California, Christmas 1941. With war declared and fears of a grand Japanese fleet attack on the West Coast, every fighter aircraft available has been called into action, which meant even uncrating these strange Vultee jobs which were bound for China. Two mechanics perform some final adjustments on the landing gear before the aircraft is taken on a patrol flight.
This is a newly released kit from Metallic Details of Ukraine. It is in a format that may well become the norm in the next few years - a 3d printed airframe, combined with etched detail, vacform canopy and decals - all the features of a full kit, but with massive reduction in the costs and minimum production runs required for injection moulding or even professional resin cast kits. I already have other similar kits from Sputnik 3d and Laci Models.
I must admit, it does feel somewhat like cheating when you open the box to find the entire fuselage apparently just sat there waiting for painting, but in fact the careful extraction required from the 3d print support is as time consuming as sealing up a straight forward plastic fuselage.
The etch parts are very nice, although seemed to vary slightly from the printed instructions.
Definitely not looking forward to doing this part again on my other boxings, very fiddly.
I do love a nice OD NG scheme, no research, no debates required, just paint it straight on. Unusually for me, I did add a panel wash as the lovely delicate panel line detail was largely invisible at viewing distances on the flat paint scheme.
The boxing included decals for an example in USAAF service but in the slightly later scheme without red dots in the roundels. I rather like this pre war scheme and without any specific reference photos, I think it is most likely that the Californian air defence fighters carried this scheme. I did use the serial number decal from the kit though and this went on very nicely.
The aerial rigging was achieved with 0.07mm wire. After that it was just a quick vignette with a nameplate from nameitplates.co.uk and all was complete.
A very pleasant build and a good start for MD who have already released an impressive selection of obscure types in 144th in this same format.
