Reviewed by Rodger Kelly
 

HyperScale is proudly sponsored by Squadron

Custom Aeronautical Miniatures (Cam Decals) have covered these two aircraft in 1/48 scale on their 48-110 Battlin’ Wildcats sheet. Thankfully, for the fans of the larger 1/32 scale, Cam Decals have scaled them up and issued them as 32-145 Battlin’ Wildcats. The 48-110 Battlin’ Wildcats sheet has been previewed previously here on Hyperscale and I see no reason to re-invent the wheel so I have cut-and-pasted the relevant parts of that preview here.

The first aircraft is Bureau No 1876 from VF-72 when based on the USS Wasp in February 1941. It is painted in overall aluminium with orange-yellow upper wings and gloss black vertical and horizontal stabilizers and lower cowling. The modeller has to paint the diagonal wing bands in gloss black and edge them with the supplied white stripes. Ouch! There is a disaster waiting to happen. I would have preferred to have seen it the other way round – paint the stripe on in white and then apply a thicker black decal down the centre.

The second aircraft is a USMC one, Bureau No 3923, from VMF-111 and it is painted in overall light grey with Wargames red crosses painted on both sides of the fuselage and the tops and bottoms of the wings. The fuselage red crosses have been manufactured to make allowances for the curved sides of the fuselage – a nice touch. Whilst this scheme lacks the visual appeal of the “Yellow Winged” Wildcats it is great to see that Cam Decals have provided decals of this scheme. The red crosses will certainly make this one stand out in your model cabinet.

Enough national insignia are provided to enable one aircraft to be built. They have been supplied as two-part decals to address the register issue. Good news really as you can uses the larger ones to build a later -4 Wildcat that did not use the red centre.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

The decals themselves have been printed by Microscale. The instruction sheet is the ubiquitous A-4 sized sheet with detailed drawings for either subject to show the colour scheme, decal placement. The stiff cardboard header also shows the same profiles this time however, they are in colour.

Packaging is in the tried and true Zip-loc bag with a stiff cardboard header, simple yet effective.

The placement sheet recommends the old Revell F4F-4 kit converted to -3 standards. This conversion is not really for the feint hearted. If you really want to do it you can find guidance on Scott Van Aken’s Modelling Madness website:

http://m2reviews.cnsi.net/kitindex/kitindexf.htm

Or, you wait for the new 1/32 scale Trumpeter F4F-3 kit to hit the shelves.

Recommended.

Thanks to Brookhurst Hobbies for the review sample.

CAM Decals are available online from their website at http://www.camdecals.com and from Brookhurst Hobbies

CAM Decals 59 page 2002 color catalog of decals and resin parts is also
now available through the CAM Decals website

Review Copyright © 2003 by Rodger Kelly
This Page Created on 05 February, 2003
Last updated 14 August, 2003

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