Alert readers may have noticed a tiny white airplane in pieces behind the Corsair in one of the photos from last time. That would be the Arii “Hamp” kit (misidentified as a “Zeke” in previous post - duh), which I recently picked off the top of the pile and proceeded to get fearlessly stuck into, despite the number of already unfinished planes lying around.
It’s some challenge too, I mean they give you decent-looking (raised) panel lines (considered rescribing, decided to live with it as is) and a generally OK shape to the thing, but…there’s no cockpit AT ALL (faired over just like the Corsair – what, no half-pilot figure?)
No attempt at engine detail, the canopy is just all wrong…so clearly this is no weekend build, though that’s exactly what I tried to tell myself it was whilst spending a couple hours cleaning up the rather extensive flash on virtually every part. I’m guessing Nixon was president when this tooling was new…however, I enjoy this type of modelling, taking an old outdated kit and doing the utmost to overcome its flaws and build something better.
First thing was to open up the nonexistent cockpit and build in a floor. I decided to try something I haven’t seen anybody do in 1/144 (though I’m sure it’s done all the time) and put in some sidewall framing as a background to the cockpit detail.
Then I put in the turnover truss behind the seat, built the seat (second attempt – first one looked a bit too much like the ol’ porcelain throne), and started detailing the port sidewall with the electrical box, upper throttle quadrant, and elevator trim wheel. At this scale I’m happy with any kind of halfway decent representation of components like this, and also happy if they don’t launch off the tweezers into a void before I can glue them down. I’ve learned to use superglue instead of styrene cement, so these semi-microscopic parts don’t melt or distort when glued in place.
Next was the dashboard, some rudder pedals, and on to the starboard sidewall. Looks a bit rough here, but should paint up nicely. I used some mighty slender stretched sprue for wiring detail, which of course will be invisible once the fuselage halves are glued together. Hey, I know it’s there…
Things got more complicated as I realized how lacking the cowling piece was, soon remedied by sanding down the cowl flap section and thinning its edges to a more believable “scale” thickness, then scribing in the cowl flaps. Had to freehand this as Dymo tape wouldn’t stick in such tiny lengths, and it shows, but I’ll have to live with it and try to figure out a better method. Also scribed in the fuselage-mounted machine gun channels, which didn’t turn out so hot either, but better than nothing. I used the cowl from the Sweet kit to mark the exhaust pipe locations, having got rid of the stock “exhausts” which are way out of scale and better described as “exhaust horns”. Then after drilling out a pair of #80 holes, I glued in a couple short bits of styrene rod that looked about the right diameter and after trimming to length drilled them out, with fairly credible-looking results. Things are looking up!
Might add a few more cockpit details before painting the interior. Meanwhile there's some fairly tedious work with the punch and die making discs for the engine cylinders, and a major learning curve crash molding a canopy since the kit canopy is just dire. Too late to stop now!
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