Hello!

I love US Navy aircraft and regular readers of my blog will notice there are a lot of US Navy builds being rolled out from my hangar this year!

I have built models of F4U Corsairs before but I never had one in VF-17 markings until now. I had an old Tamiya 1/48 F4U-1A Corsair in my stash which came in the paint scheme and markings I wanted:

This was going to be a straight forward out of the box build, but my imagination got the better of me!

I built the model as Tamiya intended, with the addition of a pilot figure and a home made seat harness. Also this was going to be an experiment in painting and weathering. I wanted to recreate the look of the VF-17 Corsair that were based on the Pacific Islands so I purchased a set of Mig Ammo acrylic paints specific to US Navy colour codes.

If we look at photos of Pacific war Corsairs we can see they were well weathered and faded. Here are some reference photos I found while researching this project:

The Build:

Tamiya’s Corsair is just a joy to build! Great detail and everything fits perfectly!

Painting:

First job was to cover the aircraft with a black base coat and then spray a marble coat.

Next the Ammo paints were tried out. Spoiler alert! They were great!

With all the camouflage colours sprayed on freehand, it was time for the weathering. For this I used a combination of Mig Ammo enamel washes and AK Interactive weathering pencils.

The display:

I took the finished model and mounted it on a custom display base. I think it really suits this type of model.

I hope you have enjoyed my model, thanks for stopping by. Until next time…..

Take care and Happy Modelling!

Darren