1/48 Hasegawa SBD-4 Douglas Dauntless |
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Gallery Article by David Thompson
on July 18 2003 |
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This is the Hasegawa
SBD-4 finished in Royal New Zealand airforce markings. A mate got me
this kit for my birthday and I was pleasantly surprised to open the box and find
NZ markings in addition to the usual US ones, as I like to focus on WW2
Commonwealth aircraft.
The markings
indicate it belonged to the 25th squadron RNZAF and serial No. NZ5034 was
based at Espiritu Santo (New Hebrides), on loan from the US Marine Corp for
operational training. It never saw action while with the NZ airforce
(amazing what you can find out on the web!).
Click on
images below to see larger images
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Building was a
breeze. This was my first Hasegawa kit and if they all fit that well, I'll
be buying more. I cut out the dive brakes and drilled out the holes with a
small Dremel-type tool. I left one section of rear canopy off as I found
to display it fully open, you need to overlap three sections and I could not get
them to sit well.
The cockpit interior
was airbrushed with Model Master interior green, the underside with Model
Master ghost grey and the upper surface with Tamyia medium blue. I went
heavy with the panel line pre-shading in (a great technique I found on the
web). The medium blue is built up in layers, lighter over the panel lines
to let the pre-shading show through. I then spray the centre of some
panels in a lighter shade of medium blue to simulate fading.
After coating with
Tamyia clear gloss, the decals were applied using MicroSol (MicroSet was not
powerful enough to bed them into the panel lines etc). The instrument
panel uses the decals applied with the kit and MicroSol made the decals fit very
nicely.
I then applied Gunze
flat clear and a very dark grey wash into panel lines, plus a rust coloured wash
in some sections. The dark wask was also applied around fuel fillers, then
smeared to the rear to simulate fuel stains. Heavy exhaust staining was
sprayed on using Tamyia flat back with a bit of Model Masters field drab mixed
in (also the mix I use for pre-shading).
Radio wires were
added with stretched sprue. Weathering of the rear machine gun was
achieved by first spraying with Tamyia dull aluminium, then overcoating with
flat black and using fine sandpaper to rub off the black in strategic areas.
David Thompson