Anyway, to go over the kit, overall I liked it. There is pretty good detail in the cockpit, though honestly it's been so long since I put it together that I've forgotten most of it. One thing I particularly appreciated was how the instrument panel has the dial detail popped out from the back of the dial, so you can paint the whole piece black and then highlight those bits in white. Easier than screwing around with decals.
Rivet detail is rather nice on this kit. The Wildcat had a mix of flush and domed riveting (compromising between production cost and the aerodynamic effect in various areas), which shows up quite well with the moulding. The domes are on the inner wing and around the fuselage from around the cockpit back.
Being as I am a relative scrub when it comes to the Pacific theatre, the kit options (basically escort carriers or a very early USS Ranger) seemed to me to hit duller points of the Wildcat's career. I decided I wanted to do a VF-3 (who flew from Lexington and then Yorktown at Midway) Wildcat, and since one of the decals in the box was a 28 code, it would be easy to modify to 23, which was Jimmy Thach's aircraft. One problem remained, going by the rather unassuming name of Felix the cat.
This was character was used as the badge of VF-3 and appeared on their Wildcats just in front of the cockpit, seen here on O'Hare's Wildcat. I decided I would attempt to hand paint this. You may judge the results.
The rigging was fairly complex with the aerials from the tailplane, however I'm mostly happy with the results. Compared to the string I used previously, I found hair was actually very thin and quite strong, so I used this and painted it in matt varnish for protection (this is why it looks slightly white in the images, I was in a bit of a hurry to get it all photo-ed and the varnish was still wet). Hopefully this lasts, but if it doesn't I'll just remove the stuff and possibly re-do it with something less organic.
Weathering was fairly typical, with brush painted chipping, some oil washes, and pastel dust for gun smoke, oil and exhaust. I did do an extra wash layer around panel lines, which I think brought the detail out well. Overall I'm pretty happy with it, though some areas of the underside and just behind the engine cowl ended up a bit more mucky than intended.
I also have an SBD-5 I want to do at some point. However it does leave me with the tricky moral dilemma of whether I should paint it as a Yorktown one from Midway (so VB-3 or VS-5) to match the Wildcat, or as a later aircraft, since the -5 model of the SBD was considerably later on and does have noticeable differences.
Howdy Ya'll!