A Brand New Year, Corsairs, a Zapped Bug Sucker, an Uncommon Boeing, Thuds, Stoofs, and Some Nose Art

Our First Edition for a Brand New Year

This is going to be what we might call a Brief Blog, but I wanted to do a little something to kick ff our brand new year with. I haven't rambled senselessly for a while, so let's start off with Some Thoughts On the Hobby:

Thought the First:  As scale modelers we've never had it so good. In spite of the worst economic times many of us have ever known the new kits keep coming, albeit at a reduced pace when compared to a couple of years ago. There's an amazing selection of aftermarket decals to choose from, and an equally amazing (if sometimes unnecessary) selection of aftermarket parts. To put the icing on the cake, we're also blessed with proliferation of reference works that we could only dream of back in those Halcyon Days of Long Ago.  It's truly a Golden Age for our hobby, doomsayers notwithstanding.

Thought the Second:  I think we should mostly build for fun. It's a hobby. When it's all said and done I try to do my best to get things right,  but at the end of the day it's still a hobby, and I don't go nuts over stuff I miss or mistakes I make, at least not most of the time, and when I do get bothered by such Intrusions into My World I either fix them and move on or, more likely than not, decide I can live with whatever the problem might be and, you guessed it; move on. My personal standards are still relatively high but nowadays I build for me, not for anybody else. In my world that's the way to do it.

Thought the Third:  Because I build for fun it rarely takes more than three or four weeks for me to finish something, and a kit such as the Tamiya Bf 109E can generally go from box to display shelf in three or four days if I can stay with the project with minimal interruptions. That takes us back to Thought the Second---it's a hobby and it ought to be fun.

Thought the Fourth and Final:  Because it's a hobby and because we're building for fun, we ought not make a given project harder than it needs to be. There's another side to that coin too, of course, because we won't get better as modelers if we don't constantly challenge ourselves, but a challenge is different from a ritual beating, and it's relatively easy to turn the hobby into just that. Challenge is Good. Beatings are Bad.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled ("Scheduled"? Did he say "scheduled"?) program.

A Few Things I Like

In the truest spirit of producing a brief New Year's edition of this missive, here are a couple of photos of airplanes that I like. Don't look for a theme because there isn't one; we're just going to look at some pictures that I think are neat.

Fighting Seventeen was the first Navy squadron to take the legendary F4U Corsair aboard a carrier, where they quickly discovered that it was a handful around the boat. That long nose, coupled with a short tailwheel strut and mushy main mounts (on the F4U-1), made for quite an adventure when trying to recover aboard ship. As a result, VF-17 ended up flying their first combat tour from shore bases, although the Navy was ultimately able to cure most of the carrier suitability problems by lengthening that tailwheel strut and stiffening up the oleos on the mains. This photo is from those early evaluations; better days lay ahead.  Tailhook Association via Doug Siegfried

Somewhere in the South Pacific...   This F4U-1A could be the poster child for what some folks might call an Evocative Shot. 901 is from an unknown (at least to me) Marine outfit, and I have no idea where the photo was taken, but it's a fine study of a beautiful airplane. Modelers note that not all SWPAC Corsairs were beat to snot; every one of them was relatively new when they got there. This one probably got grungy pretty quickly, but it's relatively pristine here.  Tailhook Association via Doug Siegfried

The AU-1 was the final American version of the "Hog". The type saw combat in Korea and survived far enough into the 50s to wear the then-new grey over white paint scheme in service. 129411 would be(and has been, come to think of it) a neat subject for a model. Check out that Glossy Sea Blue gas bag down there; it's a nice touch. The rudder of this bird is almost fully deflected, making it look as though the last four of the BuNo painted on the verticals have been applied incorrectly. The elevators are deflected too, making me suspect that some plane captain had a really bad day shortly after this was taken. Tailhook Association via Doug Siegfried

Zapped!

For those of you who may not have spent a significant portion of their adult lives photographing military airplanes, a zap is the application of an emblem or similar device to an airplane that ought not be wearing same. Sometimes such things are painted onto the airframe, although that particular method of application is generally highly frowned upon; mostly zaps are stickers or aviation decals (real "decalcomania", not the scale stickies we modelers use), easily applied and, most importantly, relatively easily removed. Here's an example:

The 178th FIS/119th FIG of the North Dakota ANG, known to one and all as The Happy Hooligans, operated the F-4D for several years. 64-0973, an F-4D-26-MC from the "Hooligans",  is an example of a bird that's been zapped by the Candian Armed Forces. This sort of thing used to happen fairly frequently during international (or even joint services) training operations. It probably still does. Don Jay Collection

