Tactical Notes, However Circumstances Member at Large: Have Put That Off Till Next Month
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January 2010 TTaacticcticaall NNoteotess The Changing of the Guard Next Meeting: Thursday, January 20th, 2011 7 p.m. Execution of deposed club officers. WWW.MMCL.ORG THE NEWSLETTER OF THE MILITARY MODELERS CLUB OF LOUISVILLE To contact MMCL: Editor’s Note 1 President: Dr. Stu “Mr. Chicken” Cox Hopefully, you attended our December meeting Email: [email protected] and Christmas Dinner. I think we had the larges attendance we’ve ever had at one of these. The Vice President: meeing saw much good modeling comraderie as Terry “The Man Behind the Throne” well as the election of new club officers. You can Hill see our new officers listed in the box at the left. Email:[email protected] You will notice some new members of the officer ranks as well as some officers who have changed Secretary: offices. David Knights Email: [email protected] I had intended to have a completely revamped look to Tactical Notes, however circumstances Member at Large: have put that off till next month. Speaking of Noel “Porche” Walker put off, the Yellow Wings smackdown has been Email: [email protected] pushed back to March due to some unforseen scheduling difficulties. (My daughter had her Treasurer: cleft palette surgery on Jan. 18th which prevents Alex “Madoff ” Restrepo me from attending the meeting this month.) Email: [email protected]. Thanks go out to Dennis Sparks whose article Webmangler: takes up the majority of this issue. It is a good Pete “The ghost” Gay & article and I hope folks draw inspiration from it. Mike “Danger Boy” Nofsinger Email: [email protected] “Tactical Notes” is the Newsletter of the Military Modelers Club of Louisville, Inc. We appreciate your taking the time to read this litte newsletter. We’d Rescheduled!!!!!!!!!! appreciate it even more if you would write something. Yes, I am talking to you! Smackdown Notice Update! Cover Photos: London’s changing of the guard. Stolen from the internet. No copyright claimed. To all interested members: There is a “Yellow Wings” smackdown scheduled for March 2011. The participants will build any 72nd scale U.S. Navy Aircraft from the period 1935-1940. There are at least 5 MMCL members already committed to this build. Join in! Contact David Knights for details [email protected] Dennis Sparks’ Ki-27 in 48th scale Mixed and Matched bring it up to anything near 2 Wildcats (and Martlets, modern standards. too!)… Building the Several years after the Tamiya Hobby Boss Wildcats offering, Sword brought out a 1/ th by Dennis Sparks 48 kit of the later FM-2 variant, but it wasn’t until Hobby Boss “I would still assess the Wildcat began cranking out their family as the outstanding naval fighter of Wildcats in 2007 that of the early years of World War II modelers were finally able to ... I can vouch as a matter of build models of some of the early personal experience, this domestic and foreign ‘Cats Grumman fighter was one of the without resorting to either some finest shipboard aeroplanes ever heavy duty scratch building or created.” —Eric M. Brown, British expensive resin conversions. test pilot As I’m fond of building series of models depicting various Tamiya’s 1/48th scale kit of versions and markings of the Grumman’s F4F-4 Wildcat has same basic airframe, I bought been around since 1994 and is examples of all of the Hobby arguably still the best Wildcat Boss Wildcats as they became available in this scale. Other available and began building than a minor and correctable them all in early 2010. mistake in the floor of the cockpit Including the Sword FM-2, two (it shouldn’t have one), probably examples of the Tamiya F4F-4 the kit’s worst single “feature” is and one Tamiya/Hobby Boss that Tamiya has never released hybrid, I now have nine finished any follow on kits of any of the ‘Cats in my collection, with a other earlier and later versions of couple of kits still held in reserve the Wildcat. in case I run across a photo of either another variant or Before the Tamiya kit was unusually marked Wildcat that released, the only other “needs” doing. mainstream 1/48th Wildcat kit offered was the one produced in I found Bruce Archer’s online the early 1960s by Monogram. article “The Grumman Wildcat While it’s not horrible, it is in FAA Service” on the something of hodgepodge of Hyperscale web page to be very several different versions and useful in sorting through the requires a fair amount of work to differences between the many Wildcat variants. Although the total length increased by only written primarily about