Grumman Iron Works Group Build

Well, I'm done.  It feels like I've spent the last six months on this build (even though this GB hasn't been active that long!)

The lights are not very bright and with the camera flash I was not able to get any photos of the lights glowing inside.  Argh.  Oh well, but the build itself is something that I'm pleased with.  I did a very small amount of weathering with pastels for the engine exhaust staining, but that was it.

So now for some photos.  The first set of pictures are of only the airplane, taken before I actually finished the base and figured out how to attach the plane to it.  The second set are of the completed diorama.  There's not much going on in the diorama as I elected not to invest in any additional kits for ground equipment and the like.  Just a couple of guys, one standing at the boarding ladder and the other inspecting one of the main landing gear.  (And I'm not very good at painting figures, which is why I typically don't include them in my builds).

And the underside of the base.

I plan to build a second kit for this GB but I likely won't be starting on it (whichever kit it ends up being, perhaps a Duck, perhaps a Tigercat) until next year. 

Steven

Tonight I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel on this build as I put the decals on.  This used to be just about the last thing I would do when building but now I have some minor weathering I plan to do, a final gloss coat, and then add the final detail parts. 

Then it's on to completing the base, doing a butcher job on painting some 1/72 figures that came with the kit, and affixing everything to the base.  Considering the purchase of some model rail road "grass" to sprinkle into the expansion joints of my "concrete" base.  Plus I have discovered one major omission to my build - this bird is a tail sitter.    Guess I was so focused on completing the scratch built interior that I neglected to even consider how it would sit when upon its TRICYCLE landing gear (that should have been my first clue).

I hope to finish this weekend but I have in-laws coming into town, and with Christmas right around the corner, we're putting up the exterior lighting a bit early, family Christmas portraits, family time .... but I wouldn't trade this for anything.  Hopefully I can squeeze in some time in the shop and get at least a few photos.

Steven

btp2k2, welcome aboard!  I have you down for the F-14A.

Scotty, thanks for your comments on the Albatross.  I'm finding that now that I'm done with the "fun" part - scratch building the interior and rigging the lighting - this kit is showing its age.  It has been difficult to get together and from what I can tell right now, it's going to require a good bit of putty to keep it looking as good as it has thus far.

Not that the putty effort won't be "fun"; after all, it's a model airplane and it's supposed to be fun!

Steven

Aggieman and Freddie,

Nice job on the builds so far!   That Wildcat is really a looker, and the Albatross is also coming along very well.  I feel more inspired to get this build going, but I need to take care of a couple of other builds first, and decide what the heck I am actually going to build.

As soon as you said what happened with your lights Aggieman, I immediately thought of the 9 volt battery being too much for the bulbs.  Of course, you soon found that to be the issue on your own.  I have considered trying to light up a couple of the projects that I have to build, and I have plenty of supplies to help with this, I just need to take the chance at some point I guess.

I just wanted to check in as I am back to working normal hours again, and should be starting to build again soon, which means I can finally get to this project as well.  I will check the postings more often now, and will let you know as soon as I pick which kit, or should I say cat, to build.

Ok, some pictures to show what I've managed to do with the lighting.  Regretfully I got some bad advice from the salesman at Radio Shack, so I blew both the LED lights I had by not using a resistor to regulate the flow of juice into the bulbs.  So I went back to the grain of wheat bulbs I had initially intended to install. 

I doubt that these lights are going to put much light into the interior of this Albatross but it was fun to put this together any way.

Here are the three lights installed and burning - one each in the cockpit, forward compartment and rear compartment.

I drilled a hole into the underside of the fuselage to run the wiring through.  Not sure if that really shows up in this picture.

Here is the base I did for this kit.  It's a piece of foam board cut in 2" squares.  I weathered it with a dirty wash and some smoke paint.  I didn't really like the way the smoke paint went down so I'll probably be doing some more weathering before this project comes to a conclusion.  I will also be painting the wood base, probably black.

Ok, so what am I doing wrong?  I have started connecting the wiring for interior lights, small LED lights I got from Radio Shack (I've ditched the grain of wheat lights I originally purchased since they were proving difficult to work with and didn't put out a lot of light).

I've soldered a twin-piece of wire (2 separate wires in one separated bundle, I'm sure there's a name for this kind of wire, I guess it's like speaker wire) to the metal prongs coming out of the LED.  I connect the opposite ends to a 9-volt battery.  Initially I got light when I was just test fitting the connections, but now that the solder is in place, nothing.