It was once considered a Good Idea to make airliners, or at least civil transports, out of bombers. Boeing went down that road with both the B-17 and the B-29 (not to mention the B707 to KC-135 thing, although that one went the other direction, from airliner to tanker). The transport you see here is the Boeing 307, which was based on the B-17. It wasn't a bad airplane, but tricycle landing gear and a need for better capacity kept it out of the big time. It looks pretty cool in spite of all that, and was a good airplane that just happened to be built at the wrong time. If we had a 1/48th scale kit I probably wouldn't build it, but it's still a neat airplane. Nankivil Collection

A Pair of Pretty Thuds

Last time around we saw an example of an F-105 that survived both North Vietnamese AAA and the smelter to end up in the back lot of a truck repair facility. Here's something a little closer to the beginning:

In the Beginning...  54-0099 is the second of two JF-105A-1-RE Thunderchiefs built, shown here proving the feasibility of buddy pack refueling with 54-0102, one of three F-105B-1-REs constructed. The "Thud" could tank off either probe and drogue or a boom, although both methods resulted in a cockpit full of JP-4 fumes. 102 ultimately ended up on public display, a rare survivor of her type.  USAF via Don Jay

A Taste of What's in Store

You may remember, but then maybe not, that we ran a couple of Grumman "Stoof" shots a while back. That elicited a comment from Doug Siegfried (of Tailhook Association fame) to the effect that he'd been an S2F driver for the greater part of his Navy career and would sure like to see us run some more pictures of his favorite airplane. As much as I love that bird (and I truly do, an addiction that dates back to my childhood) I don't have much in the way of photography in my own personal collection. Mention of that sad fact led to action on Doug's part, which will result in several installments of S-2s and C-1s over the next few months. Here's a taste:

It seems as though every single airplane that the United States operated during the ten years between 1959 and 1969 was equipped to fire the AGM-12 Bullpup. That list of aircraft includes the "Stoof", as demonstrated here by an S-2E from VS-21. Shooting a command-guided missile from a slow airplane was a recipe for Certain Disaster in an operational environment, but to the best of our knowledge the type never made an actual war shot with the weapon.  It was probably a Good Thing.  Tailhook Association via Doug Siegfried

Some Nose Art From Desert Storm

If you've been following us for a while you'll recall that we periodically run nose art photos taken by Rick Morgan immediately following his combat tour with VAQ-141 during Operation Desert Storm. You've seen most of it, but for some reason we never got around to running the A-6 photos that constitute the final installment of the series. It's time to correct the ommission, I think.

You may recall that the nose art found on certain of the aircaft assigned to the Theodore Roosevelt immediately post-War was the result of an ad-hoc competition within the air wing. "The Big Stick" was VA-65's entry in the competition. Aside from the nose art this is a useful shot for modelers; check out the deployed curtain and canopy bow detail that's shown in this photo.  Rick Morgan

And here's "Heartless", VA-36's entry in the competition. Note the mission markers beneath the wing root and the intake cover. Yes, Virginia, that's a real, honest-to-goodness cover purpose-made for the A-6 family; it's far more practical than the "hard" type of cover around the boat.  Rick Morgan

Our First Relief Tube of the New Year

When last we met Don Jay sent us a comment regarding The End of Kodachrome. Here's a follow-up to that comment. It's the end of an era.

This makes me sad, ya'll.  via Don Jay

I ran some early FJ-3 photos a while back, and immediately thereafter ran a comment from Tommy Thomason regarding the hard-wing FJs that we didn't look at in that particular piece. He mentioned he'd sent a photograph of same, which you didn't get to see because I couldn't figure out how to open it. I've since worked past that particular Act of Random Stupidity on my part and can now show you the photo that Tommy wanted you to see last time.

BuNo 136153 is an FJ-3M from VF-51 and shows the hard (slatless) wing to advantage, and if you look at the front of the wing root you can see what Tommy was referring to when he said the aircraft was missing the little fairing that ran up against the gun bay door. And, speaking of guns, this bird has obviously just returned from the range; note that it's slick, with no underwing tanks, and there's a considerable amount of blast residue and gun lubricant all over the nose by the cannon ports. Thomason Collection

When we ran those most recent OP-2E photos I made comment about the racks hanging off the wing stations, mistakenly referring to them as TERs. I should've known better! Here's a correction from Rick Morgan:

(The rack in question) is a Practice Multiple Bomb Rack, usually held Mk76 or Mk106 Blue Bombs, frequently used by A-4s and A-6s Stateside. Jim Rotramel tells me the PMBR is an A/A37B-3.  Rick

Thanks, Morgo! Rick also sent along a photo of a PMBR from the era with sensors attached, thus defining the reason VO-67 was using that particular piece of equipment at the time. Those of you who can still remember things (and I'm obviously not part of that group) may recall the caption to an A-4 photo we ran way back when this blog first got started where we described a practice bomb dispenser attached to said "Scooter" as a "Banger Board". Those Neptunes were carrying "Banger Boards", I think.

