Evening folks, think it's time for another build thread on another Corsair. Or two. And if I'm building the new Magic Factory kit, we'll I suppose I'll need a Tamiya one nearby to compare it with...
Anyways I've had my eye on this Magic Factory kit for a while and after it being stuck in delivery limbo for the better part of 2 months it's finally here me to get my hands on. So what's in this big box?
Well, two Corsairs and plenty of parts between them. One builds up as a F4U-1A, the other as an F4U-2 and with minimal changes you can build that up as an F4U-1 which is how mine will be done as.
Looking at the parts and the instructions, it appears MF went and took a page out of the Tamiya 1/32nd book. It definitely appears to build more akin to a downscaled version of the Tamiya /32nd, rather than a more detailed version of the Tamiya /48, which isn't a bad thing.
It goes without saying but the kit is more detailed than the Tamiya 1/48, but you'd expect that from a kit from 2023 compared to one from 1996. Interior detail is very nice, wheel wells look simple but good, the engine is at a glance very detailed (more on that later), the cockpit is a great improvement. Exterior details are also improved, I find the panel line work to be a bit more fine and some rivets are included though it's worth noting it's probably about 1/3rd of the amount of rivets needed. This can serve as a good base to do your own riveting, or just a good way to do chipping and weathering even if its not 100% there.
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Also worth noting at a glance that the kit has flaps with the post-war foot step in them, despite not being present on the aircraft depicted. There are parts where the flap has the cutout, and parts where the cutout is done as a recessed detail (which isn't correct either). It's also worth noting that the F4U-2 has a more accurate radome than the Tamiya depiction, which I'll likely paint up and put on my old F4U-2 model at some point during this build.
The kit comes with 4 marking options but none appeal to me, largely due to having done 2 of the options already. I'm thinking the F4U-1A will end up as 'Ole 122', a Corsair so good looking it ended up on the box art for the 1/48 and 1/32 Tamiya kits. The birdcage may be Ken Walsh's, but the photos of it aren't ideal however my plan to do something with a bit more lively nose art won't work due to the the lack of decal and masking options.
First Steps
First step for me was to work on the wing, the kit comes with one wing folded and one wing unfolded, but as as Tom Cleaver showed in his build you can easily do this as two unfolded wings if you prefer which is what I did here.
I must say the wing definitely goes together nice, much better than the Tamiya one does, and once again mimicking what can be seen in the Tamiya 32nd. The gun bays are not needed at all so the panels are glued in place and these internals are left out. I modified one for wheels up, and the parts fit well with minimal issue when converting to building this way. Some styrene was used to help act as a brace to improve gluing points, and a little bit of filler used for any outlining gaps.
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With this hurdle done and dusted, and much more simple than expected, I moved onto the engine. The engine is far more detailed than the Tamiya especially with the crank case and it's features. That being said, the cylinder rows are divided into a front and rear half and the join here wasn't very good. While I'm not too fused since I'll be closing these away, it's worth noting that while you could get a decent looking out of box engine for an opened up display you'd need to work on that gap quite a bit to make it look nice. Also something that is rather annoying is how the black push rods are moulded into the sprue, I couldn't find a way to remove them from the sprue without damage. Overall I'd say the Hobbyboss Corsair engine is better purely due to the better fit, but of course those kits have their own issues in other areas.
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After this I started work on the cockpit, painting up the Birdcage in a bronze green interior mix. I used a similar mix to what I used in my F4F-3 ages ago but improved it slightly, I used roughly equal parts of XF-5 Green, XF-8 Blue, and XF-70 Dark Green 2, mixed well and with white added to taste. Pretty happy with the resulting shade, seems a decent match to what I can see in the 1/1 scale Birdcage restoration colours.
Salmon pink was mixed up and sprayed around, it won't be seen but it was more to see what colours work for when I do come to using this colour later for weathering. I used MRP RAF Marking Red with white added for this.
The -1A gets tamiya XF-4 for the Zinc Chromite, and MRP Interior green for the cockpit. And so does the the Tamiya kit I'm also building at this time. When building the interior do note that the kit has the flare gun, briefly seen between March 1944 until May. This flare gun would fire down through a taped hole in the floor, but this would cause a large about of Carbon Monoxide in the cockpit so was quickly removed. On an F4U-1 don't include this part, on an F4U-1A check your dates and either remove just the gun or the gun and the tube, I can't personally say whether the F4U-2 had it or not since they're based on the Birdcage, but the decal schemes in the box are from a period that the -1A would have had it.
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And that brings us to now, where I'm currently painting up the cockpit to look nice and shiny. Worth noting that the F4U-1 will naturally get the F4U-2 parts, so the instrument panel is slightly wrong due to the addition of the radar screen. I won't be using the kit instrument decals for this, but even if I did the decal doesn't actually have this radar scope even if the plastic part does.
Side by side with the Tamiya we can see a nice amount of improvement over the older kit, as expected
1 additional image. Click to enlarge.
