Trumpy ASW Wildcat - almost done

[Fanes]

On 5/12/2021 at 2:18 AM, Martinnfb said:

Nice work ! 

That's a good one

[Fanes]

Moving on this time:

Inbetween work, buying new kits and other hobbies the Wildcat recieved some interior paint.

As fa as I got the early Wildcats were painted bronze green. Instead of searching for an "exact" match, I went with MRP's take on it.

 

As usual there's some variation thanks to the black base.

Painting the small stuff with a fine brush took like forever. The PE instrument panel was a special pain since the bezels aren't that high.

I know why I usually prefer good plasitc or resin IPs...

 

The control stick got two red knobs punched from styrene.

I'm not a 100% happy with the blind flying panel but added an Anyz knob anyway

 

Afterwards I shot an overall gloss coat - MRP this time, first try and already close to my beloved Tamiya X-22!

It should be dry enough for a wash later today.

[Fanes]

The cockpit parts got their dark green wash and a nastily thick coat of AK flat clear.

I really need to try new falt coats..

 

 

Up close on the IP with its acetate with white backing - quite nice but I do prefer individual decals on plastic.

 

In between I started wrestling with the PE belts. Luckily they're from the old type. Quiten thin and without any ugly preprinted stuff on them.

Gave them some annealing to make them even more flexible and after an hour of fiddling they were ready for paint:

 

In the next step I decided to do another dry fit of the cockpit and disaster strucke:

a huge gap on the front fuselage! Someone didn't pay attention to the WiPs he read. There were enough warning signs.

Out with the sander and knife. I'll shoot some photos later today.

[BradG]

Plug on mate, a little filler and away it goes!

[Fanes]

On 5/17/2021 at 9:20 AM, BradG said:

Plug on mate, a little filler and away it goes!

I guess it would have been a little tiny bit more work

Rodney Williams struggled with a similar issue in his wonderful build:

https://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/article.php?aid=773

Reading would have helped since Alain had a great solution with lowering the right side console.

That wasn't an option for me anymore so I removed "some" material.

 

It looks brutal but nothin will be seen through the small cockpit opening.

Test fit seems much more doable than before:

 

Afterwards when I was sure that no major surgery was necessary the seatbelts were glued into place. They were painted and drybrushed with a Vallejo mix and recieved a dark brown oil wash.

 

That's all in the pit (minus the headrest and the gunsight). Now I have to choose the next step: tackle the wings or the dreaded wheel well?

 

Cheers

Joachim

[Fanes]

Onto the wings!

I thought that I was going down the easy path for once (narrator: he did not).

Quite a lot of Wildcats kits seem to be displayed with one wing folded and the other one in flight position.

I couldn't find a picture of an Operation Torch Wildcat in that configuration. They are either both up or both down.

Since the folding mechanism and the wing's interior is on only okayishly detailed, I thought going for both wings deon would be the best way.

Since the wings are supposed to be moveable with a hinge, there's no strong connection between the parts.

Well I call it practice for my first short run/resin kit:

 

Reinforced the connection with plastic sheet.

But still the upper half turned out pretty rough. I filled the seam with CA (twice) and will sand everything flush later.

 

 

Lesson learned for the starboard wing: triple check and start glueing from the middle - not the edges (and sand the damn gun bay doors).

 

Well they're the next challenge. Now where's that can of worm pic that regulary apperars in the LSP discussions?

Here's what Trumpy imagines for the weapon bays:

 

Would be okay in 1/72, I guess.

First order of business: replacing the guns with CMK parts (cheap!)

 

Afterwards the complications start to add up. Eduard's PE supplies new sidewalls (fantastic!) and a new spar between the inner guns.

Here's a comparison to the plastic part and the real deal.

 

But behold - that's a F4F-3.

I only found one picture from a F4F-4 and it doesn't show the sides of the spar:

 

There are two vertical ribs visible which seem to match the eduard part.

Does anyone have a better picture?

 

Bad news for the PE itself:

it doesn't fit the kit's weapon bay by a slight margin ()

 

With a good refernce photo scratch building a new spar should be feasible.

Or should I close the doors and leave that can of worms untouched?

 

Cheers

Joachim

 

[monthebiff]

Lovely build, fantastic looking cockpit.

 

Regards. Andy 

[Jamme]

Hello.

Nice job !

Cheers,

Jamme

 

[Fanes]

The struggle continues

I started making my own middle spar from scratch. Not a big issue with a punch-and-die set.

