I've just built three models in three days! :-D
But I have to admit, it was a special case.
My airbrush has been unserviceable for a couple of weeks. The air valve assembly that I needed finally arrived on Thursday, so I was good to go. In order to get me back into the swing of things, I thought I would do a number of quick builds. The three kits were the new Airfix Sea Fury and the Hobby Boss F4U-4 and F6F-5, all in 1/72. They are all exceedingly simple kits.
I built them as a connected "what if?" project.
Part 1. What if... Hawker had started development of the Sea Fury eighteen months earlier? In that case, the Sea Fury would have been in FAA service before the end of the war. I built the Airfix Sea Fury as JT634 13-7/P of
1834 NAS aboard HMS Victorious in 1945. Disruptive pattern uppersurfaces with British Pacific Fleet insignia. You may notice that JT634 was actually a Corsair II, but in this timeline, the FAA didn't need as many lend-lease American aircraft. The Airfix kit is quite basic but still quite nice for all that. It reminds me of late-70s vintage kits. If it had actually been released then, it would have been a stunner.Part 2. What if... Hawker had abandoned development of the Sea Fury to concentrate on the Sea Hawk? In that case, the FAA would have needed to keep their US aircraft long after the second world war had finished. I built the Hobby Boss F6F-5 as a Hellcat II of the RNVR in 1948. It is in uppersurface Extra Dark Sea Grey and lowersurface Sky, with a low demarcation line. The markings are taken directly from one option in the Airfix Sea Fury kit. The F4U-4 uses the other Sea Fury marking option. It is built as a Corsair V of 802 NAS aboard HMS Ocean operating off Korea in
1952. The FAA never used the F4U-4 version, but in this timeline they did, because there was nothing else available. The Corsair really looks the part in FAA colours with invasion stripes.So... I'll admit that these aren't the most detailed models. They are little more than fancy paint dummies. But I had a lot of fun building them and now that I have recharged my batteries I'm all set to jump right back in at the deep end! :-D