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Very nice work MoFo What printers do you use?, the FDM parts looks very smooth, are you going to add the mast and pathways? Thank you for sharing Carlos

Hello Thomaz Thank you again for your help, indeed it’ll be the 1A version so the stall strip is a must. I’ll post more pictures as soon as can and thank you also for your encouraging words. Carlos

Hello TAG Many thanks for that, very helpful indeed (interesting also), somehow that information was eluding me while searching for references. Regarding the stall strip, I’m dubious if the plane I’m depicting has it or not (it would be the one on the kit box), for what I’m reading it was included for the carrier-based corsairs not necessarily for the land-based ones but I will include it. Thank you again Carlos

That's an excellent job you are doing here Steve; I like both the cockpit and the engine, too bad about the resin one but your work with the kit's engine compensated for it. I remember seeing in someone's build that the Neomega cowl front was slightly smaller in diameter compared with the Tamiya's cowl, and the modeler corrected that by making a longitudinal cut to remove just a tiny amount of material and glued it back together; did you have to make some adjustment?, Your sample appears to be just fine. Carlos

Thank you Elmo, Ramon, and 11bee for your encouraging words Hello again, a small update and a request for help. Going on with more work on the wings, the machine guns tubes are represented on the kit as empty holes on the wing’s leading edge; to improve this detail first thought of putting plastic tubes between the leading edge and a pair of styrene pieces glued in place to provide both, a place to rest the tubes on and to keep them aligned. A notch was carved inside the edge so the tube ends could be flat. After some more thinking it seems a better idea to close the wing and widen the holes to insert the tubes all the way through, it would be easier to clean up and will maintain the front perfectly round on the inside, let’s hope it works. Another detail worth improving are the windows for the gun cameras (or whatever they are), they are represented only as an engraved detail but I don’t think they will look good only by painting them silver; the detail was removed and a piece of clear sprue was glued in instead. Under the right wing, the three navigation lights are represented with a dome form but on the real bird they are flat to the surface so they were drilled out, I don’t decide how they will be detailed, either using clear styrene or some kind of clear filler. The formation lights on top of the wings will receive the same treatment. Back to the flaps, The closure plates, between the inboard and outboard flaps, were removed, a new one was made from styrene sheet, this would provide a closer representation and also help to add rigidity to the group. Now a request for help; I need to find information about what’s inside the gun cameras windows (or whatever they are), in some pictures they appear to be something like a square lens and in others could be landing lights; the left and right windows aren’t symmetrical so I suppose the interior is different. Also, I would like to know how the spent shells chutes are, what you can see if looking directly into them? because in the kit they are only empty holes. I’m sure you are thinking it doesn’t matter in this scale but, you know…... AMS. Carlos

Hello all I found this today on my newsfeed; talking about scaring people away from adopting new technology. Link BTW, I didn't know microsoft had an ebook store Carlos

Thank you John for your kind comment Hello all, Just a small update Before going ahead with the rest of the wings I want to solve the attachment points of the flaps; since the original fixing points were removed is critical to figure out how they will be secured, just in case some work inside the wings is needed before closing them. The inner flap (next to the fuselage) proved to be challenging, if it was aligned parallel to the wing then the hinge arm that connects with the fuselage doesn’t match the place where references show it should be. Only after examining several pictures from different angles it seemed to me that the flap it’s not parallel to the wing when extended, it sits lower and further back on the fuselage’s side. Here are the pictures of the dry fitted flaps to test this arrangement, it’s not 100% accurate but now I can move forward with the build. As always, comments and critiques are welcomed Carlos