the two inches, the FM-2’s fuselage 3 Martlets and Wildcats that were was necessarily longer, while the flown by Britain’s Fleet Air Arm, cowling for the single row engine it also lists the USN equivalents was correspondingly shorter. for each and contains a handy chart that lists the engine, But all in all, the Hobby Boss cowling and wing types used on Wildcats can be used to make the different versions. (When reasonable replicas of the real first employed by the British, the article. The surface details are aircraft was called the Martlet, not quite up the standards set by with this later reverting to the Tamiya kit, even though they Wildcat to avoid confusion.) the slightly more expensive of the two. But they’re more Hobby Boss cleverly engineered versatile, allowing one to build their basic Wildcat kit to enable some of the more interesting and them to offer a wide range of colorful of the breed. And as variants by mixing and matching with most kits, they’re not various component parts trees. without their minor assembly or By using various combinations fit problems. of two different fuselages, three sets of wings, three windscreens, I began the construction of each two engines and propellers and of my Wildcats by first building three different engine cowlings, and painting the cockpits. The they were able to offer kits of ten-piece cockpit is actually both an early and a late F4F-3, quite good, but given the rather an F4F-4, an FM-1 and an FM-2. small size of the cockpit opening in the fuselage and since the kit Unfortunately, they also canopy cannot be displayed in introduced a few inaccuracies, the open position I didn’t spend mostly on the FM-2. Almost all much time with extra detailing, of the other Wildcats had used adding only Eduard seat belts. various versions of the Pratt and Incidentally, the Archer article Whitney R-1830 radial engine, indicates that the primary color which had fourteen cylinders in the cockpits of the Grumman- arranged in two rows, but the built Wildcats was the darker FM-2 used a single-row, nine bronze green, while the cockpits cylinder Wright R-1820 engine. of the later FM-1s and FM-2s To balance the aircraft, the FM- that were built by Eastern 2’s Wright needed to be located Aircraft were instead painted further forward. And although interior green. The fuselage of the Hobby Boss Wildcats is divided into three parts, 4 with the usual left and right halves for most of the fuselage, while the lower portion of the forward fuselage that is under the wings and cockpit is molded as a separate piece. The kit’s instructions call for first attaching the completed cockpit to this separate lower tub, and then attaching the entire assembly to the rest of the fuselage. But I soon found that the joint between the rear portion of this lower tub and the remainder of the fuselage is one of the kit’s problem areas, and attaching the cockpit to it only exacerbates the problem. I discovered that it was easier to first glue the left and right fuselage halves together, and then insert the completed cockpit from the bottom and glue it to the inside of the fuselage. The bulkhead, two of the landing gear’s retraction struts, the oil reservoir and (sometimes!) the two intercoolers were all installed in the forward part of the tub as per kit instructions before attaching the tub to the remainder of the fuselage. I used super glue to attach the rear of the tub to the lower portion of the fuselage first, twisting and tugging as needed to get the entire seam between the two assemblies properly aligned. After this joint had solidly set up, I then super glued the joint on each side of the tub at the front of the fuselage, but without gluing together the top and bottom of the intervening wing root area at all. By not gluing this area together now, I had some latitude to later adjust the thickness of the wing root to make it match that of the wing. At this point the horizontal stabilizers can be attached so that they can serve as a reference line for getting the correct wing dihedral later. When gluing together the upper and lower wing halves, I recommend that you again avoid gluing the wing root area. Test fit the wings and if needed, trim or shim the wing roots on either the wing and/or the fuselage. On several of the ‘Cats that I built, the wing root on the fuselage seemed to be a bit thinner (top to bottom) than the corresponding root on the wings. I usually tried to correct this by trimming the wing’s ribs a bit to make the wing slightly thinner. There’s a good deal of “slop” in the wing joints, and again I’d recommend using super glue to attach the wings.