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F4U-1 birdcage


fastzx

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Nice work Jon. I have always liked the 'Bird cage' version of the Corsair, and if I can get enough reference, it is one that I would not mind mastering one day in the future. I look forward to seeing how this little conversion comes out - good luck Jon.

 

Regards

 

Derek

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Oh sure Derek, NOW you want to master one! Now that Jon, Murph, Rick, and I have suffered the slings and arrows of poor turtledecks!!

 

A master for a birdcage conversion from you Derek would be a truely wonderful thing!!

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Hey I never suffered through my build it was a labor of love. LOL No No I think you were right there it was a pain in the brian. but for sure we need to have Radu make us a real nice photo etch birdcage canopy.

 

Cheers Murph...

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Oh sure Derek, NOW you want to master one! Now that Jon, Murph, Rick, and I have suffered the slings and arrows of poor turtledecks!!

 

A master for a birdcage conversion from you Derek would be a truely wonderful thing!!

 

:blink: :o

 

OK Chris, I may raise this one on a seperate thread, just to check ot the response. I'm guessing that I would need to adapt it to fit the Trumpeter kit (been a porper, I only have the Revell offering! (basically, I'll need good references and a 'donor' trumpeter fuselage/kit from somewhere?).

 

Murph: Both your birdcage F-4U, and Chris's set the standard for conversion work. I'm certain that Radu could do a marvellous photo-etch canopy frame, however, my approach would differ from Radu's somewhat.

 

Jon: Your P-400 still looks very nice to my eyes :).

 

Cheers

 

Derek

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Thanks Derek and Murph,

 

Yes I am doing a whole lot of wet sanding on the canopy to bring the frames down in thickness!!!! I should have used thinner styrene.

But the vac canopy needs mucho sanding and polishing to remove the imperfections anyway.

 

Murph I blame you for inspiring this backdated Revell build. Nice job on yours by the way, I only hope to come close with mine.

 

I really got into researching the Corsair after reading some of the accounts of those Marines in the first fighter with longer legs so to speak to operate out of the Canal and Munda.

 

Walsh's plane seemed a good candidate for this treatment. I really like the old-style stars with no bars and the position on the fuselage sides.

 

I like doing conversions to earlier versions - I did this with an old Revell P-38 and backdated it to the sleeker G/H model similar to the plane that shot down Yamamoto. Another good book by the way ....Lightning Strike.

 

Jon

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  • 2 weeks later...

here are a few photos still working on the canopy, scribing wings and now the fuselage

I've used finer and finer sanding mesh and now polishing with old crest toothpaste as a rubbing compound, still want to polish some more before dipping into future two or three times.

 

This is a better shot of the scallops cut into the Revell fuselage and backed with the Horizon conversion vacuform pieces. I filled in behind with gobs of AB 5 minute epoxy putty so I wouldn't push them through when working on them!

 

As foggy as these look do you think the Future will clear them up?

 

I guess I can only give it a try. The Vac p-400 looked about as foggy and I gave it the fine sanding and crest toothpaste polish too.

post-791-1228416064.jpg

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I've built the main gear from aluminum tubing and modified the tail gear and hook by using R. Watanabe's drawings.

You can see the tail wheel has not been raised yet as the early planes did not have this modified yet. And the tail wheel is of a high pressure tire type and not the solid rubber of later Corsairs.

post-791-1228416497.jpg

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Main gear shot and resin wheel repacements.

My best assumption from photos is that the wheels were of a cast metal color with lots of brake dust and grime from operating on land bases like Guadacanal and Munda.

I'm going with a gunmetal color dry-brused with aluminum with a dirty wash of black grime to bring out the detail of these fine resin wheels.

I still have to dirty up the tires yet.

post-791-1228416797.jpg

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Here is a shot of the front. I used a Jerry Rutman's Corsair prop hub but cut the blades off and used the early style blades from the revell kit.

Jerry's hub is correctly detailed but the blades on it were for a later corsair version.

Also I've noticed in some very early pictures of F4U-1s the hamilton standard logo is not on the blades like they are on later models and even different F4u-1s.

Does anyone know why this is? I'm going to go ahead and leave them off this build according to my refs.

 

You can see the cowl front ring is filled in and scribed further back according to all the profiles I have of the cowl. I've also used aluminum roof flashing to correct the size and placement of the cowl flaps....I read the cowl flaps were ALWAYS open when the Corsair was on the ground.

 

Oh, you can also see the rework of the air/oilcooler intakes that gave the Corsair the Japanese name "Whistling Death"

Not seen in this pic is the reworked gear bays, Whew!

 

I still need to finish scribing the front part of the fuselage, with the fuel tank access and associated panels. (wish I had one of those Eduards F4U scribing template but I guess I'll have to make do with what I have, a draftstman's circle template, when engineering drawings were done by hand on velum and not on CAD systems.

post-791-1228417298.jpg

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And finally an overall top view.

 

You can't see much of the wing rescribing in this shot but it's there, OK maybe the Aileron notches you can see.

 

I cut apart the elevators and rudder to pose in a slightly different attitude, elevators dropped a bit and the rudder slightly to the right.

 

This shot also shows how deep my scallops are indented...I hope they are close because I had no real good references....They are going to be covered with plexi panels anyway so maybe I'm worried for no reason from the side profile they look dead on to the drawings I've used as references.

 

Well that's about it for now.

 

I can't wait to get some color on this beast so i can get to the fun part.....weathering a land based, coral and mud strip, oil and fuel stained battle weary Corsair!

 

Cheers,

Jon

post-791-1228419620.jpg

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