jimmaas

Yes. Actually, my example of the kit does have a small diagonal 'clip' at the inner rear of the elevator, but it should be bigger. A couple of swipes with a file should do. The fairing on the fuselage in the kit is straight across at the rear end, where as Brian notes it should be a concave curve. That might be difficult to fix neatly. Using the AM F3F-1 as a template for the sleeves sounds like a good idea.

The red (port wingtip) - green (starboard wingtip) - white (tail tip) lights are 'navigation lights' and follow a more-or-less international convention that's still observed today for ships, airplanes and evidently is being introduced on spacecraft, which baffles me for sure! 'Formation lights' are different, used for placekeeping during night (or bad weather?) flying. At least for USN aircraft, these were blue through WW II - don't know about afterward. The white light on top of the fuselage is often noted as a 'section light' and I don't know how that works. The whole arresting hook re

...and courtesy of Rich Dann, confirmation that the objects on the tips of the horizontal stabs are in fact formation lights. Going back to the Grumman Biplanes book, they also show up on the earlier two-seat FF-1 and SF-1. When everything was lit, an F2F must have been a wonderful sight at night!

Hello again, and good to see Dana's info! I haven't been able to figure out the bumps at the end of the horizontal stabilizers, and I've got an inquiry in to someone who may have more F2F information (I don't claim much expertise on Grumman, having concentrated on their less-successful competitor :whistle:/> ). We should probably use marked-up photos, cuz the description Dana used of a hole on the left side is I think higher up on the side. Here's a shot of the tail ident light: and there's also a light on top of the fuselage on the centreline, located over the 'F', looking like a

Hi Brian - I'll be honest, I was debating with myself as to whether the metal areas were light Gray or aluminium lacquer. The photo falls right about in the time frame for the changeover and it could be either. There are three 'holes' when viewing the lower fuselage head-on. The middle one is I assume the carb intake, with screening. The one on the port side is the landing light, angled slightly down, time for an MV lens (and there's a shiny aluminium rim) The hole on the starboard side is just a small hole. Have no idea what it's for :^) The tail colors could have been white to ref

As far as photos of the Soesterberg D.XXI, I can say from personal experience that the aircraft is difficult to photograph. The green comes out, for some reason, as a lighter, almost blue-green, color than what is on the aircraft. Then there's the question of whether the colors on the museum aircraft are correct - certainly recent research indicates the beige color is too tan. I'd go with the FS colors cited from the D.XXIII kit.

Just to add to Dnl142's post, here's something I had posted on Britmodeller: Very nice resin castings (but watch out for loose pieces in your packaging, part of a slender attachment to the port fuselage had broken off with mine). The only part I could measure at this point is wingspan and that is within a twitch of the published 28 foot six inches. The kitmakers did not copy the detailing style of the Accurate Miniatures F3F's: the method of attaching the lower wings is different, the wings have more traditional rib detailing (happily just this side of 'starved cow') and the fuselage emphas

Yes, and it is (a) a good kit, and (B) really 1/48 (I measured it and the wingspan is within 1/32 of the published span for the Flyer). From the style of detailing and the ident marks on the different sprue trees, I strongly suspect this kit had some connection to the people that were doing Otaki kits around the same time - it has that feel to it. Some of the pieces are simplified; for example the horizontal pieces that should be covered on the upper surface only are depicted as having covering on both surfaces. But it is better than the Monogram kit and is actually 1/48.

Congrats Joel on a nice job!

The Marines never had any F4F-3's in the yellow wing scheme. They did have them in the overall Non-Specular Light Gray scheme. You are spot on with your description of the use of 'silver' paint instead of natural metal during the yellow wing period. The Navy from the mid 1930's used aluminium lacquer for metal areas and aluminium dope for fabric. There never were any yellow wing F4f's with gray metal areas - the use of gray for metal areas ended in the mid 1930's when aluminium lacquer was authorized.

duplicate

Well, Lance and Jennings are right - in the Skyways articles there's a beautiful shot of the CW-20 under construction that shows the fuselage in cross section, with the distinctive double bubble crease. But in the text [memo - must actually read the text!] it states that the crease was plated over to reduce drag. The AAF thought that was unnecessary (along with many other innovative features) so the C-46 didn't have the overplating. That overplating is probably what looks, to me, like a crease line.