And that's it for our Very First Edition of 2011. Stay tuned; we've got some really neat stuff coming to you during the coming year. Meanwhile, be good to your neighbor. We'll meet again soon.
phil

A Trip to the Overhaul Facility, A Dirty Bird, and How They Done It

Reduction for Production

You know the feeling, don't you? You're admiring your completed work one day (and I'm presuming here that you belong to that group of modelers who actually build things, as opposed to the folks who get the Brand New Kit, open the box, criticize and complain their way into the belief that the model contained therein is totally worthless, then put it on a different kind of shelf to wait for that far-away day when the kit magically morphs into A Collectible That's Worth Something) and you decide that most of the collection is pretty darned good, but that model of the fill in the blank here just isn't up to snuff and doesn't really belong on public display. It happens to us all and, like most things in life, you have choices you can make to correct the problem.

Your first choice is probably the easiest one of all to arrive at; don't do anything at all. Leave it there, right where it sits, and live with the warts. It's your model, after all, and those shelves don't bear a whole lot of resemblance to the Smithsonian, now do they? Fact is, the only people who will notice the substandard piece on the shelf (and "substandard" is most assuredly a subjective term in this case) are your modeling friends. We all know how much of your life is in that little assemblage of plastic, but the sad truth is that nobody really cares but you. Once you accept that as a working premise you can just live with what you've got. I wouldn't, mostly, but it's ok to do it.

The second choice is also relatively easy to make, but a little more difficult to live with---take the offending object de art  and introduce it to Mr. Trash Can. You might want to take off any pieces that are potentially worth salvaging, but once that's done (if you even do it!) just trash that Bad Boy! Be sure, though, that you won't go getting all goofy about it later on; when it's gone, it's gone.

Choice number three is the one I like to refer to as The Ego Saver. "I really didn't want it anymore so I donated it to the fill in the blank one more time and they loved it. No, they didn't love it, not really, and they probably put it in a box in storage right after you left (I worked in a largish museum right after college and I know of which I speak in this case, having performed the function myself on more than one occasion) or, worse yet (from your perspective, anyway) threw it away the instant you got out of sight. Museums don't keep everything they have donated to them, conventional wisdon notwithstanding. Save yourself some grief and skip all the middlemen; just give it away to somebody who's admired it.

My personal choice in all this goes back to something a friend of mine used as a catchphase long ago; reduce to produce. If the model's good enough, and the basic hulk usually is, just strip it and redo the thing. Carefully remove anything that can be removed, but only if it stands in the way of such things as bodywork or painting, add those details you forgot about when you did the original build, didn't know about, or were just too danged lazy to do the first time around and, in essence, make yourself a Brand New Model. (Remember that second P-40 we looked at twenty or so installments ago? The one called "The Rebel"? That model was my first stab at "Stardust"; I built a New and Improved "Stardust" and did the reduce-to-produce number on the old one. The result doesn't look too bad, maybe...)

Howzabout we actually do something along those R to P lines while we're waiting for me to get off my Dead End and finish that A-4? Right! I thought you'd never ask, so here's My Next R to P Project; an old 1/48th scale Tamiya Fw-190D that I built straight out of the box about six years ago. I like the scheme, although I may not keep it thanks to the combined research and publications of the JAPO team and Jerry Crandall (and if you're interested in the Dora you really need to get both sets of books---it'll set you back a fair chunk of change but when you're done you'll never again have the need for a long-nosed Fw-109 camouflage and markings tome). We'll see how things shake out.

The Tamiya Fw-190D as it sits right now, built straight from the box and with kit decals. The kit instructions were probably right at the cusp of our knowledge regarding the painting of the Dora when the kit came out and the scheme is really well-known too, but time and research have passed it by. When I finish today's ramble I'm going to go pick a scheme, then remove the prop & spinner, windscreen, and canopy. The Plan is to keep the landing gear in situ, but that may not be possible. Whichever way it goes you'll find out. This should be a quick project---let's see how long I can stretch it!

Sometimes Less is More

There are many different notions on how to finish up a model airplane. Most of them produce really nice results but some don't accurately reflect the way a real airplane looks in service, and I'm one of those folks who doesn't go in for the "shade, countershade, pre-shade and post-shade  every single part of the airplane" school of thought. It's ok to highlight things, and sometimes a little shading helps create useful artificial shadows that really enhance the completed model, but it's possible to take things a little too far in my never-humble opinion. My personal preference is for understatement, and I'd like to offer up the following model as an example of that philosophy.

The Tamiya F4U-1 done as Wilbur Thomas' Guadalcanal bird. Panel lines have been washed with oil paint (over a clear-coat of acrylic) and there's a little bit of deliberate streaking along the fuel tank seams on the upper fuselage decking. There's absolutely no pre-shading, and what little bit of post-shading that exists here was done with pastels. All chipping was done with a silver pencil.

