Gonna pin up that cheesecake shot right next to my pillow!
Well, I would have gone with Betty Grable:
But hey, whatever floats your boat!
Took a detour from the elevators a bit tonight to try something. In looking over Elliot's pinup in my last post made me think about the patch work nature of the PBJ's at Kwajalein, and I thought I'd try to capitalize on it a bit with some deliberate patching (vice the "cover up the mistakes" variety I've been doing up to this point). Most notable was the area where the side gun packs used to be, being removed by the Marines on the Island. Worked up a template of the packs shape and general location:
There were two plates added on each side to cover up the gun belt pass thru's to the gun packs:
Shaped them a little to bow them out to simulate being deformed from being riveted on:
The template helped to locate them on the sides:
Then, with the actual pack shape cut out, daubed Model Master Intermediate Blue straight form the bottle (no mixing to match this time) using a stubby brush I've had (bristles cut down to almost nothing):
Instant phantom gun packs:
The real deal for comparison:
An another, this time the right side (both pics from the VMB-613 site:
http://www.vmb613.com/).
Shows the patches for the gun packs well, but also that there was no armor plate on that side as I suspected. Oh well, thanks Orlik!
Elevators went easy. They actually fit as advertised, no tailoring required. As I mentioned, the trim tab push rod tubes were supplied in the kit, but Orlik decided to print them in the lighter blue color, so were useless. I just took some dark blue material and made my own (using Mark's (shrike) "Mini Styck"):
The control yoke in the cockpit was also positioned slightly back, so the elevator are "up" a tad (continuity! Again!). Some views:
Added the tab push rods after the elevators set:
It's down to a couple/few more housekeeping items, then it major assembly time. Speeding up here at the end......
Mike