ij001
Well-known member
There's a modeller whom some folks here may have heard of called David Rapasi over on ARC who seems to specialise in WWII USN types, more especially Corsairs and Dauntlesses (Dauntlii ??) - no matter; quite a while back he posted two SBD-1's that he'd finished as (virtually) straight from the production line in the pre-war 'yellow wings' scheme, and to my eye, they looked fantastic.
I don't have a dash-1 Dauntless, I have the 2005 issue of the AM SBD-2, but after a lucky find, I discovered that the USN flew the dash-2 in that scheme from around February 1941 to October when they were ordered to be painted in the blue grey/light grey patrol aircraft scheme. So this project will be a (rare) dash-2 off USS Enterprise somewhere in that brief eight month time-frame before they turned dull.
This afternoon I spent an hour-and-a-half trying to match the myriad of cockpit parts with the call-outs in the instructions and I think I've got it sorted-out now, there's a definite disconnect between what the written instructions say, what the drawn instructions show and what the part numbers on the sprue indicate, strangely not mentioned in any kit review that I've read, (Hmmmm :hmmm ...). A fair degree of forensic expertise is required to get it all sorted but as I don't have any, I relied on the Detail & Scale book and great deal of dumb luck !!
I'll make a start later this week and post the usual progress pics as-and-when, hopefully when I'm done it will look close to this...
www.arcair.com/Gal3/2601-2700/Gal2636-SBD-1-Rapasi/00.shtm
...who can say ??
AFN
Ian.
I don't have a dash-1 Dauntless, I have the 2005 issue of the AM SBD-2, but after a lucky find, I discovered that the USN flew the dash-2 in that scheme from around February 1941 to October when they were ordered to be painted in the blue grey/light grey patrol aircraft scheme. So this project will be a (rare) dash-2 off USS Enterprise somewhere in that brief eight month time-frame before they turned dull.
This afternoon I spent an hour-and-a-half trying to match the myriad of cockpit parts with the call-outs in the instructions and I think I've got it sorted-out now, there's a definite disconnect between what the written instructions say, what the drawn instructions show and what the part numbers on the sprue indicate, strangely not mentioned in any kit review that I've read, (Hmmmm :hmmm ...). A fair degree of forensic expertise is required to get it all sorted but as I don't have any, I relied on the Detail & Scale book and great deal of dumb luck !!
I'll make a start later this week and post the usual progress pics as-and-when, hopefully when I'm done it will look close to this...
www.arcair.com/Gal3/2601-2700/Gal2636-SBD-1-Rapasi/00.shtm
...who can say ??
AFN
Ian.
