ccoyle

With the cockpit closed up, it's time to start skinning the forward fuselage, beginning with the wheel wells. I'm now committed to eventually building the Wildcat's nightmarish landing gear. 😬  To this point, I've been following the sequence of diagrams pretty closely, but for anyone who decides to build this kit later, it's a good idea to add the flat skins of the wheel wells before gluing the frames together. You can still do it afterwards, but it's a little trickier, because that central girder is part of one of the frames, and it clearly gets in the way.

Then we have the first two fuselage skins added. Fit and registration has been good, although there seems to have been a deliberate omission of certain joiner strips. I added homemade ones -- no biggie.

There's a very slight color mismatch between the second and third skins, but strangely enough it's only on one side. The parts came from the same sheet, too, so it's kind of weird. But the difference is not as noticeable as it was for the GPM Hellcat kit, so I won't complain. Once again, the fit for this part was very good.

I then decided to skip ahead a bit and add some of the wing skeleton parts, just to stiffen up the spindly spars a bit. They were beginning to get uncomfortably wobbly from being jostled around. Interestingly, there are multiple errors in the numbering of these parts between the diagrams and the laser-cut frets. This hasn't been an issue so far because it's pretty obvious which parts are which and where they're supposed to go.

That's all for now!

Greg, did you use EZ-Line for the rigging? If so, I'd be interested in hearing how you go about securing the ends to their attachment points.

18 minutes ago, abelson said:

Not sure where you're coming from, as I'm not building the Perseverance.

He's recommending your build log as a resource for a rookie builder working on a different kit. It's actually a bit of a compliment.

All the cockpit components ready to add to frame.

All closed up now.

Moin moin, Marius!

Cala Esmeralda is a beautiful ship -- I'm very fond of topsail schooners. Good luck on your project!

Welcome to MSW, Sam!

As Allan said, you can certainly spruce up your model however you like. That being said, I would probably shy away from adding ratlines. All of the sails on a small schooner could be raised and lowered from the deck -- there was simply no need for sailors to go aloft, so ratlines would look a bit out of place.

Hoping for a speedy recovery, Glenn. Backs are weird -- they can go out for the most seemingly innocuous of reasons.

Looks great! What's the new project?

Starboard side instruments completed.

5 hours ago, Dave_E said:

it’s easy to see the quality differences in kits available

To be clear, it's not a quality issue with this kit. The kit is purposely designed for intermediate modelers, therefore its detail level is not that of a Halinski or Card Army kit, but the quality has been fine so far.

Got a smidge done so far -- cockpit bits. The intermediate-level nature of the kit is evidenced by the mix of 3-D detail parts and plain 2-D printed surfaces. No provision is made for glazing the instrument panel.

If you want to take your oars up a notch, you can try flattening the blades and slimming the shafts. Fiddly work, but I think you'll like the result.

Chaz, 1/96 scale for sailing ships is a real challenge in any medium. I think you would find it very helpful to try one of the simpler free models that dot the internet landscape. You can find links in the card modeling tutorial.

Very well done!

Mike, I'm betting those are a variant of the RAF's Mk VIII depth charge, as seen in this photo from Wikimedia.

Beautiful, Doug!

Wow, best of show! That's a fine achievement, Greg!

Start with one area or the other, but put both media in the title. You'll probably get answers for both.

Nice work, Bob, and congratulations!

Congratulations! That's a suitably impressive-looking model!

First cuts 'n' glues. I've never built a kit like this that has the wing spars as part and parcel of the cockpit framing -- just seems to me like a good way to snap the spars off accidentally. But I will try to be extra careful moving forward. As I said earlier, the Wildcat is not as beefy as the Hellcat, but it's still bigger than I had imagined. The next -cat I build will have to be the relatively diminuitive Bearcat. But don't get your hopes up -- I don't actually have one in my stash.

1 minute ago, Isaiah said:

How do you edit it so you can only see some text until you open the build log?

Short answer: You don't. Only an administrator can make changes like that, and I don't think they can do it for individual topics, i.e., it's a site-wide setting.

Page length is determined by the number of posts in a topic -- I believe each page is currently set for 25 posts. The only way to shorten your content is to post fewer pictures. That's probably a good thing to do in any case, since scrolling past endless photos can be a turn-off for some users, not to mention all those photos can take a long time to load on older systems or slower internet connections. Best thing to do is to select a few photos that best show your progress on your build. If you still want to post lots of photos, you can try posting them in installments -- more posts with fewer photos per post.

Cheers!

1 hour ago, Egilman said:

Wait till you get to the P-38, that is a monster....

That's literally why I have never gone out of my way to purchase a P-38 kit. 😆  But I have caved in to temptation in the past by acquiring big birds like the Whirlwind, Tempest, and P-47. Not exactly sure where I will display them when I get around to building them, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

13 minutes ago, yvesvidal said:

This is going to be a small monster at that scale.

Not so much a monster as the F6F I built last year. This one should have about a 2 in. shorter wingspan. It may actually fit on a shelf!

Speaking of shelves, part of the reason I picked this one as my next project is the appalling lack of American aircraft on display in my man cave. I have only completed two American-built planes, and neither of them is wearing American markings! 😮  That needs to be remedied!