This model is painted in a two-tone scheme.  The specific aircraft is “Marine’s Dream” named after the nose art that will be on the cowling.  The colors are US Navy Blue Gray, and Light Ghost Gray.  The more I think about it, the less sure I am about that gray color, but it looks okay in person, so I’m sticking with it.  I used Model Masters Acrylic paint.  I sprayed the Gray as it came out of the bottle; I cut the Blue Gray 80%:20% with white.  The Blue Gray is a hard color to match, but I’m really happy with how it looks on the model.

“Marine’s Dream” has an odd demarcation between the Blue Gray and the Gray.  Normally the Gray wouldn’t come up so high on the fuselage, but it does on this bird.  I initially laid out the demarcation between the colors with tape.  After spraying it and removing the tape, I gave it a light sanding to knock off the edge from the masking tape, and then went in and did the demarcation line free-hand, using my Sotar 20/20 airbrush, ultra-thinned paint, and very low air pressure.  I had to go back and fourth between the two colors maybe four times to get it all looking right, but I’m happy with the results.

Something the photo above brings up is the cowling alignment.  It’s not as straight as it should be.  Something I need to address before permanently attaching it.

One note on the Blue Gray paint.  It didn’t cover as well as I wanted in its two initial coats, but the thinness of it in areas gives the effect of faded and weathered paint.  I quite like the look.

Nearly fourteen years ago (holy crap, that’s a long time!) I first met my wife at a party at her place, which is now our place. As part of my attempt to woo her, I turned to the ever popular magnetic poetry set on the refrigerator. Considering the limited word palette, I don’t think I did too bad. The poem stayed on the ‘fridge all of those years, and now the words lay in a pile on my desk, as I think of something cool to do with them.

The top photo in this post shows the kit as she is now.  The cowling is just stuck on temporarily, I’ll be painting it separate from the fuselage to facilitate handling.  I’ve just finished scrubbing her down with Simple Green and an old tooth brush, to remove any oils from handling and any sanding residue from the panel lines and crevices, prior to giving her an overall coat of primer.  I’ve been spot-priming up to this point, hitting problem areas that had to be filled and sanded a few times to get them just right, but honestly most of the kit fits really well, the seams are on panel lines, and the only places that have given me issues have been fitting the forward windscreen, and re-scribing lost detail forward of the cockpit.

The head-on photo below shows the distinctive gull wing of the Corsair, earning it the nickname , one of many, “U-Bird”.  The Corsair mounted such a massive engine and propeller that the designers were faced with an issue of ground clearance: designed with a typical straight wing the plane wouldn’t be high enough off the ground for the large propeller to clear.  The solution was either to put ungainly long landing gear on the aircraft — which wouldn’t do for carrier borne operations — or bend the wing to get the gear closer to the ground.

I had some issues with alignment on this model, the left wingtip and the right horizontal stabilizer were low and out of alignment.  I rectified this by holding the root of the left wing over a boiling teakettle’s steam until the plastic softened enough to align it, then repeated this with the tail.  Once they were in correct position a dunking in cold water set them in place.

You can also see below that I have the cockpit all buttoned up.  I’m having issues with the pre-cut canopy masks sticking, but hopefully they’ll hold on for a few more days.  The lower fuselage shot shows the wheel wells in their salmon primer color.

We got to the memorial visitor’s center early, and even at 8 a.m., the outdoor mall area where you get your boat tickets for the ride over to Arizona was packed. As we waited for our departure — three and a half hours away — we visited the small museum with artifacts from the attack. The museum tells the story of the lead-up to the war, and of the attack itself, through video, written accounts, recovered artifacts, and large-scale models of Arizona and other ships involved. Near the museum is anchored the submarine USS Bowfin, now a museum. We crawled through the cramped interior of the sub, all of it remarkably restored and preserved. My wife remarked how much she enjoyed that part of the day: getting to see how people lived and worked in such close quarters.

The boat ride out to the memorial was filled to capacity. You pull up to the long white structure, barely aware of the destroyed hull of Arizona just barely under the water’s surface. The memorial itself is large and hollow and crowded with tourists. At the memorial’s sides, wide-open to the outside world, you look down into the gentle waves and see the hull of Arizona still sitting there, rusting and clearly visible, seeping oil into the harbor. Parts of the ship stick up out of the water, shades of brown and green, coated in marine growth, an enormous metal tomb just below your feet. Etched in the marble wall the far end of the memorial are the names of the 1,177 who died there, and those who’ve been buried there since.

Many things struck me while on the memorial, such as how small Pearl Harbor truly is, and the mooring quays marked with the names of the other battleships in their location during the attack. But one of the most fascinating aspects is the leaking oil. I’d been under the impression that a drop of oil made its way to the surface every few minutes or so, but as I stood there I could easily see multiple drops float upward and burst on the surface every few seconds. I watched for a long time, mesmerized, as the blobs spread out into shimmering greasy rainbows on the surface, undulating on the slight waves of the harbor.

