Author Topic: F4U-1A "Vargas Cowgirl" (Read 833 times)

Saxman · « **on:** November 23, 2006, 10:38:10 PM »

Going to work on this bird (White 8, bottom aircraft, tho I still plan on revisiting and redoing my skin for Olander's ship):

Mainly, because it's one of the few Corsairs with "girlie" art, and also because I'm also working on a 1/48 kit that I'm doing with these markings.

Thing is, the photo is the ONLY one I know of, and all I can really tell is that there's a heavy exhaust stain above the starboard wing, the inboard wing section within the prop arc is VERY heavily sand-blasted, and the upper camo appears to have heavily faded.

Anyone know of other pics of this bird?

Saxman · « **Reply #1 on:** November 27, 2006, 03:07:33 PM »

First Look

The fading of the camoflage, especially the upper srface, is very clear here.

I'll probably need to fade the roundel a bit, as it looks too bright for as beat up as the real bird was. I also WILL be lightening the panel lines, and the aircraft still needs to be weathered. In particular, the inner part of the wings was REALLY beat-up on the original bird.

Gryffin · « **Reply #2 on:** November 27, 2006, 03:35:16 PM »

Awsome work saxman! I'm looking forward to seeing the weathered version

Krusty · « **Reply #3 on:** November 27, 2006, 03:39:50 PM »

Me too.

Too bad the art is so small. On 512 res it's going to be blocky, and I pity the folks on 256. Those navy planes really skimped on the artwork, didn't they?

Saxman · « **Reply #4 on:** November 27, 2006, 04:19:43 PM »

Yeah. A lot was due to supply issues and that they just couldn't keep enough birds flying to give each pilot their own plane. There's ESPECIALLY very few Corsairs with pinups. I WILL be revisiting Marine's Dream, (and probably my other Birdcages) tho, probably once I finish Vargas.

Of course, probably the easiest of my old Birdcage skins to do would be Daphne C. All I have to do is blank out the number on the new Default skin and add the nose art.

Hey Greebo, you wouldn't mind if I modified your skin of Walsh's bird, would you?

Back to the skin...

I was studying the photo in the instructions (little bit clearer than the scan I posted) and that is actually a VERY nasty stain. It extends from the cowl back to the roundel, covers the wingroot, and even stains parts of the horizontal stab on that side!

It's POSSIBLE it was linked to the reason this aircraft wrecked, HOWEVER, if you look closely you can see that the step on the side of the aircraft is relatively clean, suggesting that either it was replaced, or had been heavily used since whatever caused that black stain and partly cleaned it off.

The question is, what IS it? From the severity I'd almost HAVE to think it was a fire of some kind. Could it have been an oil leak?

Unfortunately, while the instructions give a VERY detailed description of how banged up Marine's Dream was, there's very little on Vargas Cowgirl.

Saxman · « **Reply #5 on:** November 28, 2006, 10:39:56 PM »

A new screenshot. Weathering of the fuselage is complete except for the vertical and horizontal stabs.

Unfortunately, the photo makes it hard to get a REAL good sense of weathering and pain chipping. Certainly there's heavy chipping on the metal parts of the wing (gun bays, particularly). Here you can see the heavy burn smoke/oil stain more clearly, and also just how unusual it is that whatever this stain is does NOT cover the hinged step. The forward fuselage appears to suffer the same sand-blasting as the inner third of the wings.

Overall, from what I can tell there's not a lot of heavy fuel or oil stains along the forward fuselage, and little if any chipping of paint. The cowl is a complete mystery, as it is cut off in the picture, and some of the maintenance panels have been removed as well.

Work Remaining:

The "sandblasting" of the cowl appears to extend back as far as the trailing edge of the flaps, so I need to work that a little.

Vertical and horizontal stabs need to be weathered.

The gun ports need some work (not visible here because, frankly, they suck).

The landing gear bays are going to be redone. Almost all the information I can dig up indicates that the F4U-1A used predominantly Zinc Chromate Yellow (the primer color) for most of its interior surfaces, including the cockpit. The use of overall Interior Green was more common in the later 1D and 1C. Since the 1A has a separate skin for the cockpit interior I also plan to "repaint" that more appropriately

SkyChimp03 · « **Reply #6 on:** November 28, 2006, 11:43:31 PM »

Exaust is too dark for my taste. Lower op on markings and weather upper fus a little more pain looks little too plain near markings..

Saxman · « **Reply #7 on:** November 29, 2006, 01:01:16 AM »

Look at the photo again. That burn mark is VERY heavy, and the majority of the beat-up-ness appears to be concentrated in the forward half

Greebo · « **Reply #8 on:** November 29, 2006, 01:42:16 PM »

That's a really nice skin Saxman, maybe add a bit of shadow behind and beneath the cowl flaps to make them stand out.

Not sure if you were kidding or not but please don't mod my skins. They take me a lot of time to do. So when someone adds a few hours work onto one then sticks his name on it, I feel cheated. There's a few skins like that online now that I've let pass without comment, but I won't be letting it go in future.

Saxman · « **Reply #9 on:** November 29, 2006, 02:18:43 PM »

CC on the cowl flaps, I'll look at that tonight, along with starting the new landing gear wells/door interiors.

I WAS serious, but in NO WAY intended to take sole credit (which is also why I'm asking, rather than just doing). I fully intended to note the situation in the TXT file. I just figured that since Walsh's White 13 and "Daphne C" (White 7) were the same aircraft just with different markings (the old Black 13 markings still being clearly visible on both) it would be the most fitting way to do that skin.