All three are old Airfix mouldings with the exception of the wings for the Seafire which look to be newly tooled.
The Wildcat caught my attention because it was a US bird in UK service. The special kit markings included a Midnight Blue scheme for a plane operating in India in 1945. This plus obtaining a cheap copy of F4F Wildcat In Detail book from Squadron made me decide I wanted to build this kit.
I believe the kit is circa 1980 vintage so it meant I would have an opportunity to practice a number of different skills. The raised panel and rivet detail had to go so I knew I would be re scribing everything. The cockpit is devoid of any detail so I knew I wanted to fix that and that meant an open cockpit canopy so a vac form piece was needed. Ditto the wheel wells. My references also suggest some some modifications will be needed to the airframe in the area of the engine exhausts and cowling. I also wanted to check the shape as I had read somewhere the fin was too short. So lots to do, lets get on with it.
As far as third party add-ons go I obtained a resin cockpit and wheel well set from True Details and a vac form open canopy from Squadron.
Work started with sanding away the raised detail on the fuselage halves. I then spent a short amount of time on ensuring the resin pieces would fit once the fuselage was glued together. Although the resin pieces were designed for the Hasegawa kit they were easily shaped to fit the Airfix model.
With that done I focused on painting these parts . Colours were typical US cockpit interior green washed with a sepia wash and then highlighted with various other colours per my reference photographs. Instrument dials got a final drop of Klear to represent glass fronts.
Then it was back to those panel lines. This is only the second time I have had a go at re scribing so I found it really tedious. I transferred from my reference drawing to the fuselage the lines I wanted to scribe with a pencil then using my scribing tools and some Dymo tape I proceeded to scribe the lines.
It didn't take me too long to realize I needed to glue the fuselage halves together first if I was going to have any chance of getting the circumferential lines anything like correct.
After joining the two halves and tidying the join I continued with scribing. I was relatively successful, like anything the more I did the better it got. Although I have a scribing tool that I purchased for the task my primary and favored tool of choice ended up being a darning needle in my pin vice.
With fuselage complete I moved on to the wings. This time I used the faint moulded raised panel lines as my guide and scribed new lines before sanding off the remaining raised detail. Much better doing it this way.
I purchased a pounce wheel specifically for this project so I could mark on rivet detail too. I think less is more in this department so I did not endeavour to show every rivet. Instead I ran alongside the more prominent panel lines and on some of the control surfaces. I like the finish.
So on with the wings and tail planes. The kit wing has a large tab to locate them in to the fuselage. With the resin pieces in place these needed to be drastically reduced in size. I was able to leave a part of the tab that had a mounting hole for the undercarriage.
Joining the wings to the fuselage was achieved using thin cyanoacrylate. Using a very fine applicator on the glue bottle I applied a small drop to the join and capillary action did the rest. I continued this process all the way around allowing more or less glue in to fill the gap. CA is a great gap filler.
Clean up was done with some of my riffler files and moderate application of some Mr Surfacer. The CA worked so well with the join on the tail planes that no clean up was necessary.
With the model starting to look like a plane I still had a few more tasks to complete before I could get on with the painting.
Firstly the engine cowling. The molded piece is thick so I first thinned down the trailing edge with a knife. The Wildcat had two cowling flaps which are totally missing from the kit so after measuring up from the plan I cut flaps in to the kit part. I did this by first scribing the outline and then using a new blade cut along the sides of the flap. I then scored the rear of the flap enough so that I could bend it up proud of the cowling.
There is one last panel line on the cowling that I had to do which was achieved with my trusty needle and some dymo tape. One thing I did here that is worth noting when using dymo tape. In order to get the tape to conform to the curved shape I cut slots in one edge of the tape. This makes it more flexible and much easier to get it to wrap securely around curved items such as this cowl.
Before gluing the cowl to the fuselage I used a rat tail file to deepen the two exhaust slots either side of the nose. This combined with the thinned rear edge of the cowl ensured a gap could now be seen which was the effect I wanted.
Next up were the machine gun ports on the wing. These were measured from the drawing and then drilled in the wing leading edges.
The cockpit pieces were carefully cut from the vacform mould and then the front piece was glued to the fuselage. The cockpit packet from Squadron contained two canopies so I used one for the model and the other as a pattern to make my masks for the canopy framing.
Before moving on to spray painting the fuselage I pre-painted Chainmail around the exhaust areas. I then painted on masking fluid. When this is removed after spray painting it will leave the exposed metal surface commonly seen on these aircraft due to exhaust heat.
With that done and the masks in place I stuffed up all the holes I didn't want to spray and got on with painting the primary aircraft colour,
With the main colour coat dry I proceeded with the decals. No need for a Klear coat as the paint was gloss so the decals went on fine and bedded in nicely with Micro Sol and Set solutions.
I removed the masking fluid over the exhaust area to reveal nicely stressed metal. This got a light dusting of black and brown pastel powders too.
I inserted two small pieces of plastic rod to represent the tips of the inboard machine guns and then put a small amount of black pastel on the wings around these to indicate some real "gun action" had actually taken place.
I used the kit undercarriage painted per my references, pretty basic but fine for my purposes.
Stretched sprue was used for the radio antennae. I chose to depict mine with the wire going in to the leading edge of the stabilizer. The antennae wire on the real aircraft exited the fuselage on he left hand side behind the cockpit so I drilled a small locating hole here and represented this wire also.
I chose to show a flat finish on the paintwork as I figured the paint work would noticeably fade under the sun and lose its shine. This is where I really screwed up. I used the wrong material using Testors Flat lacquer which reacted with the enamel paint to cause some crazing. Cardinal rule - never use lacquer based products on top of enamel. Hopefully I have learned that one.
Other than that this was an enjoyable model to build. I think the resin cockpit tub is terrific. I was glad I eradicated the raised panel lines and rivet detail and had a good go at replacing it. Still a skill to improve on but I think my model looks better for it.
The minor improvements like the machine gun ports, cowl flap and pilots headrest (added that late in the build) take it up a notch too.
That's it, hope you like it. Not bad for an old school Airfix kit. Here are some snaps of the finished article.