I have to admit that I felt a bit rushed at the memorial. I believe we had fifteen minutes aboard, maybe a half of an hour. Remember all of the people I’ve been mentioning at the visitor’s center and on the boat ride over? You don’t get jostled around like Herald Square during tourists season, and it’s very quiet and proper, but you can’t get away and be on your own, either.

What comes to my mind are my trips to Gettysburg. When I visit there, I spend every evening in Herbsts’ Woods, where the Iron Brigade fought. I let the sun set around me and the woods turn dark and I feel what happened there 150 years ago. I in no way believe in ghosts on the battlefield (and hold a certain disdain for those who make money off of such beliefs), but there, by myself, along with my thoughts and the surroundings, I feel something there. That is what I was missing at the Arizona Memorial. I didn’t feel that connection.  I remind myself, though, that I didn’t get that connection with Gettysburg on my first visit, so maybe I just need to visit the Arizona Memorial again.

The reminders of the war in the Pacific are as nebulous as the waters on which the battles occurred. You can see the signs of it in the faces of those who survived it, but those men and women are dying every day and before long will no longer walk among us. The decomposing hulk of U.S.S. Arizona is one tangible reminder of that history, it adds tangibility to the stories of what happened on those waters over seventy years ago, and I will return to it.

Besides a quick fun build, there are two other reasons I chose this kit to build now.  One is that the Corsair has been my favorite aircraft since I was a child.  With my father being a pilot and into warbirds since I can remember, he and I skipped the usual “my sports team is better than your sports team” discussion that most fathers and sons have, and instead we hotly debated which was better: the Corsair, or the P-51 Mustang (his favorite).

The second reason I started the build is for practice.  I’ve been putting off building my favorite models for a decade now, because I wanted to get better so that I could do them justice.  I’m not getting any younger.  It’s time to build (and do) what I love and stop with the putting off of things.  The Corsair is the first, next will be the aircraft of USS Yorktown’s airgroup: the F4F Wildcat, the SBD Dauntless, and the TBD Devastator.  I’ll be using the same build procedures, tools, and paint colors on the Corsair as I’ll need for those other aircraft.  And I guess there’s also the reason that I haven’t built a U-Bird since I was in junior high.  It’s time.

I started this build last Sunday, April 7th, at 6 p.m. The first photo (at the top of the post) showing the parts still on the sprue was taken four hours later.  I’ve airbrushed all of the interior components either interior green, zinc chromate yellow primer, or salmon primer, depending on what they called for.  One could honestly shoot everything interior green and be done with it, but I wanted to play around with different colors, and these are still all historically accurate.

The cockpit went together really fast.  The only issue I had was that I skipped priming everything to save time, and I’m using acrylic paints, so when I masked off for the black consoles, removing the tape pulled up some of the green paint and I had to retouch.  The seat harnesses are leftovers from a photo etched set I bought years ago. I did a quick wash of black and brown oil paints cut with lighter fluid, so it would dry fast, and it looks okay, but I’m not thrilled with the grain of the paint and I’ll be looking for something that will dry with a less coarse texture.

As of today I’ve finished the engine, which is a Quickboost resin aftermarket upgrade that I found in the kit box — I must have bought it at the same time I did the model — to which I added push rods, a wiring harness, and spark-plug wires (the as-yet unpainted white items).  The last photo I shot fifteen minutes ago.  The engine is not yet glued on, and the tape is holding on the lower wing assembly as it dries, but the fuselage is all glued together, and filling and sanding of some small gaps done.  By this time next week I hope to have it all together and primed, ready for paint.  My goal is to have this be a “less than three week” model.

Glad to have this complete.  Really happy with how it turned out.  Almost sad to have to ship her off.

Photos are HERE.

For washes I still like to use artists oils.  I have, however, gotten away from using mineral spirits for thinner, and instead I use lighter fluid.  It works just as well, but dries much faster.  Using lighter fluid (naptha) allows the oils to dry in just a couple of days, instead of taking nearly a week.  I did a general wash of the avionics bays, let that dry, and dullcoated everything.  I then used acrylic bronze paint for some details, and once that dried I picked out further points of interest using a silver pencil.

The next step is pastel chalk and weathering powders to dirty her up a bit, and some airbrushing of pure flat black for blast marks, engine residue, and gun smoke.

That’s it.  The journey is nearly over.  Our yearly club show, MosquitoCon, is next Saturday, and the Viper will be on the contest table.  After that, she gets packed up and shipped to her new owner.

I took several hundred photos during the trip, and while I posted quite a few while we were there, there are still too many to post (and almost too many to sort!).  I’ve put up a page with a few dozen images that I picked for… well, I picked them for some reason.

We started our trip in Waikiki, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right?  You go to Hawaii, you go to Honolulu and Waikiki, because that’s where “Hawaii Five-0″ is filmed and it’s what Hawaii is like.  We spent three days in a very nice and huge hotel on the beach and enjoyed the touristy things.  Just by chance a friend and his wife were in town as well, for their tenth wedding anniversary, and the four of us made a day of visiting Pearl Harbor (I’ll do a separate post on that) and then driving to Oahu’s north shore and down the eastern side of the island.  If you find yourself in Waikiki and Honolulu and overwhelmed by the crowds, definitely grab a car and head north; the beaches are larger, less crowded, and nature takes back the island from the buildings and roads.

