Oldbaldguy

I’ve read about this technique for painting intakes for years but have yet to get it to work for me. Obviously I am not holding my mouth right while attempting it because yours turned out just fine.

It fits! But I swear it looks like it’s upside down - like it would fit better if the open part was on the other side of the airplane. But maybe that’s just me.

Hmmph. I assume this decidedly untidy solution is for keeping the tailwheel strut out of the muck? Question: As I understand your approach, you will create a reasonably accurate bag shape and then cover it with something that better resembles canvass. Does 3D printing allow for surface texture on a part or is that still a bridge too far?

The common practice for Navy airplanes of this era was light gray paint on the metal parts and aluminized silver dope on fabric. My guess is that is how Curtiss delivered them. Altho I looked at a couple of dubious photos as well, I think you’d be safe going with silver wings. There weren’t that many of these things and they weren’t around for very long so they likely did not evolve much. But they still underwent maintenance and likely had their wings recovered a time or two, so anything is possible. I have one of these kits somewhere and would love to see how yours turns out.

Jeez Loo-eze! If I could finish any kit like this, I’d call it finished too! Your Corsair is wonderful!

Such a big airplane and such a tiny place to sit.

Also note the tail number next to the refueling receptical. Even the Air Force has to keep records of who gets what. Lots of wonderful weathering in the airflow over the wings.

By pure luck I found said video once again while trying to satisfy my curiosity. (Not the best vid, so I wouldn’t waste my time looking for it.). The guys are in orange bags and it looks like it may be the first flight or at least very early. Early seats - no pods. The B/N climbs in on the right side, faces aft, appears to sit down and starts fiddling with a canopy gizmo back at the hinge point. You can’t see the seat very well if at all, but I assume it is where it is supposed to be. If nothing else, it appears there is enough room in the middle cockpit to maneuver a bit, at least on that airframe.

This is going to be nice. Crossed paths with several Cutlasses when I was very young. My dad was in VA-12 when they were equipped with them and when we were transferred to NAS Oceana, there were at least three derelict F7Us sitting around on the base or in the nearby boneyard. Played in all of them until they finally disappeared and not a single one was painted. All were in natural metal finish, just like Vought intended. Glad to see that you plan to uphold the tradition.

That’s a pretty wonky looking canopy in their ad art. I’m not sure even you could fix that.

Absolutely sixth letter of the alphabet-ing gorgeous!!

So what’s a Venow? Nice box art, however.

Looks like you are already committed to a complete repaint, etc. Surface prep, surface prep, surface prep!! Our typical model airplane paint ain’t gonna do it for something this big nor will an airbrush of the kinds we use do the job - you are in the professional painter arena with this thing. If you plan to paint it yourself, I’d recommend you do it one section at a time and not try to hose down the entire model in a single session. It’s just too big. It is gorgeous, however. Would love to see how it turns out.

Very nice. That’s a lot of real estate for an airbrush newbie. Looks like you did very well.

Most of you all already know this but it bears repeating. The American actor Jimmy Stewart was an Air Force pilot with combat experience and a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve until he finally retired. During one of his Reserve tours he ended up in the front seat of a TB-58 at Carswell (I think) with an experienced command pilot behind him telling him what to do. They cobbed the throttles at the end of the runway and flew a typical maintenance check flight profile - charge down the runway, suck up the gear and haul back on the stick til you go blind, etc. As they rocketed up in a steep climb on four! J-79s in full burner, legend says that at some point just after wheels-up, the normally laconic General Stewart exclaimed (using your best Jimmy Stewart accent) something to the effect of, “Jeezus Christ! This is not an aeroplane. It’s a godammed rocket ship!!!” I’d buy an over priced 1/48 Monogram kit on that endorsement alone. I never had the opportunity to talk with General Stewart but I did speak with his wife. She was most gracious and told me the general, as much as he would like to, was indisposed and could not accept my invitation. Close enough; I’ll take it. Happy to stand in the shadow of greatness.

The Air Force had a low level route through the hills and hollers where my grandparents lived. It was very common to see Buffs and Hustlers down in the weeds. My grandfather called B-58s “Bushhogs” because to him they were shaped like the mower farmers towed behind tractors when clearing fields for planting. Seeing one was as much luck as anything because the sound was always way, way behind them.

I am senior enough to have seen operational B-58s both in the air and on the ground. Last time was 1968. Still, I know next to nothing about them other than they did what they did and it took three guys to do it. Watched a promotional video the other day and was astounded when it appeared to me that the guy in the middle climbed aboard and sat down facing aft. Whether he later turned around in his cockpit and faced front, I don’t know. Maybe he was prepping his seat before strapping in? I watched that bit two or three times and it looked the same each time but I just can’t imagine that being the case. So does anyone know if I actually saw what I think I saw?

Coolest prop fighter ever. This should be grand.

Besides, that conversion is in puny 1/48.

After watching this thing come together, I swear I think somebody said, “Hey, grab an engine pod off that KB-50 over there and let’s strap a seat to it and see if we can get it to fly.” Impressive bit of modeling here. I had my doubts to begin with, but this is turning out to be about the coolest thing ever.

Oooo! These turned out nice! Note the two Colt .45s that are part of the squadron insignia. Heavy 7 was called The Peacemakers, same as the revolver.

Not sure the thing with McDonnell - Douglas was a merger. Looked like an acquisition to me. If you buy up your competition, then pretty soon you don’t have any and can do whatever you want.

Just for the record, the Navy gray over white scheme was flat (or eggshell, depending on how fresh it was) light gull gray over glossy white, as everyone knows. The white was glossy to better reflect heat from nukes going off all around them as they pressed toward their targets. The idea was to limit flash burn-thru of thin skins. That never explained the continued use of dark national insignia and other heat absorbing markings, however. Heavy 7’s tail stripe was regular medium blue and not the light blue you see on the decal sheet and the stripe eventually continued down the trailing edge of the vertical stab to emulate the number 7 and had 13 stars. The GL tail code came from parent unit Heavy Attack Wing One. All HATWING 1 squadrons had their own tail code - Heavy 3 was GJ, Heavy 5 was GK, Heavy 7 was GL, Heavy 9 was GM, etc. When the squadron was permanently assigned to an air wing as a unit (and not on board as a det), the GX code shifted to the Air Wing code while on the ship. Depending on which cruise (Both were on the Enterprise) Heavy 7s A5As carried either AE or AF tail codes. The only other squadron to take A5As to the boat for a cruise was Heavy 1, tail code AG, on the Independence.

Of course there is yet another option. One of my military instructors in college said exactly one thing that I’ve always remembered. He said that once he cracked the cover, he read any book to the very end no matter how bad it was. Why? Because somebody went to considerable trouble to write it, something he had never done, so he felt like he owed it to them for their effort. HKM went to all that trouble to make a frikkin’ Mosquito kit for us so why not build it?? No kit is perfect but how many people know that? Consider it a challenge. Break out the glue. Do what you want. The world hangs in the balance of headier stuff than a nanometer error on a model kit.

This model is really something special, but why so many “On” buttons on the bottom?