Tamiya FU4-1D Groupbuild

The Tamiya cockpit is a nice starting point and was enhanced with a Yahu instrument panel (definitely worth its small price) and with belts from the same company. All else is kit'n'color. Detail, even of the side panels is nice and satisfactory for all except the most demanding modellers. 

engine cowling flaps. Two slats broke off and had to be replaced. The Quickboost item is too small in diameter to fit the Tamiya engine without modification. Meanwhile there are better, meaning more detailed, versions for those flaps to be depict open available.  

was pondering a while whether to go this extra mile to detail the front part of the engine cowling. Decided to go for it. The cowling was sanded considerably thinner. The front part was cut off to ease assembly and painting. The struts were fashioned from disks from which I cut chunks. After tweaking the first one I used that as a template to fashion the others it is image. Afterwards 0.4 and 0.6 mm holes were drilled. No exact rendition of the real thing,... 

...but looks much nicer than the bleak kit part. 

The engine was detailed with valve rod housings made from 0.4 mm and vent connection tubes between the valve boxes from 0.3 mm brass tube. An ignition cable distributor ring was fashioned from 0.6 mm copper wire and spark plug cables were made from 0.05 mm brass wire. 

Engine completed. 

Engine and cowling parts loosely assembled, waiting for color. The struts have to align to the valve housings as they are the structures to which the cowling is mounted (or so I assume 😉 ). So some precision was required to have them all positioned correctly. 

Color on. AK Extreme Polished Aluminum straight onto the plastic/metal followed by clear varnish. A wash with Tamiya panel liner (mixture of dark grey and dark brown) brings the nice details to life. Valve rods were brush painted gloss black and the visual parts of the cables in tan. For the gear housing I opted for grey (and not blue), as for the engine accessories mounted to the gear housing. 

The exhausts received a mix of dark grey and black by brush and were then drybrushed with various shades of dark rust - probably never to be seen again.  

ready for final assembly 

And the final result 

Installation of the Aires flaps in down position. Fit is good. Some scraping of the upper wing half to achieve a nice sharp edge is necessary. Although fit was felt as good I realised some warp when I glued the wing halfs together which in turn required some gap filling at the wing roots. 

If you shim the slates of the horizontal stabiliser with 0.3mm sheet you get a nice pressfit which significantly eases assembly. 

Plug'n'glue with impeccable alignment 

replaced the position lights with clear part. 

blended in. Some polishing still needed. 

gun muzzles were improved by inserting 0.6mm aluminum rods. 

exhausts were drilled open 

I used the ready made masks for the wheel wells. They are quite nice, but be aware that they are not symmetrical. 

Aluminum paint in heavily worn areas as a base layer for some chipping. 

Teasing of my mates showed effect and I finally decided to deflect the control surfaces of the horizontal stab. It would have been easy if I would have done it right away as I had the aftermarket set from The Bodi at hand. This includes the whole horizontal stab with the control surfaces as separate pieces.  

I decided to deepen the engravings along the controls and saw them where necessary and then just to deflect them. Not too happy with the result I cut them off completely only to realise that the The Bodi parts are too short to fit. Grrr. Back to the kits parts. 

Finally reached the painting stage. The cowling received a 3 tone camo with insignia white, intermediate blue and seagloss blue. Hmm. The seagloss blue appears rather green - me thinks. A bit of color modulation with lightened base colors was applied too. 

The rest of the plane was covered in the 'new' seagloss blue and revealed a few areas which need a bit more attention. So, a redo is required here and there. 

I thought it a cool idea to color the engine cowling in 3 tone camo and the rest in seagloss blue, as if a spare part was used to keep the plane in service. But looking at it now I do not like it and so the engine cowling will be redone in seagloss blue too. 

A rough layout of the envisioned diorama. 

Some japanese scrap pieces provided by a friend to serve as scrap for the dio. 

This tool proved to be invaluable to cut those PSPs.  

