TCinLA

Wow, really superb aluminum finish - I love the way you got the different tonal surfaces, from really shiny to matt. Quite realistic.

Mach II kit? "You're a braver man than I, Charlie Brown." considering what you startedwith, a fantastic model!

"Okie" is one of the most difficult airplanes to get the markings right. Chris Davey and I went nuts trying to coordinate markings to national insignia to get a correct profile for my new Osprey book, "Aces of the 78th Fighter Group". For most of the airplane's career, the national insignia on the fuselage and upper wing has only the white bar extensions and no blue surround (from July 1943 on), while the lower wing large insignias had both the red surround and later the blue overpaint. As near as we could come up with (and this included talking extensively with Ernie Russell, Quince Brown's wingman and later element leader between October 1943-May 1944), by the time "Okie" had blue surround insignia at all five positions, the "sweeps" brooms had been painted out and the black/white checkerboards added, with the scorboard changed to a 'blackboard' with Luftwaffe crosses and no swastikas. This is confirmed from a photo Ernie had of the four guys in Brown's flight standing in front of Okie the day of the 18 March 1944 "fight of my life" as Ernie put it. Okie has no blue surround upper/fuselage insignia, sweeps brooms and the outline swastika victory board, with the white nose band. And she only ever had the "toothpick" prop. Ernie also had a photo of "Okie" with the checkerboards, and she had the different scoreboard and no brooms. Not a complaint or a criticism - it only took us five months and interviews with those who were there to figure this out. Most decal makers don't go this distance. If you really want this very nice "Okie" right, paint out the upper insignia and replace with borderless insignia, and find a toothpick prop (AFAIK, Tamiya only provides the symmetrical paddle prop on the 1/72 kit).

Nice work but you need to get better control of the airbrush. You're shooting at too high a pressure and wikthout a fine enough tip. If you don't have a pressure regulator you need to get one. Shoot at 13-15 psi, thin your paint 50-50, and use a fine tip. The result will make your paint work the equal of your construction work, which is excellent.

An unusual scheme that gives a very interesting look, lots of nice work to achieve the final result.

Really nice looking result of a lot of good work.

Having done one of these myself, I know what you mean about the terrors of test-fitting. Your result is truly excellent.

Beautiful work - particularly with the weathered/faded paint finish. I do wish the kit Mfrs would have dropped the drop tanks - they were only ever carried once by F4F-4s, when VF-5 used them at Santa Cruz. Used some in the Atlantic, but that was it.

Very nice work on that old reeker of a kit. I've thought of getting one (since they're cheap) and combining it with the Tamiya I have.

I know what you mean about that kit being a real disappointment. You have, however, made an excellent "save" here. Once again the metallic finish makes it look very realistic.

Very nice work. I'm interested why you did the white mixture you did? To what purpose for what result.

I get to look at a real F-80 every month out at Chino, and I have built this kit myself, so i know how hard it was to make that model look like the real thing I know so well, which you have done so well. Really, really good work on this.

The catapult is seriously really amazing work, and that old model (goes back to the late 1960s) looks good. One bit of information for future reference: Pre-war US Navy aircraft had the cockpit painted in aluminum lacquer. An easy point for people who don't study the subject in detail to miss, not offered as a criticism.

Really good.

Actually, the silver finish you got looks more like what an NMF airplane on operations looks like. There are very very few high-polish NMF airplanes, due to the effect of sunlight on aluminum. I knew a guy once who had a polished aluminum T-6 and he must have put in 10 polishing hours per flying hour. Not what you're going to get on an operational unit. So you've got a better final result than you expected.