The other side. The discoloration aft of the cowl flaps was done with pastels, as was the "dust" on the wheels and other minor weathering. I'm not entirely certain Thomas' aircraft had kills on the port side; the Marines and Navy generally manned-up from the starboard side of the aircraft and they often put their kills on that side only. And no; the interior green isn't really that bright. It's the result of a lighting system I no longer use.

This shot is included to show the way the weathering looks from behind, and also to lead us to a quick discussion of color. The ANA 603 Non-Specular Blue Gray used by naval aircraft early in the war was a lot more gray than it ever was blue, but this photo blues things out quite a bit, the direct result of a lighting change. The "real" color should be closer to that of the top two photos. Most of the off-the-shelf paint you can buy gets the Blue Gray wrong and moves it substantially into the blue spectrum. Custom mixing is the way to go.

A 3/4 nose shot to show light abrasion to the prop blades and moderate chipping. The MLG wheels were airbrushed with Floquil Old Silver (the real ones were usually silver from the factory on this variant) then lightly airbrushed with Testor Interior Black to dirty them up; Corsair wheels were nasty things!

This photo was taken about an hour ago, outside but in moderate shade to eliminate shadows. Notice how the paint has magically turned blue? That's lighting and nothing more; it's the exact same model in the shots above! (That's the Paint Thing. What I really wanted you to notice was the modest chipping on the prop blades but I just couldn't resist talking about the color shift caused by a difference in lighting.)

And finally, here's what the bottom looks like. The panels have been outlined and weathering has been accomplished  with pastels. One area often overlooked by modelers is the staining that appears behind the engine panels due to oil leaks. Look at any photo that shows the undersides of an operational piston-engined aircraft and you'll see what I'm talking about. It's a mess down there! And speaking of paint colors, which we really weren't this time; Chance Vought used a goofy-looking red oxide primer early in the war and Conventional Wisdom now says it was visible in the wheelwells of the early Corsairs. I'm not entirely convinced that it wasn't usually painted over with the undersurface color, but here's my interpretation of it, colloquially known by the modeling fraternity as "salmon pink". It might have been lighter, it probably wasn't darker, and it might have been overpainted and not visible at all. It's your choice, Gang!

How to Put Nose Art on a Real Airplane

Rick Morgan and I go Way Back. Rick still in aviation and does books too, and those books are just about as good as it ever gets if you're interested naval aviation. He's one of my go-to guys for NavAir and pretty much always has been . During Desert Storm he was aboard the Theodore Roosevelt with VAQ-141 and managed to bag a SAM site or two with HARM, although that's a story for another day. I don't think Rick ever went anywhere without a camera, and his photography has always been on the high side of excellent. Let's round out our Friday with a series of photos he took of EA-6B BuNo 163527 getting her nose art just prior to the opening of hostilities:

First you get a drawing of what you want, then you transfer it to the real airplane. There are different ways to apply the art, but masking is a pretty good idea if you're going to do it with air instead of a hand brush. Look closely at the artist's right hand and you'll see---an airbrush! Note also that the artist is wearing a cranial, which is the norm when working on the flight deck.   Rick Morgan Photo

The figure's done; now it's time to add a HARM to the art. The original sketch of the artwork is taped to the fuselage for reference, and everything is being carefully laid out before painting begins. I don't know who the artist is (How 'bout  it, Rick?) but he's good!   Wonder how the guy in the green shirt got there without some sort of head protection....   Rick Morgan Photo

And here's Deception Lass/Eve of Destruction in all her glory! A little risque maybe, but certainly not lewd! She was crewed by Cdr Frank "Axel" Folly, pilot and squadron CO; LCdr Rick "Flash" Morgan, ECMO 1; Lt Steve "Psycho" Schwing, ECMO 2; and Lt John "Gordo" Gordon, ECMO 3 during the Gulf War.   Rick Morgan Photo

And a final photo to illustrate a practice and prove a point. Note the red paint inside the open crew access door. That's the norm for Navy aircraft and is also found inside the slats and slat bays; I mention it to provide graphic reference for all Navy aircraft in general, and specifically to that Scooter model we may finish someday. As for that point to be proven, look at the staining on the aircraft. It's an operational bird (Boy, howdy!) and shows it, but there's nothing here that much resembles the overdone pre-shading we see on so many models. The Nav's TPS is a notoriously "dirty" camouflage system, but the grunge is from normal operational wear and tear on flat paint.    Rick Morgan Photo

And so we end another week. It's beautiful in South Texas; time to get Jenny, crank up the Miata, and go meet Frank and Pam for some serious roadstering! Be good to your neighbor and we'll see you next time.
phil