1:72 F4F-3 Wildcat - Zoom Set (for Arma Hobby Kits)

The Wildcat before entering the war

The F4F-3 version still had a fixed wing with no folding mechanism and four .50 caliber machine guns. It was exactly these machines that made up the armament of American carrier and Marine squadrons at the turn of 1941 and 1942, when the Wildcat bore the weight of the first months of fighting in the Pacific and had to cope with a more agile opponent. The small, squat fighter proved exceptionally tough in the process.

The 1:72 scale puts the builder up against a hard limit. The straps in the cockpit were barely a few centimeters wide in reality, and in scale that means a belt thinner than the finest rib that can be cut into a mold at all. The result is a smooth seat with nothing on it and an instrument panel on which one counts dimples rather than dials. A photo-etched sheet, by contrast, is thin enough that a strap looks like a strap and can be folded over the edge of the shell.

The fret brings a panel with printed instruments, belts, levers and several small parts for the space behind the seat. The work is simple: a part is cut off at its bridge, bent carefully over the edge of a steel ruler and seated with super glue applied on the tip of a wire. The colored parts are left as they are, and the rest can be painted once degreased.

A small scale rewards patience differently from a large one. The model tends to be finished in a few evenings, but the difference between a bare and an equipped cockpit shows even under a closed canopy, because that is exactly where a viewer's eye goes first. The straps therefore belong on the seat before the fuselage is joined. The fret is small, so it pays to work over a light surface, on which a part that flies off can be found.