where you guys get info like that??!!!
when i see pics of cockpits with those buttons painted, i feel so dumb and kick myself[banghead]
i mean the Hasegawa and Tamiya planes I BUILD surely don’t say the colors…IS THERE A SECRET SOCIETY I DON’T KNOW ABOUT???..WELL, is there???[:o)]
OR were the colors painted with guessing???..urrrrhhhh, someone FILL ME IN PLEASE!!!
well…i’m now working on a 1/48 F4F-4 WILDCAT and a A6M5 ZERO
please help me…I BEG YOU
Hey Kaysee…
Use the internet…just search for the plane you are looking for chances are you will find lots o’ info. Look at the images section in yahoo or google…saves time of picking thru the webpage. Also reference guided like the "Walk around " series…Squadron has lots available…get their flyer and see.
Check out www.j-aircraft.com great site for Japanese reference…
When all else fails…wing it!!! Accuaracy is in the minds eye…once you see the pics you will see that most pits are basically the same.
Carlos
A lot of the museums have cockpit photos online, such as the USAF Museum. Check for the USN Naval Air Museum. And there are books on just cockpits. You might also check your local library, as they might have these books. Info is available somewhere. You just have to find it.
You can usually find photos of most aircraft’s cockpits on the Internet. Googling Farley Fruitbat walkaround’ or 'Farley Fruitbat cockpit’ usually comes up with the goods.
Other than that, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of guesswork, especially if you’re going to have the canopy closed…[:-^]
Cheers,
Chris.
I use Google and do an Image Search for pictures. For example, I type in “F-14 Tomcat cockpit” or “P-51 cockpit.” I peruse through the results and either print off, save or just keep the laptop next to my work table and reference the pics as I paint.
Real airplane cockpits aren’t quite as colorful as many modelers make them out to be. A few red handles or big switches may be in there, a placard or two, but in general there doesn’t seem to be a lot of color coding. Black knobs and silver toggle switches are the norm. Pilots and crew know their interiors more by feel than by what color things are. Red warning lights don’t show up as bright red unless they’re on, and they wouldn’t be on unless the the engine is running and somebody’s in the cockpit. Check reference photos.
Over the years I have collected a library of reference books and magazines. The Squadron “in Action” series and the “Detail & Scale” books are great references for specific subjects and reasonably priced.
I belong to the Tailhook Association and their quarterly journal The Hook has terrific photos and in-depth articles about Navy carrier aviation.
As mentioned previously, the Internet has become a fantastic resource in recent years.
There are many knowledgable & helpful folks here on this forum who can answer questions. I would only add that, as a matter of courtesy, you should make an effort on your own first if you are asking for information that is readily available through a simple Google search.
Mark
My biggest pet peeve with cockpits is those who give the instruments chromish looking bezels. Thats fine for a sports car but not for aircraft.
There are a few things that are required to be colored, but as said many of the indicators are not visible until they are illuminated. The more modern the cockpit the less flip type switches and more touch or push button ones there are.
The seems to be some artistic license taken by those who don’t have proper references or…its their model and they build it the way they want to.
[#ditto] everything already said above.
A site I like to use for US modern:
I had one for WWII cockpits but the link appears to be dead now.
Reset the shiny switches, ignore the dull ones. (Confederate Air Force fighter pilot on cockpit checklist)
Even then they aren’t on. The only time you ever see red lights is when you are testing them or when something is on fire. There may be several switches that have red plastic guards on them, though.
Red = Bad
Now, alot of amber lights may be on if the plane is on the ground with the just electrical power on but those lights generally extinguish when the engine(s) are started.
No lights are on in flight unless some system has a fault.
As far as World War II aircraft go, (i.e., your Wildcat & Zero), there are many references to choose from, and the kit’s color painting suggestions are not always accurate. I have been a volunteer in many WWII & cold war era aircraft restorations, and there are some general rules of thumb to follow:
There is no one single color as “zinc chromate”. Zinc chromate (and several other anticorrosive paints and platings) came in a variety of shades & colors. I have seen wide variations in this in US aircraft, from a deep green to a bright apple yellow. Often a single aircraft will have many shades of zinc chromate on its various parts.