Some cuts later I was ready to fit the new part into the gunbay.

With the eduard part being way too short, I had some doubt on the fit of the rest of the PE.

Well, I hate to be right sometimes..

 

 

 

All parts for the sidewalls are at least 1-2 mm short

I concluded several options for the issue:

• scratch all the sidewalls
• try to get a hold of a newer eduard set (32170) for the F4F-3 (out of production and nowhere to find with a quick search)
• wait for a new AM set to pop up - thinking about those beautiful resin sets fro Kopecky models
• get over it, close the wing and move on

I'm leaning heavily towards the latter.

What do you guys think?

 

[Fanes]

Well, four weeks have gone by an d not much has happened.

The problems with the gun bays were a real mojo killer.

In the end I closed everything up and assembled the wings

 

The latter required quite some filler and sanding since the fit between the fixed wing part and the foldable part is vague.

The leading edge was a mess as well.

 

The wings are now waiting for my least favourite task: restoring rivets and rescribing.

It's definitely not the joyful quick build I anticipated

[Fanes]

Finally an update!

I've been busy with wing and it's still not a 100% what I would prefer.

Rivetting was extremely tedious since the Trumpy rivets are more like holes. So re-rivetting with a rivetting wheel produced way too shallow impressions.

So I drilled every single rivet that was lost or damaged with a 0.3 mm drill bit.

The seams were filled with black CA sanded, primed and sanded again. Then rescribed.

 

While the starboard wing turned out just fine (except for some dust that needs to be removed), the port wing is still a head scratcher. You can see the result after three iterations in the photo above and it's still not consistent. I may have to rethink my approach.

 

But now onto the next issue:

The wheel well and the tilted bulkhead

I think I found only one correction of the issue and that was in Alain's Martlet build.

 

Here's the situation on my wildcat:

 

and even worse on the inside:

 

and here it is with the Grey Matter wheel, which is far from the quality of some other resin wheels in my stash (Barracuda, brassin...), plugged in:

 

I'm not sure what to do now.

Really go to town and reshape the cutout like Alain did, or leave it be and maybe finish my first ever GB entry in time?

Edited July 17, 2021 by Fanes

[dennismcc]

Keep plugging away, it will be worth it in the end, plus the only alternative is the Revell offering.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Alain Gadbois]

Hi,

I felt I had to correct the shape of the opening because it made the bulkhead fit perfectly.

However, in most builds this is not done and the finished kit still looks fine. If you just trim the bit that sticks out (as I see in your photo), it will pass the quick look test very well.

 

Alain

[Fanes]

Well, I have a week off from work and finally felt confident enough to tackle the issue.

Out with the styrene sheet (0.5 mm) and onto the wheel wells!

I made a template from tape to transfer the shape of the kit's cutout to the sheet and used a circle cutter to make the new opening.

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos during the processs, so here's the first dry fit:

 

You can see the pencil mark where material needs to be removed from the fuselage.

The starboard side with the reshaped opening:

 

Afterwards I copied Alain's approach and sanded the opening to a circle shape (400 grit on a socket) with a diameter little bit bigger than 20 mm.

 

There's still some gaps to fill and transiions to smooth (already on it) and I need to add the vertical cutout near the wing root, but overall I'm really happy with how it turned out.

But see for yourselves with the resin wheel inserted:

 

 

[Fanes]

Moving on this time.

I call the newly shaped wheel openings done:

 

Now onto the internals. I erased all moulded on lines, hoses and stuff on the bulkhead and added a 0.5mm shim on the bottom to ease up the fit to the fuselage.

 

The next step was to assemble the undercarriage and oh my that was a pain in the a**.

Sink marks, ejector pin marks and mould seams everywhere. It took me hours to get to an accetable result.

I added two PE parts from eduard which replace the plain plastic (PE doors are already bent, but not installed).

You can see the amount of putty and black CA to fill all the faults. Additionally the assembly is quite tricky and needed some deliberate force to connect everything.

Once completed he whole thing is quite sturdy.

 

 

I'm usually no wheel well detail freak (does anyone admit to being one?) but the wildcat's one is quite visible form the side.

So I added a bare minimum of lines from copper wire (straps from tamiya tape) and made some boxes/housings from scratch.

 

 

That's it for now. I'll shoot some primer followed by Grumman Grey later today/tomorrow.

Not much left to do to finally close up the fuselage!