Gonna do a Skyraider from the Korean war, using the Italeri boxing of the old Esci kit with Cutting Edge decals.

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

starting with the cockpit

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Reinhard, @grimreaper
This is an excellent choice, and I look forward to watching your dad work his magic on this kit. Thanks for starting and documenting yet another build journal for us to follow along with. I'm sorry to hear the decals have shattered on your kit.

I have one of the old Monogram kits in 1/48 scale #5419 with the big "stinging bee" on the tail, but I'm not sure if it would work to build a Korean War bird. I think it is one of the first / original releases and it dates back around the late 1970's or early 80's.

My Dad was a Korean War combat veteran and he had nothing but praise for the pilots who flew the Skyraiders, Corsairs and C-47's.

By the looks of things you guys are already making some good progress.

troublefree progress so far...

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Interestingly enough, VF-54's and VF-194's Skyraiders had a role in the "true story" of "the Bridges at Toko-ri."

ESCI marked the holes for the outer bomb rack locating pins wrong, they did it parallel to the wing leading edge but should be in a 90 degree angle to the fuselage length axis

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Nice that you discovered the wrongly positioned rack holes, my friend @grimreaper!

the side inserts don´t really fit good
because some filling and rescribing is necessary, my dad decided to rescribe the whole thing

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.