I'm nearing the end of building a FAA corsair. I tried a slightly diferent weathering technique on this one. Please ignore the canopy, it isn't finished yet, I only placed it in position as the aircraft looked stupid without it. All comments welcome, good or bad.

Hi Brandydog....
Your Corsair looks great, but I think that the prop needs to be weathered a bit to match the rest of the plane. How did you weather the tires?


(++)

She looks great Martin!! Might I suggest a liitle more soot around the gun ports and I think you'll have a real winner here.
By the way what new technique did you use?? It looks great as stated before.

Paul

I agree about the prop. I think I will drybrush the blade edges with grey. The tyres were painted dark grey, dry brushed with a lighter shade and the areas round the wheels were painted black. It is a little stark, I should have blended it in better.


I drew in the recessed panel lines with a pencil. I rubed the pencil on wet and dry and applied the powder heavily to all the panel lines that run across the airflow, less so to those running in the direction of the airflow. I then brushed on matt varnish with a little of the powder mixed in, all brushstrokes runing from front to back. The powder on the panel lines was dragged back, I was trying to keep all the streaks running in the airflow direction. It didn't work as well as I hoped, the wings especially are too heavilly done but I'm happy with the fuselage. My normal method is to draw the lines in and apply a small amount of powder to them, then airbrush the varnish on. I like to experiment. :-)

Hi Martin

I'm simply amazed at how fast you've built such a great model! It was only bare plastic a week or so ago and you were sorting out the wingtips! Very nice job!

I'm always interested in how lend-lease aircraft were built for us... what colours did you use?

I've never tried mixing pencil-lead with varnish (never even thought of it); I'll give it a try, because your build proves it's a neat technique to have in the armoury. Cheers for explaining how. :-)

The only thing I'd suggest adding are wingtip navigation lights.

All the best

Rowan

Doh! I was going to but I forgot. After I cut off too much from the wingtips I added strips of plastic to both wing tips to increase the wingspan . I was going to cut them short at the leading edges and add bits of clear plastic. I was so keen to try the weathering that as usual I went at the kit like a bull at a gate to get the paint on and overlooked it. Oh well, live and learn. The paint I used was different lots of humbrol grey mixed up to try to get colours like the colour profile in the instructions. They were similar to the light grey/dark grey on fighter camo schemes mid war.

Oh my! What a beauty! I love it! How did you blend the light undershade with the top one? Looks very proffesional!

The camo was airbrushed on, I didn't mask the demarkation between the upper and lower colours, I just did it freehand. I think the graphite powder in the matt varnish helped to blend in the colours by slightly darkening them both the same amount.

BrandyDog - great finish. If you ever think about tryiong another Corsair. Think about these markings:

That is a great looking corsair, was it supplied under "lend-lease?" I have another corsair to build sometime, it is a Korean War night fighter and the stars-and-bars markings have light blue in place of the white, against the dark blue camo they look really cool.

This plane was captured in Norway and used for evaluation. you read about it here: Captured FAA Aircraft

Thanks for the link, that makes interesting reading. I didn't know the Germans actually got their hands on so many FAA types.

:-) A really nice Corsair, Martin Congrats
I agree with penny that the prop blades need weathering. You could drybrush a little dark earth over the tyres, to take away the "stark" look. An interesting weathering idea, thanks for sharing
Mal

I love the speculative scheme ... with the proviso that it is just that - speculative.

Most captured aircraft got a coat of plain old Dunkelgrun (dark green) 71, with Gelb (yellow) 04 undersides and tail. There were some exceptions - P-51 T9+HK retained its n/m uppersurfaces.

"On special missions" by Smith, Creek and Petrick is a usefull reference. Anyone fancy a captured Mosquito or Typhoon?... they're in the book.

All the best

Rowan

Hi Martin,
The corsair really does look excellent. And thanks for explaining your tecnics too.
It is always great to learn different ways of weathering and all. .

Good modeling,
Wayne