Relevant indeed, I hope it gets solved soon 🤞

Thank you all for your responses. I’m enjoying to learn different points of view. Is interesting to see how DRM is an issue for most of us; in my case, one of the factors that encourage me to switch to electronic versions was the availability of those books through cloud services, like Amazon and Google drive, this gave me some assurance that even if can have the files in multiple devices, my library still would be safe in the case of some catastrophic event like a stolen tablet or disk failure; regarding the obsolescence of the hardware, cloud services seems to diminish its effects, I’ve been through a couple of PC’s, some smartphones (including a pair of BlackBerrys) and could read my e-books on all of them. Of course, there is the risk of losing, or not being able to access, any information that is stored in digital format, I’m betting on companies like Amazon or Google to exist in the long term future and I have the feeling that they would find a way to make a profit even after the zombie apocalypse. I’m on the same boat with many of you, the sensation of reading a printed book is more rewarding (and sometimes more practical) than reading from a screen; for me, the advantages of an e-book comes before (it’s easier, faster and cheaper to get one) and after reading it (it doesn’t take physical space or sits on a shelve gathering dust). In any case, I see the options of printed and electronic books not as mutually exclusive but complementary, in the case of a publisher having both could only add to sales; this, of course, is only speculation on my part, but it intrigued me the lack of digital versions of such books. Please keep sharing your thoughts. Carlos

Being a hobby and not my way of make a living I'm not counting lack of free time as a stall; having said that, the main reasons for me to stall a build are AMS related: Can't find this or that reference I need to detail, paint or modify the model. Can't figure out how to make some extra detail or modification, I don't mind to try and fail; the problem is not to have any idea to start with. Ill-fitting resin parts. Any drawback related to painting. In all the cases, past some time, either I find a way out or forget about it and move ahead. Carlos

Thank you for your responses. dnl42 That’s a good point, didn’t knew anything about DRM but, now that you mentioned it, I did a little research on the topic, yes it could be a real concern, only one of my e-books was purchased via iTunes, I’m not an Apple user but do have access to an iPad and it was the only format available, it really disappointed me that I can only read it through an Apple device, technically the book is mine, but they limit me; it was the first and probably the last I’ll buy from them. Fortunately, that’s not the case with the other formats I use, (Kindle, E-pub and PDF). Regarding music, I only recently stopped buying CDs. Mstor Let’s hope that more publishers join in, I always thought that doing a digital version of a new book would be easy, or not too tricky at least, because most of the work to edit one for printing is done in digital mediums, someone working in the industry could clarify this maybe. Bruce I started with the Kindle but now only use it for books with little or no illustrations, for the ones with pictures or diagrams I use an Android tablet and the PC monitor, right this moment I’m on my PC reading the Kindle version of D&S Crusader book, I can zoom in the pictures and the level of detail is impressive, sure there are also some e-books that are more or less a scanned image of the printed version and didn’t have the same quality. And yes DRM is an issue.

Hello fellow modelers I’ll like to know your opinion about books vs. e-books regarding our hobby, either aviation related or modeling focused. Which one you prefer and why? Do you think it seems to be so few options of e-books even for books just recently published? If this is the case, why? What do you think about this? Let me share my point of view, I’ll start by saying “I love to read and also love books” in that order so I somehow can understand the sensitive or emotional part of owning and reading a printed book, despite that and for practical reasons years ago I’ve decided from that point on I’ll only buy the digital version of the books when possible, not only I can read whenever I want at any place but also there are also more tittle options, and generally the price is lower. Being a subscriber from a woodworking magazine I also switched to the digital version of it, after getting only half of the issues and sometimes weeks after they were available in the newsstand I’ve made the switch, I’ve to admit that is more pleasant to read the printed magazine than from a tablet but at least I have all the issues I’ve paid for, and also the price is lower. Regarding our hobby, one of the most important “tools” I use when building a model are the references, books have been more useful for me than the regular Google search (while looking for precise information, sometimes a paragraph is worth a thousand images); but in my experience, the more interested I’m in a particular book, the more difficult is to get a copy from, either the book is long ago out of print, or there isn´t a digital version. When Detail & Scale started to publish the digital versións of their books it was great news for me, I already got three of them and in my opinion the books are among the bests both in terms of the information provided from a modeling point of view and in the way the digital edition is formatted, on the other hand, they seem to be more the exception than the rule. So this brings me back to the subject of this post, my logic says that there should be more digital editions of this kind of books, the “esoteric” nature of the topics can make more expensive to publish in a physical form thus reducing the number of possible buyers and also, because of shipping costs, making worldwide sales less likely. Does the typical buyer prefer the printed version? It’s more expensive or demanding to convert to a digital format? Is the revenue share of the standard services (Amazon, Apple) unfair? Is there a technical reason? Is the risk of illegal digital copies hurting sales too high? Thank you for reading all this verbosity, and I’ll be looking forward to your opinion. Carlos

