First question about this HobbyBoss kit - markings. There is a single photo (attached) of this particular aircraft. This shot was made sometime between August and October 1944 near Greece or Italy. You can see that invasion stripes are corrupted. Stripes on the decals "corrupted" too. Anyway I was not going to use decals for invasion stripes (painted it will look better), but I was thinking about this photo. So, I think that this aircraft was repainted after some repair - area from canopy to national insignia looks lighter than others and cleaner. I'm going to paint stripes entirely to represent the possible look of an aircraft during invasion.

I've started with dry assemble to check the fit. Then I glued together main wheels, stabilizers with elevators and fuel tank - to test plastic and fit. All is good, but not excellent.

PS. Sorry for my English - I'm not a native speaker...

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

That's an interesting photo, Dmitry. This is my opinion, and I could be wrong about this, but I think the lighter color you see aft of the cockpit could be the lighter (or badly faded) of the two upper camouflage colors. You can see a patch of the lighter color on the wing just below the roundel as well. If I'm correct they should be FAA dark slate gray and dark sea gray on the uppers with sky lower surfaces. It looks like the invasion stripes on the upper fuselage and the aft part of the wing were not very well applied and peeled off! They also don't appear to carry around to the bottom of the fuselage.

It looks like you have a good start to the model!

Looks like a great kit from your photos Dmitry. I look forward to seeing your Hellcat progress.

Grumman did in fact use correct FAA colors (Dupont mixed) for their Martlet/Wildcats, Tarpon/Avengers and Hellcats. The lighter color in the photo is Dark Slate Grey, the darker color is Dark Sea Grey. The invasion stripes were likely distemper applied over the factory-painted lacquer, which is why with water and brooms the stripes came off as easy as they did. This was likely the end of August/early Septemer, before Emperor left for the Pacific with her Hellcats.

I have an Eduard kit with the full invasion stripes on my blog here, if you want to check it out.

Wow! You are really getting going with this build. Looks great.

Dmitry, you are going to be finished before the rest of us get started...lol
Very nice work indeed

Some build updates. I made a masks for windows behind canopy, pre-painted tail wheel and hook and glued fuselage. Also I pre-painted main wheel bays before assembling wings - I've started with pre-shading with black colour and then I used a darker variant of a base colour (RAF Sky).

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Cool! That's what I call attention to detail 🙂