After assembling the cockpit, which needed a little extra detail added to along the sides of the fuselage to fill up the interior was painted US Interior Green. Once dry the kit decals were added to the instrument panel and consoles, not as flash as the Tamiya F4 kit but at this scale the decals do the job. Scott Van Aken's wonderful Minicraft/Hasegawa F4U-1 Review  (may not currently be available) shows how to add the extra details to the interior

Assembling the fuselage presented no problems and no filler was needed at all. In fact I barely had to do any sanding on the joint. Wings were assembled next and again no problems were encountered, apart from having to prise the front joints apart to add the separate oil cooler fins that I had forgotten to glue in before. Doh!

Wing assembly was then glued to the fuselage and because of the way that Hasegawa have approached this means that there is almost no need for filler, a tiny dribble of superglue was needed on the underside joint and that was it.

Tailplanes were added and this is getting boring but again no filler was needed. In fact the only time I had to break out the filler was to fill the flap step in (see photo)

Total assembly time for the major airframe was less than 1 hour. Remember the days when you could build up that Airfix or Matchbox Bf-109, paint it, slap the decals on it and have it flying around the living room terrorizing the cat in less than ½ hour? Wheels were cleaned up, flats filed on the bottoms and ejector pin marks disguised as much as possible by re-scribing the tread pattern using a razor saw. While on the subject of undercarriage remember that when fitting the tailwheel to remove the arrester hook as RNZAF Corsairs did not have them fitted.

RNZAF Corsairs saw active service in Bougainville and although never scored a kill over Japanese aircraft were used extensively for ground attack duties in conjunction with CAC Boomerangs of the RAAF, Most of the time the Corsairs were operating in hot dry dusty conditions with very little maintenance to unimportant details like paint.

Most NZ Corsairs were painted Matt White undersides with NZ Ocean Blue uppers which due to the climate didn’t stay pristine for long, the blue in particular fading and weathering badly.

First step was to pre-shade all panel lines (see photo) then Tamiya XF-2 Flat White was carefully sprayed over the bottom of the aircraft, with the airbrush set to about 3 mm spray width the squares between the black pre-shaded panels were painted in.

Then with the airbrush adjusted out to its maximum setting light coats were misted over the entire bottom until the required results were achieved.

Once I was happy with the results the underside was masked off and the NZ Ocean blue (Tamiya XF-18 Medium Blue with a drop or two of white added) was sprayed over the rest of the aircraft using the same technique as the underside. To weather the upper wings and fuselage even more I added about 5 drops of light grey to the remainder of the paint left in the airbrush and lightly dusted the very top of the fuselage to give the paint that UV faded look. Random panels were carefully painted in on the wings and tailplanes to give it a patchy look.

After a quick coat of future and leaving for 24 hours it was time to apply the decals, only one aircraft is shown in the instructions No 31 NZ 5531 stationed at Ardmore part of No 3 Service Unit a backup to the units fighting in the Pacific.

Like all Flying Kiwis’ decals to-date they went on with no fuss or problems. Once dry and light exhaust and gun smudging added the Corsair was given a final coat of future and left to dry overnight

Small sundry items were added and finally you have a RNZAF Corsair to add to the collection of Mustangs and P-40s.

I usually don’t add the aerial wires to my aircraft as they have to be displayed on open selves and leaving the rigging off makes it a lot easier to dust them.