1:32 F4U-1 CORSAIR

A cage of bars above the pilot's head

The first production Corsairs were given a canopy made up of narrow panes clamped in a dense grid of bars. The nickname birdcage caught on with good reason: through that tangle of frames the pilot's view forward and down was restricted enough to make landing on a deck troublesome. A modeler has the opposite problem, though: that grid has to be faithfully painted from both sides.

Inside the cockpit the gunsight, the instrument panel and the tall seat back are clearly visible, and the frame around them has a different color from the outside of the machine. The set carries an outer and an inner mask precisely so that this boundary can be sprayed and does not have to be laboriously brushed over.

Box contents

• A mask for the birdcage divided into an outer and a cockpit layer.
• Three stencils for the roundels of naval aviation.
• A sheet with supplementary decals for numbers and inscriptions.
• The shape of the parts follows the intricately divided canopy of the large model.

The more bars a cockpit has, the sooner cutting tape by hand takes its revenge. It is enough for two neighboring strips to come out a tenth of a millimeter apart and the eye registers it on the finished model at once. Pre-cut pieces remove that unevenness.

A practical note

Fit the inner mask before the fuselage is glued up, with tweezers and good light. Once sprayed, lift it before the finish has cured completely; the edge then stays clean. Adhesive residue on the acrylic is dissolved by a drop of warm water with detergent; solvents have no place on it.