Some base color slashed onto some bits n pieces for the dio.i 

First figure almost done. The Legend-figure is nicely crafted but it is a bit annoying that it consists of 8 pieces (in scale 1:72). At least they fit well. I suppose it is a scanned figure but traditionally cast. 

Only while painting I realised that there are a few casting flaws - particularly at the head. Will have to address these. Apart from that I am quite happy. Second figure is from 3Djsons Seabee set. It required some sanding as the printing layers were a wee bit too prominent. Priming and highlighting is done. Color will be the next step. 

After the base color some flaws were identified and addressed.
MRP paints just give a great finish out of the bottle. 

Rough idea of the figure interaction I have in mind. 

Calling the first figure finally done. 

 

 

 

Result after a few more rounds of sanding and painting until I was at least somewhat happy with the result. I finally decided that the hue of the color was too dark anyway and lightend it by about 20% with white. 

I was hoping to acqiure the fabric masks from Airone but couldn't find them anywhere. So I will do it the old fashion way. I will adopt a strategy Jakub Fiala layed out in his Corsair build. So masking the fabric covered areas is the first step. 

Second it was painting the areas with a considerably lighter tone (in this case MRP-237 and 98 1:1). The same mix was also used to add some lights along the fuselage. 

Puhh. Masking the ribs was quite tedious.  

Result after removing the top masking layer.  

Result after blending in. 

Wasn't quite happy with it as it appears way too light. But looking at it from a distance I think it will be ok with the subsequent steps of weathering (knowing my tendency to try to avoid too stark a contrast and ending up with the desired effect lost. So, let's see...) 

Second figure done.  

 

 

I might dirty his trousers a bit and light the cigarette too... 

Well, always tricky to judge from photographs, but the blue filters strongly improved the dull and greyish hue of the colors. A wee bit darker and I will be pleased even more. I am optimistic again that I will finally get there. 

I didn't like the rockets too much and thought I could do them better. So cutting 1.7mm brass tubes, cutting off the war head from the plastic ones and plugging them into a 1.5mm brass plug with a 0.6mm copper wire inserted for more stability were the next steps. I sanded the war head flush then and added the fins from 0.3mm styrene I sanded even a bit thinner. Particularly the fins look much more to scale now.  

Let's improve the hard points next. 

After having seen Seablue Gloss in real life I decided that I can still darken the color considerably more. So I sprayed two to three thin layers of Seablue Gloss over the entire model. Now I am quite happy with the shade 

The fabric covered areas are still discernable, but the effect is much more subtle.  

That's the way I want the base color to look like. Now I can dirty, wear and alter it.  

Some progress on the base. Cutting the profiles to size and shape resulted in quite a significant learning curve. Cut three times and still too short I had to adapt the base plate too. But finally I am where I want to be. 

The top board received an edge banding. A few tweaks and a varnish and I should be good to go for the ground work. 

I need some japanese scrab for my dozer. Some parts were scavenged from discarded kits... 

...the fuselage parts were scratched and detailed with PE-parts.detail 

Working on the layout of my little dio which slowly evolves into the desired direction. Still pondering on how to best do the groundwork. 

Decals are on. Typically Tamiya they are rather thick and require tons of aggressive softener to conform to something - anything. 

The upside is that the white of the print is absolutely opaque and even the small print of the stencils can be read - if you can.
 

The decals are a wild mix and do not represent a particular machine. I didn't want to replicate a carrier bourne machine and thus skipped carrier specific decals (or those I considered as such). Three courses of Tamiyas decal softener superstrong resulted in a decent conformation of the decals but a painted on look wasn't achieved- not even after another clear coat.
The MRP paint provided a smooth surface and I didn't experience any silvering - even without an extra clear coat underneath. But the decal softener reacted a bit with the paint and left me with a slight shimmer I couldn't polish away. 

