Hey
Folks!!!! I’ve always wanted to have among my collection the legendary
Corsair. I think I felt in love with this plane, since I used to watch the old series
“The Black Ships”. Capt. Gregory “Papi” Boyington was a hero to me. I
was just an 11 years old kid.
Unfortunately,
here in my country doesn’t exist none specialized hobby store where one could
find a wide-open line of scale model kits. All the kits you can have at your
reach are always the same, they come always from only one or two manufacturers,
so is very difficult to us to find the kit you ever dreamed of.
Finally
last Christmas came to the toy store a very important amount of kits, among
which was the Revell F4U-7 French Corsair. And the most important thing to me
was that the kit’s scale was 1/48 and it came with all the detail enough to
get a very good result. So here I am with my Star decorating my collection. But
that’s not all. I bought two. So this time I present to you this version of
the F4U-7 French Corsair which represents to the “57S Escadrille École de `l
Aeronautique Navale in 1961, based in Kore
a”.
I
promise to present to you my future project that I’m working on with my second
Revell F4U-7 Corsair. Maybe I should try to make it a huge conversion to a
F4U-5N or a F4U-4.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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I
Have to realize that Revell has improved very much their molds. I had to deal
with just a few problems. No big deal with them. Practicing some scratch
building to the fuselage to make the canopy fit in it (as the real Corsair
does) didn’t take much time and work to me. At the end of the day I had an
exact copy of the real canopy. See the Photos as it follows. For references you
can visit this web page: http://www.fanakit.chez-alice.fr/f4u-7
I
also added some extra detail to the cockpit and to the canopy frame to make them
look like the real ones. But the original detail in the cockpit from the
box has a very good quality.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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The
only error to me that Revell still has for some kits, was that the decals for
the Rockets are to big for them. Actually I never found any
information on the Internet about how the decals should go on the Rockets, so I decided to put
them on using my imagination according to the instruction book. Don’t look
bad. The Pitot tube was also made by two pieces of .035 and .020 Strip Styrene. The
landing gear struts also have their own detail. I added some stretched sprue
simulating the Hydraulic system lines and four more little stretched sprue for
the springs in the landing gear actuators.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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And
that’s it. I really enjoyed making my French Corsair. I hope you`ll enjoy
reading this article and seeing these Photos. Actually I did my best, because
my digital camera isn’t a professional one so I had to make a lot of tests
first. If you want to send any comments or share information, pictures, etc,
feel free writing to my e-mail: modelnetjr1002@yahoo.com.mx
José
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