An amazing save, Louis @lgardner
No signs left of the disaster that happened. It even gave you the chance to add the wingtip lights and they do look great.

Two steps back and many forward! It does suck to have to remove what's already been accomplished but in the end the save looks great.

@lgardner - Amazing work to get the paint and decals back in order Louis. A very unfortunate thing with the Rustoleum clear. I think Rustoleum tends to be quite 'hot' in order to bite into a lot of different surfaces. Probably a good choice to discontinue it's use in the model shop.
I do agree that the wing tip lights add a lot of visual interest as well. It's really looking fantastic!

Tom Bebout (@tom-bebout)
Eric Berg (@eb801)
John vd Biggelaar (@johnb)
Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
gary sausmikat (@gwskat)
David Butler (@dbutlr)
Brian Mennenoh (@brithebuilder)
Rob Anderson (@robertandy)

Thank you all for the kind words. I have another project that is going to be a tribute build that should be in the headlines section on July 29th, if things go as planned. So I have not been working too much on the Corsairs...

Also I have been bothered with how the clear Rustoleum had affected the US national insignia under the wing on Corsair #883 as well. It left some marks on the decal surface here too, just as it did on the #740 Corsair. I didn't want to remove the decal, because it has a different color around the border from what we are accustomed to seeing. I was thinking about various ways on how to fix it... but other than replacing it with another decal, I came up short. I still have not figured out how to replace the off Blue border, other than just substituting a standard US insignia in it's place.

So off it goes !

I carefully started scraping the old decal off. I had to use some very fine sandpaper as well.

In the end, it looked like this.

Now when I start spraying the Intermediate Blue on my tribute project, I'll spray this lower wing again on the #883 Corsair.

For now, one step forward, and two steps back.

Please check out my tribute build. It's dedicated to a PV-1 Ventura crew that tragically lost their lives here during the War at our local airport when it was a dedicated US Navy training base.

I'll be starting a new build journal for it as part of the Jim Sullivan group.

As always, comments are encouraged. Thanks for stopping by.

Always a pity if this happens, Louis @lgardner
With your skills it will look perfect after the corrections are done.

Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
John vd Biggelaar (@johnb)
Tom Cleaver (@tcinla)

I made an attempt at fixing the insignia, but I wasn't happy with how it looked. Something just didn't look right to me, and I can't explain why. Plus a closer inspection revealed the fuselage insignias were also compromised, along with the side numbers. Chances are I will have to strip these two down to bare plastic, or at a minimum sand them down some and possibly finish them up as camouflaged FAA planes... but I have also always wanted to build a Latin American camouflaged or "mostly Gray" FAS Corsair from El Salvador or Nicaragua. I think I could convert these to a later F4U-1D if necessary. An Argentine Corsair would be cool too...

Time will tell exactly what happens with this.

If I end up doing the latter of these options, I will bring out two more partially assembled Corsairs from the Corsair Kindergarten, and finish them up as Boyington's planes.

Thankfully I was able to get a new set of decals that I ordered directly from Fundekals. Now I have the complete set, and this is good, because I have also ordered a pair of the Magic Factory Corsairs. These are the two to a box edition, where one is a night fighter "bird cage" version, and the other is the more common raised cabin F4U-1A as we call it today. Sprue Brothers had them on sale and I was also able to use some of my accumulated points, so I managed to get them at an even better discount.

I thought I would resume work on these two Corsairs, to honor "Pappy" who was shot down exactly 80 years ago on this very date in 1944.

Now that I have completed the 1/48 scale ICM Ki-21 Sally, I can resume work on these Corsairs and also the P-51 Mustang builds that I have underway with Pedro Rocha.
Pedro L. Rocha (@holzhamer)

So please follow along with me as I complete these two Corsairs and get them across the finish line.

Thanks for stopping by, and as always comments are encouraged.

Bolt also has the honor of having written an article for TV Guide in 1976 when "Baa Baa Blacksheep" got started on TV explaining that Boyington's story about who the "blacksheep" were and how the squadron got started was a complete and total lie (which it was). Like nearly everyone else who ever flew with Boyington (Charles Older told me he hated to have to admit Boyington was a fellow Marine, and that "he couldn't navigate his way around the breakfast table, let alone from Chungking to Hengyang"), Bolton was no fan.

Unfortunately, most of the "records" of the final three months of the Rabaul campaign are completely suspect, due to the fact that when ComNorSols (a USMC command) was put in charge of the campaign, they canceled the requirement of having one other pilot confirm a victory claim for it to be accepted. While the overwhelming majority of pilots submitted claims in good faith, there is solid evidence that Marine "ace" Robert M. Hanson's claims are 90% false - his commander was so suspicious about how he always seemed to "lose" his wingman and return with claims for 2 or 3 victories that he put the best pilot in the squadron as his wingman on what turned out to be his final flight. Despite Hanson's best efforts to lose his wingman with wild maneuvers, he was unable to do so. He finally dived away and made a strafing pass on the light tower outside Rabaul harbor - which he didn't realize had been turned into flak trap until he was shot down. By the time the wingman got back to Torokina, the paperwork had already been submitted for Hanson to get the MoH (which he did). It's been demonstrated that individual victory claims by all sides and all participants since 1915 have been inflated by a factor of 2-3x reality. The only claim that counts is at the end of the campaign - who is still operational. (As Air Marshal Dowding once famously said when RAF claims in the BoB were questioned, "If we're wrong, they'll be in London in a week.")

When I met Boyington back at the 1977 Fresno Warbirds Fly-In, I thought he was a homeless person who'd walked onto the field (I wasn't far from wrong). But most of "Baa Baa Blacksheep" has been refuted by both other members of the squadron and other researchers.

I personally list Boyington down there with Cunningham and Billy Bishop as someone I will never memorialize with a model.

Catching up on the Corsairs, that Rustoleum paint may be too "hot" to use on even hobby grade enamels. With the Future clear coat, the dissimilar decal material vs Rustoleum caused some kind of chemical reaction. Tough luck after almost at the finish line. Again with the negative talk on Pappy TC, really? You mentioned that at the start of this thread way back when. Get over it. He was a gruffy Marine Aviator, yet he put his men before him. Despite his trespasses to himself which he has admitted. You have made your point over the years you do not like the man. One of many, me included, however lets just keep to the subject and keep your personal opinions to your books.