemens:I purchased that set off of ebay. It was around 30 bucks.

I got about 25 minutes bonus time for modeling this morning so I spent about 55 minutes at the bench. I sanded over the putty filled rocket mounting holes this morning and applied a small drop of Mr Hobby liquid putty just to fill in the minor divots still remaining on alot of them after sanding off the initial application of the Tamiya white putty. As of now this is where I"m at:

Well-done, mustang!

Thanks checkmateking!!

I see trouble on the horizon....... This is the starboard wing section and it's going to be a pain in the bohunkuss to get it to fit right. Thank God I'm onlly installing one wing in the locked down postion!!!!!! Folks this HAS to be the crappiest fitting model kit I've ever built...............and that includes when I was a kid. I don't think I built this one as a kid because I'd sure as hell remember this!!