I went ahead and continued working on this build so that I could hopefully post an article about it on the Anniversary date of the "Great Mariana's Turkey Shoot", which just happens to be tomorrow. On this date, Payne happened to score a kill while flying with VF-16 from the Lexington, when he shot down an A6M Zero.

I wrapped the oleo struts with "Bare Metal Foil"

and gave the decals a sealer coat of Future...

Once this dried I used some "Testor's" Dull Coat to tone the shine down a little.

Here's how it looks now:

Other than some weathering, oil leaks and exhaust staining, (plus making an antennae lead cable from clear stretched sprue), this one is done. It has been a great kit for building, and I am very happy with the fit and ease of assembly on this one.

As usual, comments are encouraged.

This will be the last posting for this build thread, as hopefully tomorrow I will be able to post an article about the man and his machine.

Thanks for reading along, and I hope you have enjoyed the read as much as I did building the kit.

Take care.

Hellcats are sort of funny planes with respect to painting. They're just not very sexy to start with. They're just big, blunt, square... very generic looking. Like a P-47, with all of the curves taken out of it.
Getting the demarcation between the intermediate blue and the sea blue on the fuselage has given me fits in the past...too high...too low... too high on one side...too low on the other side. You go thru this iterative process to get it looking like its in the ball park and you ask yourself...did i get this right?

And then the insignias go on the fuselage and BAMM! it look like a hellcat. Funny how it works out.