Not so fast - from Bowers' Curtiss Aircraft 1907 - 1947: "CW-20T - as completed in 1940, the prototype CW-20 was a twin finned transport....the fuselage cross-section was of the double-lobe type, with two circular sections intersecting at the level of the cabin floor..." There are a lot of things to change to get a prototype, but the cross section is not one of them.

Best info I know of would be Skyways Magazine 53 and 54, from early 2000. There's a small three view (sorry, it's not a Bentley scale plan). Check this LINK which shows they have issue 53 as a PDF download. Best of luck - Jim Maas

Hey Joel - here's a section from the blueprints for the wing that show the wingtips have a marked upsweep when seen from the front. This was actually pretty common on US aircraft from that period as an aerodynamic feature. The wing should be dead flat along the top line, though.

Since the landing gear mechanism is next, this may be of interest....

There are several Aviaeology 1/48 sheets devoted to the Ventura. One is listed here and the others are listed below this entry. The Venturas in Canada 1 sheet has BP turrets.

DDG would be near 34092. As far as the round counter window, in 1/32 the easiest route would probably be to rummage through the parts box and find clear plastic bits (like a teardrop wingtip light) and use those to replace the kit bumps; just masking over the window should do it.

Hi Joel - yes, I did the Buffalo I pilot's manual (in the sense that I re-typed the manual to post on Dan Ford's Buffalo site). Dull Dark Green is usually equated to US Medium Green 42, but Dana Bell gave me a color chip sometime back that shows DDG is darker than 42. Bronze Green is often equated to Model Master Euro I Dark Green. I dug my Czech Models kit out and looked at the instruction sheet. There's a mistake on page 13. The 'solid' ventral insert should be used for the F2A-3, not for the Australian Model 339-23, and vice-versa - the glass ventral insert should go with the 339-23,

Hi Joel - glad to help. As far as the cockpit interior goes, my source is the Brewster Erection and Maintenance Instructions For Model F2A-3 Airplane (Report No. 512): 7.23 Cockpit - Detail In addition to the finish schedule of paragraph 7.21, the interior enclosure, as defined in paragraph 7.22, and all the brackets, supports, reinforcements used for structural purposes, control handle shafts, containers and flooring included in this section shall receive a coat of dull green lacquer unless specified otherwise. Note: the control handle shaft is the rod connecting the handle to the control c

In fact, the cockpit interior was Dull Dark Green for F2A-3's, so it's going to be pretty dark. (The earlier F2A-1's and -2's had aluminium lacquer interior, except for the eight -1's converted to -2's for VS-201, which were also Dull Dark Green). A couple of things about the Czech Model kit, and all the other MPM-derived 1/32 Buffaloes: - they all have two landing lights under the wings; except for the British 339E Buffalo, there should only be one, under the port wing. Sand and fill the starboard one; - on the upper surface of the wing there are two bumps on each side over the wing gun i

There already is a 1/48 Wright Flyer, and a fairly decent one too. No, not Monogram, but Tonka. Tonka Diorama 7011 "Moment of Flight" includes a kit of the aircraft that reminds me strongly of Otaki back in the day. The kit turns up on Ebay for pricing ranging from cheap through reasonable to ridiculous. But it is a worthwhile model and wingspan scales out to 1/48.

The oval you're describing is a clear vision port (which the pilot could open if the canopy was fogged), found on the British Buffalo, on the left side of the sliding canopy only. It is essentially the same as one on the Spitfire canopy's left side, though of course that one is much smaller. The most recent Tamiya release, Brewster B-339 Buffalo 'Pacific Theater', item 61094, has a decal for the clear vision port. It's item 12 on the sheet. You might be able to post to see if someone is using the sheet for the Dutch or USN scheme and would part with the clear vision port decal. A couple

The very nicely built Ryan ST posted on the 18th was captioned as belonging to the Royal Netherlands Air Force. That organization did not exist until 1953. The closest thing in the East Indies was the ML-KNIL - essentially, Air Corps of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army. But this particular STM didn't belong to the ML-KNIL (which had many, but all coded with R0-nn). The 'S' serial shows it belonged to the MLD, the Netherlands Navy air arm.