1:32 F-4F-4 Wildcat (US NAVY)

The Grumman Wildcat, fighter of the first months in the Pacific

The stubby aircraft with a barrel-shaped fuselage and hand-cranked landing gear was in 1942 the only thing the US Navy could put up against the Japanese fighters. The version with six machine guns and folding wings allowed a carrier deck to take considerably more aircraft. Characteristic is the cockpit with its heavily divided framing and the fixed side windows below the sliding section.

How the balance between 1:32 and 1:24 changes

The number of glazing segments does not change with scale, only their size does. In 1:32 every frame is a narrow strip on which a brush has almost no way of drawing a straight line, whereas in a larger scale it is at least in theory paintable. Paradoxically the smaller scale therefore gains more from a mask, because the hand alternative is practically out of reach there. The heavily divided framing of this cockpit is a textbook example.

What the box holds

• glazing masks for both faces of the clear part
• two masks for the national insignia

The item does not include decals, so count on sourcing them separately. The star in a circle of the American insignia comes out cleanly when sprayed if the mask is coated with clear varnish once in place, sealing its edge.

Folding wings and what follows from them

The wings turned back along the fuselage, so on deck the aircraft took up barely half its original width. Kits sometimes offer this mechanism as an optional position and a model with folded wings looks unusual on a shelf. Whichever variant the builder picks, the cockpit stays the same and the masking does not change at all. It pays to decide before painting starts, though, because the wing joint is painted differently in the two positions.

The model itself is not supplied.