This
is my 1/72 Hasegawa F4F-3 that I built a few years back for the kit review
section of Bert Kinzey's most recent Detail & Scale volume on the Wildcat.
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images below to see larger images
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The
kit originally started out as Hasegawa's F4F-4 that was improperly boxed as a -3
with colorful pre-war markings.
Modifications were made to convert the kit to a -3 variant by carefully
filling in the wing-fold joint on the top and bottom of the wings, filling in
the outer gun portal & gun bay panel lines and filling in the
three cowl flaps on the sides of the top of the cowl and then rescribing them as
one big solid flap.
In
retrospect I have since found out that my current gun bay panel lines are
incorrect, but this was not readily apparent in the references I had at the
time. I've had the privilege of being able to examine one of the
surviving restored specimens that was retrieved from the bottom of the Great
Lakes several years back and the gun-bay panels were totally different than what
is found on the -4's. Also the placement of the wing guns on the -3 are
said to be closer to the fuselage than on the -4, but after having seen the real
specimen, I'm not certain myself... so I would recommend checking photos and
references very closely if you're going for all out accuracy on a -3.
While
operating from carriers, Wildcats used a hard-rubber tire on the tail gear,
while land based aircraft used a low pressure inflated tire. In early 1943
a high pressure inflated tire was introduced that was suitable to both land and
carrier based ops. To replicate the early hard-rubber tire on this model,
I used a spare item that I had left over from a Hasegawa Brewster 239 Buffalo
kit.
A
True Details resin interior and gear bay set was used to help busy up the
landing gear bay, which is a tad bit spartan to say the least.
Once cleaned up, the True Details parts fit amazingly well as they are very well
engineered and almost simply drop into place once a few interior pegs have been
ground down or removed from the existing kit fuselage halves.
Paints
used were Pollyscale acrylics and the decals are from a Superscale set, since I
was not impressed with the ones that came in the kit. The aircraft I chose
to model was the one that is currently on display at the National Museum of
Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida... as I just didn't want to do another
overall blue Wildcat and was really drawn to the bright markings of this
aircraft. Plus, the Wildcats were some of the last fleet aircraft to wear
the colorful pre-war markings before the switch to low-vis grays and blues.
Unfortunately I was unable to match the blue shade that Superscale used for
their stripes, so just went with what I could find that I felt was 'close
enough' to paint the blue cowl ring. In comparison to the bird on display
at the NMNA, I feel that Superscale's shade of blue is a tad bit light anyhow,
so I probably would've been better off masking and painting all the stripes,
but... oh well, I'll live with it.
Apart
from the inaccurate gun-bay panel lines, off-blue cowl ring and some other
minor imperfections that I'm sure some of the sharper eyed among you will see in
these photos... I'm very happy with the way this kit turned out and love the
color that it adds to my collection.
J.C.
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images below to see larger images
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