Oh, how I wanna cry. I live in, as so many of you have heard me complain about incessantly, the biggest city in America and it has not one LHS worthy of the name. Not one. Least of all a Hobby Lobby within 500 miles that I know of.
I want an Accurate Miniatures TBF/TBM-1 or -3 so bad I can taste it, not to mention an AM SB2U-1 for my Yellow-Wings Decal set for it (the finest new decal company to come down the pike in a while, IMHO, but quite specialized, as the name implies. Check 'em out at www.yellow-wings.com.). AcMin sent me a sample of the SB2U-3 when it came out, but I just can’t get excited about it because there simply is no interesting paint scheme that ever appeared on this version of the Vindicator.
But now that I’ve broached the subject, and gone way off topic, I’d like to add my two cents about this hysteria over the sink marks. Particularly on the -3, those sink marks couldn’t have been more appropriate or in a better place on the airplane, which is around the fuselage right where the “fabric” part meets the “metal” forward fuselage. These -3’s, by Midway, were so war weary that as most of you know the white stripes on there are 4" hospital tape covered with dope just to hold the fabric on the airplane. So when you apply the white stripes (which for some reason AcMin leaves out of the decal sheet), you’d be more accurate to thin some Tamiya clear amber way down and paint it over them so it’ll look like “shellac” that has been sitting on a shelf for a while.
Also, the color film and photos from Midway show the blue-gray on the No. 6 bird that is on the box top as having a new coat of blue-gray heavily sprayed, very hastily and sloppy, on the rudder, spilling over onto the vertical stab. It’s so dark it more than hides the red stripes it’s meant to hide, so dispense with the decal and just lighten the blue-gray of the rest of the plane, because they were very sun-faded on the upper surfaces, and put the blue-gray straight from the bottle on the tail if you really want it accurate. You can see this clearly in one photo of No. 6 taking off at Midway in the Squadron/Signal “SB2U Vindicator In Action” book.
Also, I’d recommend using Yellow-Wings decals or, if you have them, roundels from the spares box, for the following: The kit national insignia are the wrong size, because the real planes had 40" national insignia, which is 5/8" in 1/48 scale. Take the right size national roundels with the red meatballs in the middle, and paint them out yourself with white paint allowing the red to be apparent under the white paint, but clearly painted out. They will look more real than the attempt made with the kit decals, which look a little too perfect and are, as I said, the wrong size anyway.
So, I’ve gone from whining about not having a Hobby Lobby to an unsolicited workshop on building the AM Vindicator. Gives a good idea about the state of Sharky’s attention span. Not good for a grown man.
(And Kurt, my steely-eyed missile man, it’s on the way. The Avenger PE set is really and truly on the way. I hope you can forgive me my habitual tardiness with the post.)
TOM