Boeing F4B-4

**Paperwarrior** · #1 08-01-2010, 08:07 PM

Greetings,

For those who don't know Roman has created a great new aircraft from the Golden Age...the Boeing F4B-4 in many different liveries. I decided to make one based on board the USS Saratoga. The Felix the Cat 6-F-10.

I spent a good bit of today working on it as the outside temperatures had climbed to 104 degrees in the shade. Even with the A/C on and fan going my work room was a bit warm. Anyway...

This is a great kit! It represents the aircraft flown by the Section Leader (6-F-10 (Leader) and the rest of his section would have flow 6-F-11 and 6-F-12). The parts are well laid out and the instructions are quite easy to follow. For those who like detailed cockpits you got it. I was surprised at how much detail is in that cockpit....even the 1-72nd scale version. All the parts thus far fit real well. I did have a mix up on the alignment on the port side...sorry Felix. That isn't Roman's fault. It is all mine. I'm not sure what I did. When I dry fit the parts all lined up well, but when I got to glueing I noticed I'd off set by about a 16th of an inch. I'm not real happy with the engine cowling. I just need to find a way to smooth it out. Guess I'll call this my practice run before making the others, eh?

Jeff

P.S. Don, background look familiar. Too many projects. Too little time.

**birder** · #2 08-01-2010, 09:20 PM

Great job, Jeff, looks good to me.

(This is my favorite era of aircraft, so nice to see this model)

**Don Boose** · #3 08-01-2010, 09:47 PM

Very nice, indeed, Jeff. I bought these from Roman, too, as well as both sets of SBC-4s and look forward to trying my hand at them eventually. I'm also looking forward to the Curtiss F11Cs (Remember the trio of Monogram 1/72 fighters of the 30s? Can the P6E be far behind?)

Best wishes on the completion of this build!

Don

**Paperwarrior** · #4 08-02-2010, 04:34 AM

Thanks Birder and Don,

Yep, I too picked up a set of SBC-4s (off the USS Lexington) and am awaiting the F11Cs. The P6E would be a nice addition. I put in a request for an Grumman F3F.

Jeff

**ghshinn** · #5 08-02-2010, 07:36 AM

It's great to see your work on the F4B. I ran across an older gentleman at the San Diego Air and Space Museum that flew the aircraft - the F4B-3, as I recall - out of North Island Naval Air Station in the early 1930's. His cousin or brother (can't remember which) flew the P-12 variant for the army. It's good to see the great job you're doing on a venerable aircraft.

Garland

**Wyvern** · #6 08-02-2010, 10:39 AM

Looks great! I also bought the kit and will be scheduling my first build from it shortly.

Wyvern

**wag** · #7 08-02-2010, 02:54 PM

I printed out three versions of this kit as soon as I got it but I got sidetracked by another project. I'll be following along.
Wayne

**DrLaser** · #8 08-02-2010, 03:03 PM

Really looking forward to watching this build - I still have my Monogram 1/72 plane on the shelf (Yikes! Must be over 40 years old). The "Felix the Cat" squadron was a natural for this plane - can't wait to make one. Say, that MiG in the background looks familiar. Just where can I buy this cardmodel?

**Paperwarrior** · #9 08-02-2010, 07:23 PM

Thanks for the comments guys. Much appreciated. I am a bit befuddled over that slip up with Felix considering on dry fit it all lined up well. :( Oh well, good practice model. Also, of note...I opted not to do rigging on this particular model. I wanted to see how the kit, overall, went together to figure out how best to do it. Some of the rigging on the real bird goes from the upper wing down to the landing gear struts. Hmmm, how best to do that on this kit. That sort of thing.

Garland, that is an interesting story. I'm sure there aren't too many folks left who can say they flew the F4B or its Army counterpart.

John, The MiG 21 is a, you guessed it Fiddler's Green model. It is the first kit I made after getting back from Iraq, as I recall. As for the F4B-4 Roman Vasyliev produced it. I got it direct from him via e-mail. I looked on his website, der Kampfflieger card models - Aircrafts but didn't see it there. Sometimes his kits are on ecardmodels.com, ECardmodels.com Shop, but I didn't see it there yet, either. Suspect it is in the works. You might try e-mailing Roman at [email protected] and ask him about it. I'm sure he'd be more than happy to help.

I didn't get anything done on the model today. This pesky thing called work got in the way. Seems these Generals and Colonels expect work to actually get done in my office.

Well, that and my kids distracted me this evening. Even for dogs pools are nice at 105 degrees.

Jeff

**Paperwarrior** · #10 08-03-2010, 04:30 PM

Another day. I just added the wing struts. The plan for the kit is to fold the paper over along the dotted lines to give the part a two sided appearance. I NEVER have any luck doing this.

So, I cut each piece out and glued them together. Much better. :D

I forgot to mention one thing I did. Former "G" is the back of the cockpit. fusalage part 14 wraps around it. I cut a small notch in 14 that corrisponds to the headrest. This allowed for a better fit.