On our third day we took a flight over to our ultimate destination, the Big Island, Hawaii.  Before researching for this trip I had no idea that the name Hawaii applies to the “big island” individually, as well as the state collectively.  It can be confusing at first, but probably no more so than New York City being in New York County being in New York State.

It pays to have friends in cool places.  Atsumi and Randy used to live two blocks away from us in Hoboken.  Two years ago they closed up shop here and moved to Kona.  Smart move.  They run a beautiful vacation rental setup with a few acres of coffee trees near Holualoa, just a few miles from the coastal town of Kailua-Kona.  It’s a perfect base of operations: the elevation provides an amazing view of the ocean and sunsets, as well as temperate weather that remains comfortable year-round.  The heat of the beach is twenty minutes away by car, the cooler northern mountains and cattle country are an hour to the north, and the variable climate of the volcano parks are a couple of hours to the south.

Our main focus of the trip was to do as little as possible.  Mission accomplished.  Most of our time was spent lounging around, reading and writing, and touring the island in our convertible rental car.  We cooked breakfast and dinner every evening, generally trying a local eatery for lunch.  Bite Me Fish Market has amazing fish tacos, and the Kona Brewing Company’s brew pub has exquisite beer, great barbeque, and some excellent pizzas.

We visited various beaches every day.  The good ones are hard to get to, but that makes them all the more worth the visit (car rental tip- get a four wheel drive vehicle!).  The most easily-accessible beach we visited was Kahaluu Beach Park, with a true parking lot and everything.  We’d been told the snorkeling there was exceptional, and that they had equipment rentals.  True on both accounts.  I’d gone hoping to see a Honu (sea turtle) in the wild, but only saw one at a distance from the beach.

We had one day of scheduled activities, a whale watching trip in the morning with Atsumi and Randy.  It’s mating season in Hawaii — for the whales, not the… well, never mind — and we saw a lot of activity on the water: dolphins following the boat, a mother and her calf cruising along just below the surface, and at one point several full breaches by a particularly active whale.  I took a TON of photos during the cruise, but most of them are at too much of a distance to be very good.  Yet another reason I can use to justify buying a big honkin’ zoom lens for my camera!

After the cruise, we made our way up to Waimea to see fellow Altered-Fluid member Greer and her husband John, who moved to the area ten years ago.  That evening they took us up to the Mauna Kea Observatory Visitor’s Center.  The drive up was through intermittent rain and cloud cover, but upon reaching the center at 9,000 feet, we were above all of the weather just in time for sunset.  We didn’t venture further up to the observatories at 14,000 feet, but the visitor’s center was ample.  The view is especially clear due to the altitude and the fact that all of the street lights on the Big Island are sodium based to reduce light pollution. One can make out the banding of the Milky Way with the naked eye. Park rangers mill about the parking lot, where a half-dozen telescopes are set up.  Views of Venus and the Moon through the telescopes were amazing, but the highlight was a large telescope focused on Jupiter.  Icould make out the color bands on the planet, and four bright points of light nearby: her moons, lined up alongside her.

Our last day on the big island we visited the beach at the Mauna Lani resort.  This place has large outdoor pools with tropical fish, sharks (hammerhead and black-fin), and even a few sea turtles (Honu!), that they keep until they reach adulthood and then release.  So at least I got to see my honu.

Our trip home took us through Honolulu again for one night.  Waikiki and the Big Island are so different that it was quite jarring when we checked into our hotel that last night and went out among the tourists again.  Not that there aren’t tourists in Kona, it’s just that the area is so much larger and the tourists so few, that in Kona you feel like you’re on your own, almost a local (just don’t tell the locals that).  As I told Kristen, I feel that Oahu is what Hawaii is supposed to be like, what we see in the movies and on television.  The Big Island, though, is so much more, so much better; more laid back, secluded, restoring.

We boarded our flight home well rested but sad to be leaving.  We’ve resolved to return to Hawaii as often as we can and figure out a way to live there eventually.  Yeah, we had a good trip.

You can see the photos HERE.

I also removed the canopy masks.  There’s some cleaning up to do where I built up the paint a little too much, but otherwise it looks good.

Next is weathering, and a final clear coat to hide that visible film around the decals.  I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with how this model is turning out.  I’ve had my doubts along the way, but she’s coming together very nicely!

Only two real photos this update.  The first shows the added piping that I’ve done to the engine bays.  The top is brass rod, the lower two are braided steel cable.  The cables come in a roll and are plastic sheathed, which kind of kills the whole braided look.  So I held them over a flame, burned off the sheathing, tacked the ends with superglue so they won’t unravel, and glued them in place.  I was going to leave them in natural metal, but the more I look at it the more I think I’ll be painting these details.

The guns were a lot of work for one-piece fixtures.  There were seams around the entire assembly, and anytime you have to sand anything rounded and with a lot of detail, it takes a lot of effort.  I believe I spent three evenings of work just to get these things looking right.

Up next: Decals.  This weekend.