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Trumpeter F4U-4 Corsair


dutik

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Great choice!  I have this one in the stash for an F4U-4 that flew off my fathers carrier in 1945/46.   I too have heard the same thing about the Aires wheel bays................just like the ones for my Trumpy Flanker, you will need to shave them down to literally within an inch of their lives.

 

Most I have seen have to be thinned so much in fact, that just like my Flanker wells, you can hold the wells up to the light and see almost right through them.

 

Cant wait to see more on this!!!

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Guest Clunkmeister

The Aries wheel wells on Paul's and mine F-100 builds were exactly the same thing.  We both could see light and almost read through both the thinned wing skin and the thinned resin part in order to get them to fit.

 

The cool thing though is that it adds SO MUCH to the finished build.

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Thats the only reason why you have an upper wing half, of course. To prevent the light from shining through the wheel well :punk:

 

- dutik

 

 

p.s. Cutting styrene will start next Wednesday.

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In fact, to be frank, this is the worse fitting landing gear well set I have ever seen. I thinned the upper and lower wing to a fraction of a millimeter, then thin the well to paper thin thickness and guess what? This was not sufficient! You also have to remove part of the upper section of the well (normally you should not!)... and use clamps and CA glue!

 

I just have the Trumpy F4U4, so I'm not going to work on another Trumpeter Corsair but if had to do it again, I 'd consider another approach: part using sections of the set, part scratchbuilding,... This is probably easier.

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And on the "sagging" wing problem: isn't it possible to have a reinforcement going thru the fuselage and both initial wing sections up to (and maybe including) the folding point?

That is how i solved my wing problem with the Combat Tigercat (well you had to do that anyhow because of the very weak styrene parts, but that's another story)

 

just my 2 P's

 

J.

Edited by Jack
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Possible - yes.

 

But alea iacta sunt. I will go with folded wings. For the look, the (lesser) space and the ease of construction. Especially after the trouble with my Hellcat build of Vietnam GB. Regardin the UC bays I consider to use only the bay tops to circumvent the fit problems, because the ejector mark problems are mainly at the top of the plastic UC bay. We shall see.

 

- dutik

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Dutik my friend, I know you can do this. On my Trumpy 1D I just went ahead and filled in the ejector pin knock outs and scratch built the rest of the gear bays.

All the best,

 Paul 

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Guest Clunkmeister

I have this kit, among others, and some AM Korean War decals for it courtesy of LSP_Ray, and it is calling my name loud and clear.

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OK, started styrene cutting on Sunday. The major task at first - fitting the wheelbays. Number 1 looks like nice fitting now. Just put some 100 grid wet/dry sanding sheet in use, reduced the thickness of the UC bay roof, the upper wing and also carved off some styrene around the cut outs of the lower wing. Not a biggie, just a dustie :)

 

Will paint and glue the part (to avoid mismatching right and left one) and move on to wheelbay number two the next days.

 

- dutik

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I've tried to post a photo of my own Bible, but the computer refused to read the memory card. Made in China, the PC, so I guess he must be an atheist :shrug:

 

 

As for the kit build: I am close now to glue one of the Aires UC bays. Maybe it would have been easier to clean up the ejector marks of the kit :tumble:

But the AM was there in the stash for years and so it goes in. Looks also better when installed. Sanding to fit is easy, but somewhat time consuming to avoid overstressing/breaking the part and to ensure a smooth fit. I sanded down the top as reqired, but also made the tub shallower by sanding down the rim as much as possible without loosing visible detail. Also sanded the inner side of the upper wing to some extend.

 

If you want to use the Aires set AND show the wings folded up you meet another problem: The outer side of the wheel well is also the central wing spant, exposed by folded up outer wing. But the Aires wheel well has no detail at the outside... So I used Trumpies wing spant and sawed off the outer wall of the Aires tub. To ensure a good fit and to harmonize the look of kit and AM parts I cut off the details from the UC bay side of the spant. This helped also to fill all that ejector marks. Will rebuild the lost details with strip styrene when the UC tub parts are glued into the wing.

 

 

- dutik

Edited by dutik
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