Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat by ccoyle - FINISHED - WAK - 1/33 - CARD

[ccoyle]

Ahoy!

 

Well, it is time to start a new build log. For those of you who might be saying, "Hey, don't you already have, like, three other unfinished builds in progress?", I will simply observe that what you say is true, but I'm starting a new log anyway, so there! Anyways, I haven't been doing much modeling lately because I have a six-month-old, very active puppy, and for that same reason I may not make speedy progress on this model, either, but we'll see.

 

The Subject

 

The subject of this log is Leroy Grumman's famous F4F-4 Wildcat. I won't go into too much detail about this airplane, because if you are reading this then you are probably sufficiently airplane nerdy to already have a good grasp of the Wildcat's place in history. It will suffice here to say that the Wildcat was America's front-line, carrier-borne fighter for the first year-and-a-half of the country's war against Japan. Although the Wildcat is frequently compared unfavorably with the Mitsubishi A6M 'Zero', I think it is fair to say that the Wildcat, when flown to its strengths by a skilled aviator, could hold its own in a scrap with the Japanese fighter. You can read more about the Wildcat here.

 

The Kit

 

The kit is a brand new offering from the Polish firm of WAK. In fact, at the time of this writing the kit is still listed as 'NEW' on the company's website. This will actually be the first time I have ever worked on a hot-off-the-press kit, so you should all feel fortunate to be among the first to see one of these being built -- perhaps not likely to be among the first to see one finished, but close enough. The kit is designed by Jerzy Janukowicz, with artwork by Marcin Dworzecki, who is famous in the card modeling world for his work done for Kartonowy Arsenal (Halinski). Let's have a look, shall we?

 

The kit depicts the personal mount of the famous Lt. Cdr. John S. "Jimmy" Thach, the man who perfected the "Thach weave," a combat tactic that allowed a Wildcat pilot and his wingman to get a drop on the more maneuverable Zero. As you can see in the photo, I also have the laser-cut frames for the kit. Now, I took a bit of a gamble by not buying a canopy for this kit, since I already had one on hand, albeit for the ancient Halinski F4F-3 kit. I'm not aware of any changes made by Grumman to the canopy for the dash-4, so I'm cautiously optimistic that the dash-3 canopy will fit.

 

 

Lots of lovely diagrams.

 

 

And beautiful graphics. Don't be alarmed by the printed wheels -- there's an option to build the kit wheels-up, which I will probably not elect to build.

 

 

 

The back cover has pictures of the prototype model.

 

 

A nice touch in this kit is the inclusion of instructions in English.

 

To wrap up this introduction, I thought you all might like to see a little comparison of this kit with the older Halinski F4F-3 kit published in 1998.

 

 

 

A side-by-side view of the graphics (I don't believe Marcin did the art for this Halinski kit) reveals the nearly complete lack of weathering on the older kit (at left). The difference in detail is even more stark for the cockpit interiors (not shown) -- the older kit has almost no three-dimensional details at all.

 

 

Well, that's it for the introduction -- hope to get started soon!

 

[Dave_E]

I am definitely in! 😄

[Egilman]

Wouldn't miss this for the world...

[Canute]

I'm in for this one, too, Chris.

[yvesvidal]

This is going to be a small monster at that scale. I have always enjoyed those big-belly planes from the 30-40's. 

 

Yves

[ccoyle]

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!

[GrandpaPhil]

Looking forward to seeing this!

[Egilman]

2 hours ago, ccoyle said:

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!

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

[ccoyle]

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.

[Egilman]

3 hours ago, ccoyle said:

That's literally why I have never gone out of my way to purchase a P-38 kit

Then I guess you really don't want to see anything like this...

 

B-17

 

Now that IS a monster....

 

(I have the plastic HK version, they are HUGE)

[rlwhitt]

3 hours ago, ccoyle said:

 

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.

I did the Halinski P-47 a few years back and upscaled it to 1:20.  I had to put up a special shelf.  😀  Crazy

Edited May 19, 2023 by rlwhitt

[Dave_E]

Hang them from your favorite man area ceiling!

[ccoyle]

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.

 

[CDW]

Watching! Following, lots to learn from you here. Good stuff.

[popeye the sailor]

following along as well.....very nice start  

[ccoyle]

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.

 

[Landlubber Mike]

Great start Chris!  Looking forward to seeing  what you do with these kits.

Edited May 31, 2023 by Landlubber Mike

[Dave_E]

Unless you scratch built the control panel with all the levers… it’s easy to see the quality differences in kits available. The P-40 I’m working on has no where near the level of detail this kit has.

[East Ender]

Following this build. Our entire family worked for Grumman on Long Island, my dads father on the F4F Wildcat, my moms dad on the F8F Bearcat through the A-6 Intruder, both my father and I on the F-14 Tomcat. Enjoy the build!

[ccoyle]

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.

[Dave_E]

I’m with you, wrong word on my part. 👍😀

[ccoyle]

Starboard side instruments completed.

 

[ccoyle]

All the cockpit components ready to add to frame.

 

 

All closed up now.

 

[Dave_E]

I can’t get over the level of detail and small stuff! Those rudder pedals are amazing. So is that left hand side console! 👍😀

[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!

[FriedClams]

Sort of a wood/card hybrid.  Always enjoy watching your progress on these card models, Chris.

 

Gary

[Javlin]

19 hours ago, ccoyle said:

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

Chalk it up to damage some time ago new panel/paint.

[ccoyle]

Not uncommon for card planes, the fuselage consists of a number of conic sections.

 

 

[ccoyle]

Framing for dorsal hump and vertical stabilizer has been added -- calling it a night. Not all of the transverse bulkheads come up to the height of the dorsal profile piece; I'm not sure what the deal is there, but I'll find out once I start adding the skins.

 

[Dave_E]

Are all those ribs card? They look like wood.