I'm getting ready to go back to the work shop to heat up the soldering iron so that I can loosen the connections and start over.  But if anyone has done this kind of thing before, perhaps you can shed some light (no pun intended) on what I may be doing wrong.

Thanks,

Steven

Today my modeling was limited pretty much to building a display stand for the Albatross.  I actually followed a recent article in FSM about building a diorama for a P-47.  I cut out a box frame and using the article as a guide, I made an approximate 1/72 scale "concrete" tarmac out of a piece of gray foam board.  It looks pretty good as is but I'll start putting some paint on it to break up its monochromatic appearance and try to give it some oil staining.

I've also started the wiring for the interior lighting but so far have not made much progress on that front.

Well I've decided to go ahead with the interior lighting idea.  I've bought a few grain of wheat light bulbs that haven't come in the mail yet and today I picked up a simple rocker switch and battery holder at Radio Shack.  I am in the process of coming up with a diorama for this bird - any one know of any 1/72 airfield equipment that I should look for?  I have found a kit by Hasegawa that has a bunch of pilots and ground crew, plus what looks like a UPS-style truck and a boarding ladder.  I'm not real thrilled with that.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Steven

Hey Aggieman,

Another big one!  I must be nuts but it does keep me out of trouble.  Trumpy's 1:32 monster is under way and I'll post pictures when they are available. 

Regards,

Freddie from LI

 PS, under status, please put that the F4F-3 is finished?  thanks.

Fred,

Outside of the real thing, your Wildcat has to be one of the finest looking models I've ever laid eyes on.  Looks like it's ready for another sortie out of some muddy South Pacific island.  Excellent weathering.

As for installing lighting inside the Albatross, I've considered it but haven't really convinced myself to go for that type of work.  Thanks for all your comments!

mucker wrote:

I just went back and notcied Stephen's progres... WOW! That's a lot of work. Looking great so far.

Thanks Charles, I missed the Albatross pictures too.  It is really coming together.  You should put some lights in the interior so it can be seen when you close it up, Stephen.  It's going to look sharp in the Coast Guard colors.

I just went back and notcied Stephen's progres... WOW! That's a lot of work. Looking great so far.

Here she is, Tamiya's F4F-4 converted to a -3 by filling panel lines and sanding off barts that didn't belong.  Here is what I did to complete this build:

Stretched sprue antenna, Quickboost .50 MG barrels, Superscale decals sheet # 48-1033, True details resin wheels, wire brake lines, added second oil cooler inside wheel well, filled in all panel lines on the wing for a -4 (wing fold, gun access panels, ammo boxes), rescribed panel lines bringing the wing in line with the configuration with a -3, sanded off carb airscoop off the cowling, repositioned tailwheel, Paint is Testors Model Master Enamels and weathering is done with thinned oils and pastel chalk. 

The markings are for an F4F-3 flown by US Marine Major Robert E Galer, (VMF-224) from Guadalcanal during 1942.

Here are the pictures, I hope you like them and as always comments are welcome.....Now it's on the the 1:32 Trumpeter TBF-1C.

Regards,

Freddie from LI

She's looking very well Aggieman, can't wait to see her done

Regards,

Freddie from LI

Pictures at last.

Internal layout:

Cockpit:

Forward section:

Rear compartment:

Exterior:

Hey Folks

I have finished the F4F-3 Conversion, will post pictures tonight!

Regards,

Freddie

I don't have any pictures to share just yet, but I've made some good progress today despite all the appealing football games that were on TV (and my plans to go to the A&M-Oklahoma State game tonight had fallen through).

Anyway, I had put some white primer on this kit earlier in the week, and today decided that I would go ahead and get most of the exterior painting done.  I started with flat white for all of the external structures, then spent a couple of hours masking the Coast Guard identification striping.  I finished painting just in time for the A&M kickoff on TV, and while watching the horrid first half, let the paint set.  When I got back to the modeling bench at half time, I started removing the masking, for which I had used Tamiya tape.  I thought this tape was the lowest tack tape one can get but it pulled up great chunks of my base white coat.  On top of the half-time results of the game, I was getting quite upset!

So here it is after midnight.  The Ags pulled out that game with another 1-point victory over the Pokes, and I returned to the bench to re-paint.  I finally called it a night when I finished painting all of the de-icer boots.  There is still a little bit more exterior painting to be done, plus I have not even addressed the molded-in engines or the props, and I've yet to build anything other than the interior details.  Hopefully I'll have a completed model this time next week, but I'll post pictures as soon as I can find the time to take them.

