A tracked vehicle, a wheeled vehicle, and a wingy thing. A little sump’n sump’n fer airybody.
So where to start?
After looking at the AMT kit it looks as if it may need the most work. I’ve never seen a kit with this much flash before - and remember - I’ve built East German kits!
No matter what the genre I hate overly thick parts. I’d rather a part have incorrect detail than be too thick. At least with incorrect detail most people don’t even know. But overly thick parts stick out like, well, you know the one about the speedo…
Mo’ betta. A little smoothing out with liquid cement and it’ll be fine.
And that seat - voof! And the cockpit walls are pretty much ficticious. True Details to the rescue:
You can see the diamond tread tires in the original photo. True Details comes through again.
While I was on a thinning spree I thinned out the cowl flaps. For comparison you can see the one on the left is unfinished. This makes a huge difference IMO.
The sad two piece nose art decal in the kit. Not even sure the colors are correct. And for only one side?
Thankfully I found this set:
And for good measure, I got this one just for the stenciling:
Although I have to be careful here. The South Pacific planes were originally OD mottled with dark green. At some point the 45th Fighter Squadron repainted their planes to match the coral color of the island. In looking at photos you can see where they simply put tape over the stenciled data and then sprayed the new color over it. It left patches of OD with black stenciling on the tan aircraft. Would look horrible to a judge at a contest, but thankfully I don’t build for them.