Generally speaking, anything painted bright red is a saftey item (i.e., a canopy lock/release lever, manual landing gear/flap extension, flight control locks, etc), an emergency use only item (i.e., fire extinguishing, emergency stores jettison, etc), or a saftey/guarded system (weapons/guns arm, etc.). Modern jet aircraft tend to use yellow for ejection seat/canopy jettison items.
Many parts of World War II aircraft were of phenolic construction, a compressed wood fiber & resin composite. It is usually of a reddish brown color, and it was used for control cable pulleys & guide blocks, among other things. Nearly every WWII US aircraft cockpit has some phenolic components, and this is a detail often missed by modelers.
Japanese and German aircraft varied greatly in the materials used in their construction. A prewar or early war Japanese aircraft was given much greater anticorrision protection than a late war production aircraft, which is one reason so few survive today. Many parts originally made of metal were made of wood in later years & often left unpainted. German aircraft, too, utilized a lot of wood in later production aircraft.
Japanese aircraft interiors are not one color, either-they ranged from a vivid transparent blue over natural aluminum color to a transparent green over silver to a solid, nontransparent pale green. The transparent green & solid pale green were often used together on the same aircraft. I worked on the restoration of an early war naval Zero that had a pale green instrument panel, cockpit floor, control stick, rudder pedals, & cockpit sidewalls, but the aircraft strucure for the gun mounts forward of the instrument panel (and the rear of the firewall) were the transparent green over aluminum. Check your references carefully.
You never know where you might find references. The internet is, of course, a great source. A couple of years ago my wife bought me a calendar that has close up pics of historic WWII aircraft cockpits taken at various museums. Each photo has an instrument identification guide. They are really great! The aircraft are: Beaufighter Mk 1C, Messerschmitt Bf 109G Trop, Chance Vought FG-1D Corsair; Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero, Hawker Typhoon Mk IB, Focke-Wulf Fw 190D-9, Republic P-47D Thunderbolt, Yakovlev Yak-3, Sea Hurricane Mk Ib, Messerschmitt Me 262A-1A, Martin B-26G Marauder.
I must say, WWII cockpits are probably less colourful than modern ones, but they have a certain analog charm!
Cheers,
Biggles
For a nice bit on U.S. interior colors during WWII, see the Dana Bell article in the October, 1997 ‘Fine Scale Modeler’. See also
http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2004/02/stuff_eng_interior_colours_us_part2.htm
This is part two of a three part series covering USAAF and Navy interior colors.
For real live pictures of mostly WWII cockpits: “Cockpit. An illustrated history of World War II Aircraft Interiors” By Donald Nijboer ( who also did “Gunner”, about gun turrets, in case you need to know about that. and may have done “Cockpits of the Cold War” for aircraft after WWII. Don’t have my copy handy, so may have been by someone else.
See also “At the Controls: The Smitsonian National Air and Space Museum Book of Cockpits”, which covers cockpits from the Wright Flier to the Shuttle.
Be wary of restored aircraft colors: the colors may have been chosen to keep the aircraft preserved and protected, and may be only close to accurate. there may also be additional radio and navaigation gear currently required by law that was not in the original aircraft.
Hope this helped.
Joe
If you’re planning a visit to a museum, write first, and ask if it’s possible take photos of a cockpit, or two (don’t overdo it, or the answer’s bound to be negative.) You might have to make the trip on a weekday, when there are more full-time staff around (the RAF Museum, here, has that rule.) I’ve been doing this for around 40 years, and have 5000+ photos of bits of airframes.
It’s surprising, these days, how many books are including interiors (Mushroom publications are a good example,) and, only last year, I managed to get hold of a pair of pocket-sized books, written in Japanese, with dozens of cockpits (photographed with a fish-eye lens at times, it’s true, but better than nothing) from pre-WWI to the YF-16. The books were the work of Hiroshi Seo, printed in 1980, distributed by The Asahi Shimbun company, and the ISBNs are 0065-223507-0042 & 0065-223508-0042 (I think; can’t read Japanese.)
Edgar