I decided to start my holiday build today. Our local club’s January theme is “Yellow Wings” and I want to do the Monogram F4B-4 with Starfighter Decals resin cockpit and their decals; I picked up both at the Nationals this year.
While the detail is fantastic, it’s nearly lost in the little kit.
GS
Looks great so far. Too bad its 1/72 instead of a “normal” scale. Just kidding
Looking good- I’ve got that kit heading towards me through the mail. May have to consider that resin set myself.
The resin cockpit makes a HUGE difference. With the original, you basically have a pilot (oversized) that hides the lack of detail. Omit the pilot and there’s just this hole. As evidenced by my F11C-2 from last year:
I’m holding off on my next F11C-2 and BFC/BF2C until Starfighter comes out with a cockpit set for that kit.
GS
One of the most beautiful bipes ever to fly, very nice work. [tup]
Awesome build, GS! There’s just something sexy about yellow wings! Well done![8D]
Making slow progress. Finished cleaning up all the mold release points and minor flashing. Drilled holes for the bracing wires. Glued the gun trough and lower wing in place. Thanks to some help online here I finally got the Mr Surfacer to work without significant sanding and removing of details.
This is the basic photo, showing the gun trough and lower wing:
Upper wing, cleaned up mold release marks and drilled holes for wires:
Next weekend I’ll paint, weather permitting.
GS
Another one in the finished column.
I installed the Starfighter Decals’ resin cockpit; used Starfighter Decals’ # 72-102F4B-4 Pt 1 with markings for VB-5, USS LEXINGTON, 1934. Starfighter’s sta-in-circle insignia blue is too light, so I used insignia from Yellow-Wings sheet Nr 72-001.
Basically out of the box with execption of that resin cockpit. It’s really nice and my next go-around with a Monogram bi-plane I’ll try to install the same cockpit into their F11C-2. My refs indicate it’s not that different (especially in this scale) and most of what’s visible is the seat and side panels.
I truly enjoyed the build and know now not to try to add guide-bars to the bracing wires - they’re too large for this scale and just don’t look right to me.
GS
PS Seems like the pics I can see are not working right for you…here’s the link instead.
GS - All I get is red x’s. Sure like to see your pics if you could fix that. Thanks.
Dick
ps: where do you find Starfighter decals? I never heard of them.
Hmmm I thought I was the pnly one with that problem. I believe it is a software glitch on my end. Chuck W’s fantastic project was another one I could not view the pics on. [BH] Any of you computer experts have any advice on what the problem may be ?
Dick,
Try this link for the pics – I did nothing different than in the past…
http://picasaweb.google.com/Greenshirt82/MonogramF4B4#
Try this link for Starfighter Decals: http://www.starfighter-decals.com/index.html
Tim