Freddie, nice work on that Cat so far.  Keep us posted!

So here is my progress on the Albatross.  I've completed all of the scratch-building and painted the interior.  I also put on a white primer coat on all the exterior surfaces.

Interior painting is a dark gull gray. 

I added some styrne rod to represent throttle controls mounted above the cockpit area. 

I figured that since this aircraft was used by the Coast Guard to rescue people, presumably some of these people were in the water so perhaps there should be a life preserver somewhere on board.  I made the preserver from the cap of a ball-point pen. 

The forward compartment with some radio equipment and a seat. 

The completed cockpit. 

   (I really need to learn how to shoot pictures without a big ugly shadow I think).

The rear compartment.  Again since it is an sea rescue bird, I figured there could be a set of bunks.  I didn't build the bunks to good scale as originally I intended to put two sets of bunks inside but upon test fitting, the bunks I built would not fit real well.  Maybe I'll tackle them again to scale them down a bit.  The pillows and sheets are tissue paper. 

A couple of shots of the interior layout. 

Hey All

I have been busy with this latest Wildcat build.  I am using Tamiya's 1:48 scale F4F-4 kit as a base.  I originally was going to use Just Plane Stuff's F4F-3 conversion set.  However after I began to get busy working, the JPS's many shortcomings became apparent.  I decided to modify the Tamiya kit's parts; this turned out to not be as bad as I thought. 

The first pic is an overall shot of the model, sitting in the spray booth.

Here are a couple of pics, showing how I filled in the many panel lines that needed to be filled, in order to make the kit from an F4F-4, to a -3.  This mostly involved the wing fold seams and removing the outboard wing gun and ammo bay.  I also did a lot of replacement of the many rivits that were wiped out, by all the sanding.

Here is how the engine looks all mounted up in the cowling.  I took the kit cowl and basically sanded off the top carb air scoop.  It makes the whole model look like a completely different kit with just that one modification.

Lastly, a couple more shots of the cockpit.  I really am looking forward to getting this baby painted and decaled and posted up here.  BUT....I will take my time and NOT rush because that's how a mistake will happen and ruin the whole thing.....right?  Right!!

When I get this done, it's on the 1:32 Trumpeter TBF-1c that I have looking at on the shelf for a really long time.

Thanks for looking at my post and as always, comments welcome

Regards,

Freddie from LI

More Power Scotty wrote:

John, Let me praise you in public (something they stressed in a couple of my supervisor classes) for the absolutely fantastic job that you did in creating the .gif image for me.  As you can see, I loaded it a few minutes ago, and it started to work immediately.  Thanks again, and if there is any tip or technique that I can offer in return, please do not hesitate to ask.

Hear! Hear! John is always a "model" member in these forums. Pun fully intended.

Well, I am ready to show off what progress I've made to this point of the build.  These pictures represent about 3 weeks' worth of work, not every day mind you.  So far everything is just being cut out and built - no painting yet and very little actually glued into the airframe.  I also can make no guarantees that any of this is really to scale, as I simply eye-balled everything and tried to envision what looked "right" for the size.

Instrument panel

Interior bulkhead with a door opening cut out.  I'll position the door inside the forward compartment just behind the cockpit.

The forward compartment floorboard with internal support framing.

Three shots of the cockpit.  I struggled with the seats.  I tried probably 3-4 attempts to cut them out of sheet styrene but could just not get the look I wanted.  Then I read another poster's depiction of some interior detailing he is doing for his Hien (sorry, don't recall the poster's name) and he showed pictures of the seat he had constructed from cardboard.  Ding ding ding!  So I cut out of a couple of seats today and was satisfied (although mine do not look nearly as good as that seat he did for the Hien). 

I also could not get anything remotely resembling success in constructing the second steering column.  The one I have is one I pirated from an old Matchbox Do-17 that I had never finished, and was never going to finish.  I just decided to leave the second steering column off as there is not going to be much that visible in this cockpit anyway.

Interior layout thus far (without the instrument panel as I am not ready to glue anything in place - other than the 4 support beams in the forward compartment).  There was a slight engineering issue that I noticed in dry-fitting everything in place.  The landing gear on this kit are designed to retract.  I didn't really want to lose that, although I'll likely never touch the gear once the kit is done, so I cut a notch in the forward wheel well floor to allow the strut to retract as Monogram designed it to do.