Fanes

Final update (or so I thought) What was left to do? repair the wheel hubs and attach the landing gear repair the scratched belly add the exhausts paint and install the nav lights get the drop tanks in place antenna mast and antenna wire shoot the RFI photos Well, I thought everything was done right. But during arangement for the glamour shots, I noticed that the wheels weren't as solid as I would have liked. The opening in the Grey Matter wheels is quite oversized for the Trumpeter axle. So I used 5 min epoxy and hoped for the best. This didn't work out of course since even epoxy can't do magic on a butt joint. I'm already working on a solution (hacking up the Trumpy hubs). Until then there's only one quick photo with a weird camber angle... One more todo I'd like to add: What will my next project be? - I'm looking for a fun build before I return to my pink photo recon Spit Cheers Joachim

Who doesn't like the dirty greek jets? Nice job!!

Baby steps towards the finish line So, the clear coats were applied and I started doing all the small stuff to finish her up. Of course some things didn't go as planned. The underside is supposed to be glossy - I went with a satin. Then exhaust stains were added with MRP exhaust soot (for the soot obviously) and Tamiya deck tan (for the lead residue). Light residues from the guns were done with black pigments. Well, during adjustements for the exhaust fit, the blade slipped and scratched the white paint. Repairs are imminent; already sanded it sommoth (the black patch) More things that didn't go as planned: removing the masks on the wheel hubs removed all paint coats, even the primer, as well. The gun bay recieved some small paint chips with silver oil paint - easy to remove when overdone. Keep in mind, that VC-13 F4F-4s appear to be held in good shape. Another little setback: the canopy doesn't fit in the open position... But it now has the small panel in non specular blue grey painted on the inside - a typical Wildcat feature often overlooked. Well, cloed canopy it is. Doesn't look so bad either, does it? What's left to do: repair the wheel hubs and attach the landing gear repair the scratched belly add the exhausts paint and install the nav lights get the drop tanks in place antenna mast and antenna wire shoot the RFI photos

Just marvellous! I really like the oil spills and the chipped/scratched paint on the wing root.

Nice! That seems like a good reason to bin my Academy Ontos which is sitting on the shelf of doom for around ten years now.

Aaaand we're getting closer to the finish line. The Wildcat recieved a panel line wash. Not the dark-brown-green-black-type, which looks mostly artificial but a much more restrained one. "My" F4F from VC-13 was used as a photo backdrop for the crews and looks especially clean in all pictures. In fact all F4F-4s in the two tone ASW scheme seemed to be rather new and spotless. So long story short: a light (neutral) grey wash for the white parts and a dark grey one for the parts of the Wildcat in ANA621. Of course a little boo boo happened: I chipped the blue paint on one of the insignia when I tried to remove a lint before applying the flat coat... As I post these lines the damage is repaired and the flat coat(s) are drying until tomorrow.

Stickers are on! Applying the decals was a quick joy since there aren't many and they were a dream to apply. So here it is with a protective gloss coat, unfortunately with slight orange peel this time. Taking photos with daylight is quite challenging with the ASW scheme. The RFI photos will take some time later.. I rebuild the antenna mast on the vertical stabilizer, too. I snapped it off early during painting and since the plastic one was too small anyway, it was replaced with a strip of brass from a PE sheet. That's it for now. A restrained washing will be next up.

Thank you very much guys. To keep the paint as good looking as the photos suggest, I have to make some repairs since some genius managed to get dust in his clear coat and polished/sanded right trough the paint during removal of said dust... We really do need a FM-2 Wildcat in 1/32 since the ASW scheme was more common on these. But kudos to @Jennings Heilig and his research for the fundekals F4F decals! Otherwise I wouldn't have thought that any F4F-4 was painted something else than blue/grey. Cheers Joachim

I love the colors on the exhausts!

All repaired and glloss coated It took some time and I forgot to take pictures in the meantime. So, here's the repaired insignia on the port fuselage: As you can see the individual aircrat numbers were painted on as well. and of course on the cowling as well: Afterwards I tried something new: Alclad aqua gloss. Why not Tamiya clear with levelling thinner as usual? - well I had some trouble with the lacquer thinner used for the white. It somehow interacted with the Tamiya semigloss I used as a base coat. The more thin white I sprayed on, the darker it went... So, in this case I'm fr the first time ever happy with a water based clear coat! I'll apply the decals soon and quickly - there's only a small amount of stencils and the squadron badge to put on.

Thanks for the suggestion Bob. I tried Tamiya sheets in the past and struggled with the strong adhesive. Once it was on, no corrections were possible.

If I'm not completely mistaken, Graham from Iconicair plans to release a resin Firefly in the not so distant future.

Thanks for the input Jeroen! getting the contrast "right" seemed to be the challenge and in the end the pure XF-24 looked way too dark. With a 2:1 mixture of Gunze H-57 and XF-24, which looked way too light in the jar, but turned out quite to my liking in the end. Please ignore the improper wihite balance in the photo above. The wings reflect the last bits of sunlight from the window, while the fuselage is illuminated from my desk lamp.. Again I went for a nonunifom finish since the contrast between white and dark gull grey is quite heavy: Add the stars and bars with the red outline and it looks quite uniform to the camera's eye And one clos up just because I love how the insignia turned out on the wings: On the fuselage some alignment issues make a respray of the ANA 621 necessary (forgot to adjust the exposure in Lightroom for this photo ): Getting the vinyl down on the curved fueslage with the kink at the spine was quite a struggle since the masks were a little too stiff to go on without wrinkles. Adding cuts eased the problem but I will consider doing this differently next time.

I used the pictures in the fundekals F4F manual as a reference: https://fundekals.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/FD32012_FD48034_Inst.pdf Scroll down to p.23 - there are some really good photos of VC-13 ASW Wildcats and it looks like there is (white?) paint sprayed on the cuff - especially regarding the overspray on the rear (on p.27).

Fantastic work Vince! One minor thing: Are you sure about the silver prop hub and cuffs? I thought they were painted in white on the ASW Wildcats (at least on the F4F-4s). Cheers Joachim