**** DONE: GB-69 1/72 Grumman F6F-3 - Maritime Aircraft WWII

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Weekly summary. After seeing that the wax was dry, I applied the decals.
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Well, we're now waiting for the decal sealant to dry; they're all in place and sealed.
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Preparing the weathering,
for the moment I'm looking at photos of real aircraft to make it look as realistic as possible.
In this project, I didn't use the paint scaling; I applied it directly from the pot, and it looks too dark.
The rear clear coat is already glued in place. One question: all the Navy colors from this period are described as FS 1xxxx, so I understand they were glossy, but as they wear down, will they become saturated by the metal itself or will they become matte?

The ANA606 Semi-Gloss Sea Blue like the name of the paint says was the satin (semi-gloss) coat but not the gloss. It was used for the three-tone camouflage from January 1943 to June 1944. However the specification also called for ANA607 Non Specular Sea Blue applied along the leading edges of the wings and horizontal stabilizers and the top of the fuselage. Also the paint name indicates it was a matt colour. The difference in the colour tinge between the ANA606 and ANA607 was really little. The gloss version of the Sea Blue was the overall ANA623 Glossy Sea Blue paint and was used from June 1944 to war end.

The ANA608 Intermediate Blue and ANA601 Insignia White were the Non-Specular colours.

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Tu sum up ... the three-tone camouflage was the matt one basicly. The semi-gloss ANA606 was getting the matt appearance quickly and the whole plane seemed to be painted matt. So taking all that into the consideration your model should be of matt tone.
 
In terms of size, the Hellcat was the second largest single engine fighter of the war, being just slightly smaller than the Republic P-47 "Thunderbolt".

I am being pedantic I know but this is one of those oft repeated "facts" that is debatable. The Jug is more accurately described, in my opinion anyway, as the HEAVIEST single engine fighter of the war. It has higher empty, gross, and max takeoff weights than the Hellcat. It is also longer in terms of the length of the fuselage. However, by the most commonly used metrics to determine physical size, those being wing span and wing area, the Hellcat is actually the larger of the two airplanes. I will step down from the soap box now!
 

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