1/72 Heller FG-1D Corsair

by John Green

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I'm always on the lookout for different markings & camouflage schemes for my models, variety being the spice of life.  Some months ago I discovered Aztec Decals & their range of decals for a wide variety of military aircraft in South American service & bought a number of their sheets for subjects ranging from Mustang to Kfir & Jaguar.  Looking through the sheets, I was rather taken by a pair of Fuerza Aerea Salvadorana (apologies to any Spanish speakers if I've spelt this wrong) FG-1Ds, one in overall Gloss Sea Blue & the other in GSB with several odd panels from other aircraft , supposedly aircraft which the FAS had attempted to get back into operational condition at the time of the Soccer War in 1969.  Aztec's intention is that the aircraft should be scruffy & weathered, but since I'm not much of a fan of weathering - and also rubbish at it - I decided I'd build the overall blue bird in a clean state to represent the aircraft at an earlier point in it's life - after all, everything must have been new, or freshly repainted, at some time.
Having decided on the markings, I had the choice of either buying a new kit, or refurbishing an old Heller kit which has been sat on my model shelves since 1979.  Unlike most of my builds from that era, it still looked reasonable, though it was beginning to get tatty, so I decided to give it a repaint.  Whilst it's obviously not in the class of the Tamiya version, the Heller Corsair is still a pretty nice kit, as indeed is most of their stuff from the late 1970s & early 80s - it's got raised panel lines of course, but that's not something that bothers me.  Having made the decision to use my old kit, I removed the undercarriage, canopy, seat, stick, prop & pitot head & immersed the rest in Fairy Power Spray, a UK brand of liquid kitchen cleaner, which is presumably
slightly caustic & hence works pretty well as a paint stripper.  With the paint being well over 25 years old, it took a couple of goes & the use of some fine Scotchbrite, but a couple of days later I had a nice paint-free airframe to work with.  Whilst cleaning it all up, the cowling fell off, which was ideal as it let me repaint the engine & the cowling interior. 

I've found in the past that glued joints on kits tend to age & grow weaker over time, so my first step was to brush a generous coat of liquid cement over all the seams to  reinforce them , fitted the pre-masked windscreen & then did a little filling, sanding & priming & it was ready for paint.

Paint was, as is usual with me, Humbrol enamels.  I sprayed the front gear doors & wingtips orange, masked the tips & sprayed the blue.  Past experience has shown that Humbrol gloss Midnight Blue  has astonishingly poor covering power for such a dark colour, so I undercoated with matt Oxford Blue before spraying the gloss, which worked extremely well.  On the subject of the US Gloss Sea Blue, I've seen comments in the past saying that the Humbrol Midnight Blue is too light, but I recall reading in Scale Models many years ago an article by a guy who'd been a mechanic on an F9F Panther squadron in the early 1950s & he said that basically no two of their
aircraft were the same colour & all were definitely blue, rather than the blue/black which is sometimes depicted.  Consequently, I felt quite happy using the Humbrol colour.

The decals were a definite case of good news, bad news - they worked extremely well, but there were too few sets of suitable FAS lettering, two sets having a faded US star & bar behind them & being intended for the other option on the sheet.  The instructions attempted to cover themselves by stating that aircraft number 213 may not have had FAS titles on the wings.

This is all very well, but I really think they should have given you the option.  I figured that if I decided to omit the wing lettering it would make the wings look very bare, so I bought a couple of sheets of Fantasy Printshop's white lettering & used that instead.  The other problem with the decals is that they supply a considerable number of stencil markings, but totally fail to give any clue where about half of it goes.  Since it's mainly white, there's no chance of identifying anything against the pale blue decal paper, so I decided just to apply those for which info was given.

Once the decaling was completed, I gave the airframe a wash to remove the surplus decal adhesive & setting solutions, gave everything a gloss coat to seal the decals in, fitted the pre-painted landing gear, seat, stick & prop, applied a final coat of Humbrol Satincote, demasked the screen & fitted the canopy.

As I said previously, the Heller offering's not in the same class as the beautiful Tamiya kit, but the end product came out very well & I'm extremely pleased with it.
John 

Photos and text © by John Green