Genre: Multi-seat military aviation (if there's such a thing). Scale: Die hard 1:48 Manufacturer: Monogram, can't give any solid argument on why, I just love them. Kit: Monogram Prowler, Two on the stash but never build one, go figure. Carlos

Hello all First, thank you Mr. Happy, Joel and Peter for your kind comments A long time has passed, life became exciting for me since the last update but here is a small one. Tamiya’s attachment points for the flaps are meant to be sturdy but doesn’t resemble even remotely what the real ones are. To make a more close representation some work is needed, the curved nature of the Corsair wing just add a level of difficulty to this task. The inaccurate tabs of the flaps were removed. Also, some detailing was added to the sides using plastic card or by merely carving the original parts. You can see the reworked parts alongside the original ones, note that the trailing edge corners have been repaired, but they will be shaped at the end of the build to avoid further damage. One concern is how to maintain the extended flaps firmly in place using only the original attachments points. For this, I’ll take advantage of all the connections on the real plane even if they are not intended as such, for example, there is a rod connected to the leading edge of the flap that operates the mechanism for the flap doors at the bottom of the wing. The little white rods you can see protruding from the flaps are an experiment to make a sturdy attachment point, it consisted of a metal wire inside a plastic tube from evergreen, a simply used the stretched sprue technique to shrink the tube around the wire. In theory this will make a flexible but robust attachment point that could be secured using regular plastic glue, right now it seems to be working since the flaps can be dry fitted securely in place. There is a blank space on the fuselage where the inner flap aligns, this was closed using plastic card; in the real plane, there is an arm on the flap that goes inside the fuselage through an opening, since I’ll use all the attachment points available, this will be represented too. Here you can see the first attempt at such detail, but during test fitting, the flap doesn’t align correctly with it, I realized that the opening need to be a little more to the bottom. At the back of the wing you can see the kit’s attachment points covered with plastic strips, the separation lines between the flaps covers were filled and re-scribed at the correct angle, holes to attach the flaps were drilled where the hinges would be. Another characteristic that needs attention are the intakes on the wing, Tamiya part is fine but it could be better since they are an interesting feature on the real plane. Before cutting anything I make sure I could improve this part, first I build the section of intake vanes for both sides, the one on the left is only dry fitted; for the round oil filter I’ll use photoetched mesh that is close enough in shape. This is all for now, thank you for looking and, as always, comments and critiques are welcomed Carlos

Hello again and thank you all for your kind comments, really appreciate them. Slow progress those past weeks. The reasons for separating the flaps was to detail the notch that exposes the actuator linkage and to better represent them as a separate part without depending on washes. While looking for reference pics of the linkage, I also found that the actuators for the aileron’s trim and balance tabs have interesting details. Here is my attempt at it. Let’s say the details are inspired on the real thing rather than being an accurate representation. Source of frustration and time lost were the resin wells, every time I manipulate the wing's center section to dry fit other pieces, they just pop out, glued them back just to came loose time after; this happened several times until I tried something I saw in the forums, mixing acrylic nail powder and super glue. So far the joint is still firmly in place, this mix also worked great to attach photoetched parts and as a filler. The first time I knew of this technique with was in Paul Budzik's youtube channel, the idea of using acrylic nail powder came from the forums. To me is similar to using epoxy resin but without the exothermic reaction that can harm the plastic. Carlos