Tamiya and Trumpeter Wildcats

[Mentalguru]

Its alright s'pose- for a girl....

[Guest Hunter]

Really nice crisp clean build.

[Notdoneyet]

Very nice Jen

[Smiffy]

I'll tell ya what, that looks reet nice.

Great job.

Look forward to seeing it in the mag.

[jager]

Now there's a pretty little cat. Just love those pre-war USN schemes, now can somebody kit up some of those big pre-war US flying boats please ?

[desmojen]

I finished it!

On a whim really. I was delving around under the bench yesterday and picked this up. I looked at it and thought it was pretty much ready for paint, so I cleaned it up and got going again. It was indeed ready for paint so after consulting my Techmod decal sheet (the original was no good as it had got damp at some point) I decided on the Operation Torch markings.

The underside was sprayed with straight Tamiya XF-19 Sky Grey. The topside was listed as being XF-18 and XF-2 in a 2:1 mix. I ignored that and mixed Sky Grey into the Blue by eye straight in the colour cup.

I got that on and then faded it a bit. But not a lot, because I had already google Operation Torch and I could see that the Wildcats involved looked in pretty good nick. After all the paint was on I sprayed a coat of Klear on ready for the decals.

The decals then. OMG what horrible horrible things they were as well! I have used Techmod a lot before in the past and never really had any trouble with them. These looked ace on the sheet, mega thin and a nice sheen. They turned out to be a complete nightmare, really crispy and incredibly fragile. The wing ones weren't too bad since there wasn't much they had to cope with. The hugenormous fuselage roundels were another thing entirely though. The Tamiya fuselage has both lapped panels and raised rivets to go with the considerable double curve and the spine. The decal just didn't want to know at all. It wrinkled up, it split over all the rivets and didn't want to conform at all. It also seemed to be impervious to decal solutions. It took three applications of Mr Decal Sol (very strong stuff) to get it anywhere near. I then had to touch it up over all the rivets and all the splits and tears. In the flesh it's easy to see from less than a few feet away, it doesn't show too badly in the photos though.

The rest was straight forward enough and went easily. I didn't fit the tanks because the only photos I could find of the aircraft in the Operation didn't have any. What they did have though was massive gun smoke and exhaust streaks - nice

I've taken a few of it side by side with the Hobbyboss kit for comparison. To be honest, side by side the quality of the Tamiya kit is very obvious. The Hobbyboss one though is still a very decent effort and is cheap. It also doesn't have rivets and overlaps to confound your decals!

So there we have it. I never built a Wildcat before, and then in the last year I have built three!

I would still like to do two more as well, as Royal Navy ones

Jen.

[OzH]

Jen,

Not picked up on this thread before for some reason, those builds are amazing, stunning finish!

I do like the wildcat, which helps, great finish, really nice an neat...

Great job