MODEL OTAKU: Tamiya F4U-1 Birdcage Corsair

Ah yes, another aircraft! This is the Tamiya F4U-1 Birdcage Corsair in 1/72nd scale. I had my eye on this kit for a while and picked it up in Tokyo when I saw it on a bargain table for 500 yen. What a beautiful little kit. Like just about all of Tamiya’s products, the engineering is impeccable. All parts fit perfectly.

I used the Eduard PE set which added a lot to the cockpit area. Not much else to tell… I used Tamiya Light Sea Blue for the upper surfaces and Light Gull Gray for the undersurfaces. I post shaded and gave some nicks and dings with a silver #9 artist pencil. I gave the whole aircraft a wash with black oil paint diluted with mineral spirits. After that I dry brushed the plane with ground light beige and white pastel chalk and lightly shaded the area around the exhaust with black pastels.

Model Otaku (ﾌﾟﾗﾓｵﾀｸ) - Japanese for "Model Geek"

This is my modeling site. I’ve been building models for as long as I can remember. The first kits I can remember actually building myself and not having my Dad help me with were those quarter scale Aurora tank kits from the late 1960’s that came with the vacuform battlefield display stands. The detail and fit were horrible but the box art was cool and they were just the thing to get a kid hooked. I remember well riding my bike past Willow Grove Naval Air Station on countless trips to the strip mall with the Allied Hobbies shop. I spent my lawn mowing money practically before I earned it. Like many guys from my generation I took a hiatus from the hobby to go to college, start a family and approach near middle age. When my son got old enough to give models a try I started to remember what I had been missing. I finally got back into the hobby at the level I was at as a kid while I was deployed to Iraq. I didn’t have a lot of time or space to build while I was there but I was able to put a few kits together and partake of the astounding generosity of the modelers back on the home front who donated kits and supplies for the troops. Now it’s my cheap form of psychotherapy. Nothing seems to purge the demons quite like fiddling with small pieces of plastic, resin and photoetch brass! Usually on the rare occasions when I complete a project I have it put in the local hobby shop case for a while, then take it home and put it on the shelves in my basement workshop. It always seemed a shame to me to have them where no one but me could enjoy them. I hope you’ll enjoy viewing my feeble efforts.

Tamiya F4U-1 Birdcage Corsair

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