This
is a representation of an RAAF 25 Squadron Buffalo, stationed at Pearce in
Western Australia
in 1942.
These aircraft were bound for the Netherlands East Indies air force, but
diverted to Oz. They came in the
Dutch colours, the Dutch markings were over-painted
and the silver undersides re-sprayed light blue to hide the US Army lettering.
The Tamiya
kit used is the US Navy F2A2 version. This model was a bit of a rush job for a
local competition. Building in rush
mode does not suit my temperament I discovered!
Click on
images below to see larger images
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Construction
I
used the Red Roo resin conversion set which supplies
a new canopy, propeller/spinner, seat, seat armour,
tail wheel and tail cone.
Additional
scratch-built detail was added including:
·
Wiring
and rudder cables in cockpit from fuse wire
·
Heater
hose from fuse wire & wrapped in masking tape
·
Scratch
built compass from sprue
·
Reflector
gun sight from sprue & clear plastic scrap
·
External
gun sight from wire (this version had 2 gun sights apparently)
·
Piping
etc in wheel wells from fuse wire you can see right through the wheel wells
into the internal fuselage on this kit, so I glued in some card to hide the
internal fuselage join, sprayed the inside matt black and added the piping to
make it look less hollow
·
Cut out
sections of solid bulkhead behind the seat
·
Added a
1mm circle of plastic card to the front of the cowling as per Red Roo
instructions requiring tricky re-scribing of the join thanks Johno
(MadMike) for the tips on scribing which improved my
initial attempts
·
Added
brake lines to wheels from fuse wire
·
Added
second landing light under starboard wing from clear plastic scrap
Getting
the vac-form canopy (which got slightly squashed in
the mail) to blend well with the fuselage was problematic and the fit is still
not great. Fuselage halves had a
step at the join, requiring putty. Wings
and tail sections fitted well.
Painting
The
cockpit interior was painted with acrylic USMC Green (Model Master), the
instrument panel in dark grey, details picked out in flat black, white, yellow,
red.
External
colours were Tamiya
acrylics Deep Green, Olive Drab and Light Blue with a little grey/white
added. The usual pre-shading,
addition of lighter weathered patches, exhaust and gun stains and panel line
washes (enamel) were carried out. Camo
masking was done with worms of Blu-Tac (never
tried this before, it works well).
Coating
the olive drab with clear gloss changed it to a dark chocolate colour,
requiring re-spraying that part of the camo with a
mix of olive drab with some light tan added, gloss coating, then
simulating faded patches with the same colour mix,
but just a flat overcoat.
The
other tricky bit was the little window on the underside.
It looked too small to mask, so I hand painted the frames with aluminum,
but that did not go so well. Eventually,
I cut thin strips of Tamiya masking tape, sprayed
them light blue and added those over the aluminum
that worked better.
A
tip on the Gunze Mr Metalizer
this stuff seems to get everywhere not just on the model and stays wet.
I ended up with aluminum finger prints in
all the wrong places.
Apparently,
these Buffaloes were quite dirty so I made it look used with heavy exhaust &
gun stains (though whether they actually fired their guns in anger over
Perth
is an issue) and much paint
chipping using Gunze Mr Metalizer
added strategically with a fine brush. My Aztec fine (tan) tip wore out prior to
adding stains hence they are not as subtle as usual.
A new tip has since been purchased.
Decals
were a selection from my spares box (hence the black fuselage code which is
really supposed to be light grey).
David
Click on
images below to see larger images
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