Everything sealed with clear varnish and prop and landing gear popped on. Starts looking like a Corsair.  

I wanted a panellining which was visible but not too stark. A mix of Tamiyas panelliners Light and Dark Grey produced the result I was after. 

I tried to replicate the wear which could ne seen even at the Sea Gloss Blue Corsairs. But I am not too happy with the result 

So I removed part of it again. Let's see whether I can do a bit better. 

Almost finished the japanese scraps. The flaps are soldered so that I could bend them. I am lucky to have a friend with very solid knowledge of japanese WW II stuff who could just fire away on my question of how to color what. And reaching into his drawer he produced the appropriate colors too. Some spare decals pepped everything up. So, most of it is ready. 

Now I like the chipping better 

Masking to spray some fabric shading onto the decal. 

Result. Subtle but discernable. The defects at the decal from removing the masks are fixed. 

Coming full circle on the Marston mats. Here the ones from Flightpath ?) layed down one by one on douple sided tape. 

Put loads of pigment onto it, hoping that the double sided tape will keep it. Well, it didn't  

Used diluted Elmer glue then. Seems to work better. I started to wipe off the muc when it was still wet but that didn't work too well too. So now I will try again whenever I get the time for it and wipe the exess off then. 

Quite some elements had to be superglued again. Then I removed excess pigment and drybrushed the mats with various shades of olive drap. Next some sprinkles of greybrown dirtstains that were then oilyfied with a topping of clear varnish 

I then fixed it again to the base and covered the cardboard with kitchen paper towel soaked in highly diluted Elmer glue.  

Material for the next step, the groundwork. It is planned to form the base with AKs ground texture and add some stones to it that were colored with Vallejo Buff. Where the ground texture is too rough I intent to use AKs snow texture of which I colored a bit with Buff too.  

getting plant stuff ready to be put on the groundwork too. 

raw material for the palm trees. 

Some progress today. After sorting and preparing the plants I collected on my last holiday I finally went for the groundwork.  

 

Using AKs Light Terrain for the base. I build the heap of sand the dozer created by shoving debris off the beach and two craters caused by explosions. 

Next will be plants. While the dozer is already fixed, the Corsair and pilot were just put preliminary. 

 

 

Shit. That will be tricky to fix. I do have an idea about how to, but would appreciate any input from you guys 

plan C of Plan B. I tried my intended approach with a cardboard and soaked toiletpaper but that just didn't look right. I remembered a big block of Das Pronto modelling clay and all the problems I encountered with it. So I watched all the videos in the web there are, were and will be and found explainations and techniques to avoid my failures. So here is stage one of my recovery using Das Pronto. A promising second start I dare say. 

Clay work finished. Steps evend, sides trimmed and the sand heap* in front of the dozer blade fashioned. Lets color it.
* the sand heap was fashioned using scraps of isolation foam as a core and then wrap a thin coat of clay around it. The second layer of clay could be worked easily into/onto the base after moistening the surface again. Like this the heap was blended onto the ground too. 

Finally another step forward. I had ripped off the edges of the PSP area as the plates didn't cover the edge of the base. Being at it I flipped those plates I mistakenly mounted upside-down. Have to rework the paint job there too. 

For the final layer of the ground work I followed the advise of a friend and used household polishing cream as used for cleaning kitchens and bathrooms. Mixed with arylic color and diluted with water it was stippled onto the surface. When still wet the recovered debris was pressed into it. Finally some leaves from a mimose plant which resemble palm leaves quite well were scattered on top. Some variety in color is still needed and the barrels wait to be weathered next. But with this crucial step finally done to my satisfaction I hope the end is in sight. 

After a longer hiatus I finally achieved some progress. 

Battered palms have been planted, scrub and underwood was added using longstapling moss. To dirty the ground in between some scatter was mixed with diluted white glue and smeared under the greenery.  

Not too unhappy with the result. Good to see this moving again. Time to turn my attention back to the Corsair. 

