Revell's 1:32 F4U-1 is next up, and has been built by Dave Wilson, an expatriate Kiwi now living on the Gold Coast of Australia.

In Dave's words:  I'd like to present my Revell 1/32 scale F4U-1 Corsair, finished as NZ 5312 of 26 Squadron, RNZAF, Bougainville, April 1945.

This model started out as the bog standard Revell kit, but thanks to the fantastic people in the FFM ( Far Flung Modellers email group ED) , it became a co-operative effort with resin, PE, decals etc. So, my deepest and profound thanks to everyone for their encouragement, and in particular to: Anthony Galbraith - who provided not only a Black Box resin cockpit, Eduard PE cockpit set, Squadron vac canopy, and resin tyres BUT also supplied me with another Revell Corsair kit for another project! Anthony, you're a true friend!

Nick Dixon- who sent me the R2800 engine from a Hasegawa Hellcat to give life to the sharp end of the model!

Pete Mossong- a patient man who was invaluable with detail information when I fell short, and who supplied the yellow tail decal numbers, without which the F4U could not have been completed!

Dave Pratt - who supplied a Moskit F4U exhaust system (what a gem!). I was too chicken to hack up the finished fuselage, but the Moskit will go into the next big F4U - which will be finished in the 3 tone scheme.

Guys, I'm in your debt and it's been a helluva lot of fun ( and a huge learning curve) taking a 34 year old kit and dressing it up. Where possible I tried to use kit parts but the replacement engine and my first attempt at a resin cockpit are what lift this old kit into a different league.

The model was brush painted with Humbrol enamels, mixed to match the FS numbers of NZ Blue/Pacific Blue as per Charles Darby's book RNZAF The First Decade.

Weathering of metal areas was with Citadel paints "chain mail" colour. This is an acrylic which looks like worn metal and can be removed with Tamiya acrylic thinner if you stuff it up ( which I did repeatedly). To me this paint is a breakthrough because stuffing up weathering with enamel silver is a bitch to rectify. With Citadel paints ( used for Warhammer figures) any mistake needs only a second's repair.

Decals are by Roodecal with Micro Scale tail numbers and Letraset serials. Finally, the model was dirtied up with chalk pastels.

I don't claim it's 100% authentic and the Fuji FinePix S3000 camera is very forgiving of the faults ( I love this camera!), but the model is as close as I can get it to the real a/c.

The following Corsairs are from Dan Farnham (well known on several discussion boards as Dan the Yankee Air Pirate) from Washington State, USA, but currently living on Kwajalien Atoll, and are from the 1:48 Tamiya kits. 

First up is NZ5393. This kit was built straight from the box using the Tamiya 1/48 scale F4U-1A kit. The decals are
from Aeromaster SP48-10. I used Model Master paints (brush painted) for this project. The model doesn't have any weathering on it, as that is not yet a part of the hobby I've experimented with! 

Next up is NZ5485. This kit was built using the Tamiya 1/48 scale F4U-1D kit. I used the earlier F4U-1A canopy on this one, as this model represents one of the early F4U-1D's that still had the ribbed canopy. I used Model Master paints (the Blue was the Sea Blue spray can) on this model, and the decals came from Aeromaster SP48-10 . As before, there is no weathering on this.

Gwyn Avenell of Auckland, New Zealand,  has sent me this picture of his flying model of NZ5056 'Paddy's Mistake'.  As he competes in the scale class, he had to do a lot of research and provide full documentation before it was even flown in competition! 

Gwyn has provided me with a lot of his research, and his self drawn plans now appear on these pages.  These were made using measurements from the Planes of Fame Museum example (ex-NZ5062), and the RNZAF Museum's SBD-4 at Wigram.

PLM2005