Here’s my second of the year. It’s a Hasegawa F4U-4 in some Reserve markings for NAS Los Alamitos that I built it for a GB on another site.
I saw a pic of this Corsair and, since my brother used to be stationed at JFTB Los Alamitos, I had to build it. The build’s pretty much OOB. The only additions I made were the custom decals, foil seat belts, the antenna wire , plastic rod pushrods (my fault), tube stock exhausts (another one of my errors), and rocket launch rails taken from some Tamiya Mustang kits and their scratched mounting plates.
It’s painted with MM enamels, and weathered with pastels and watercolor washes. I’m not totally satisfied with the exhaust staining, but trying it was a good opportunity for practice. Anyway, let’s get on to the pix!
It’s not visible in the photos above, but I wanted to show one last detail. One of my references for this build said that the “NAVY” line of the BuNo info block was painted over. While it was correctly represented in the decals, I thought I’d make it look a little more like it was actually painted over.
Here’s what I did:
I think it looks the part.
Finally, I’d like to thank Pip Moss, Jim Sullivan, Joseph Osborn, Jim Hegedus, viper50, and everyone else that answered my questions and provided their support during my build. Cheers!
Hope you enjoyed the pix as much as I enjoyed building the kit. Thanks for looking!
First of all, thanks for the kudos everyone. Much appreciated.
G-J, I started out using my airbrush. Problem is, I’m not that good with my airbrush. I know that others do a great job replicating exhaust staining using theirs. I can’t, so I use other methods. I started by spraying on very, very thin layers of grey, building up the color slowly. Then I laid down a little dark tan using the same method. Then…well…I chickened out. I finished up with various pastel colors and make-up. Yes, you read that right. Make-up. While out shopping with the wife one day, I saw some small “kits” of three colors that reminded me a lot of the Tamiya Weathering Powders (like these), only cheaper. I picked up a couple and they’ve worked well. I’ve even used 'em on a P-47 and they did the job.
Some subtle “smoothing” with an ear bud got the colors to blend well. After things looked good enough, I fixed 'em in place with some flat coat.
Hopefully this answers your question. If there’s anything else, feel free to ask.
Nice job! I have several Hasegawa & Academy -4’s in the stash, and the wife got me the Hobby Boss -4 for Xmas. Also have several Hasegawa / Revell -5’s and an AU-1, I could build one from each USMC squadron deployed in Korea. F4U is my absolute favorite.