Tackling the time consuming details. The updetailed rockets (see pics 50 and 51) received five paint jobs. Now trying to figure out how to best replicate the mounts. 

Finished the main landing gear. Hydraulic lines and springs were added. Nasty ejector marks were covered with label decals I stuck on aluminum foil, cut it out and placed them over the marks. Together with Eduards Brassin wheels I really like the look.  

To have some color variation I decided to paint the fuel tanks white. They were white as standard at Corsairs with 3-tone-camo, but the all Dark Seablue like mine usually had them in Dark Seablue too. The kit ones miss the fuel inlet as I discovered only after some weathering, soI fashioned them from PE spare parts (still to be painted). 

While the tanks can remain white, the pylons should be blue. Said - done.
Them rockets received the rear clamp and decals. The forward support clamps will have to be aligned with the pylons. 

The tailwheel gave me a headache as the one in the Eduard set was unusable and the kits one was a bit coarse for my liking. So - scratch-bashing was done. Actuator was clipped off and replaced by a piece of syringe, the horizontal part was sanded thinner and got holes drilled into it. The vertical part was fashioned from a styrene strip and the PE parts of Eduards conversion were used in conjunction with some thin aluminum rods. Now I like it better. 

On quite a few pics the Corsairs in the Pacific theater look pretty dirty. I tried to replicate that. 

I dare say: I am on final. 

Tailwheel, rockets and antennae are all that remains to be done as sooooooooon as the oils used for weathering are dry. 

 

 

 

Polished the canopy and got rid of the Liquid mask residues. Touched up what had to be done and put the canopy back on in open position.
Calling the Corsair done. 

I always wanted to have my Corsair more dusty. As the Ammo shaders didn´t produce the desired effects I went back to oils. Right side done, left side still clean. Coming closer.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As layed out in the comments I tried to construct a QAS harness. This was fumbly enough using 0.6mm masking strips and photoetched buckles. The guy helped to get the dimensions reasonable. 

Here the final result. 

...and the pilot to wear it. 

With the Corsair ready I was looking for ways to improve my dio. The destroyed palm trees didn't quite look the part yet and appeared a bit lost among the scrubs. I will try to improve this by two means.
1. constructing a bent palm with the top dangling down
2. Putting communication wires to the stumps of other palms 

As the twigs I used as palm stems snapped immediately when bent I was looking for a way to make a kinked palm stem look convincingly. My take was a short stretch of plumbers hemp between two pieces of twig,... 

...which was kinked after the Elmer glue set. This resulted in some torn fibers while the pieces stayed connected - the way I wanted it.  

In WW II pics I saw palm stems used as telegraph poles and want to do that too. In my quest for isolators I stumbled across resin screws and redesignated them. Here they are mounted on beams ready for paint 

It fought me tooth and nail on the last meters to completion, but I was determined and wouldn´t take no for an answer. As decals with my printer did not work - and boy I tried - I went for photo prints, which took several attempts to finally come to a result I could live with. So here I am: a Seabee batch and two mottos of theirs stuck to the base. 

After some attempts I finished the communication lines too. Not 100 % the way I envisioned them, but ok. 

On second last glance the greenery looked a bit like brownery, so I hastily diluted some Vallejo paints and hoped not to ruin everything on final. But it turned out quite ok, me thinks.  

a cigarette and a chat before the next sortie - taking off from an improvised airfield the Seabees had built. 

Ok, some semi-final pictures hurriedly taken before the trip to Moson where the dio was displayed.  

 

 

Haven´t found a mechanic yet to hang the HVARs under the wings to make the rockets on the ground look a little bit more reasonable. 

Bottomline I am quite happy how everything turned out in the end. Corsair and D7 look as I wanted them to look. I definitely have to work on my diorama skills, but after some detours I am rather satisfied with the endresult.
Thanks a lot for your interest, motivation and feedback. Loved to have had your company along the way.