This TBM-3 kit is in the box of the Academy, and the contents are the masterpiece kit of the old Accurate Miniature. Decal is made of high-quality Cartograf, so I bought it long ago. Even now, this kit is on sale.
A decal is Cartograf. Though I bought it long ago, the coloring is being kept.
There are many more parts compared to Yak-3 made the other day. There is much volume, too.
A glance at the assembly instructions made me very uneasy. It did not specify the place to be installed properly. I wonder if expert air modelers probably purchased the kit of the Accurate Miniature in the old days. It is probably made by a modeler who has a lot of data.
This kit has a high level of assembly difficulty. I don’t know what to start with. First of all, the parts inside the aircraft are attached. I think the parts’ fitting is good, but it isn’t easy to understand the assembly manual. As I am usually used to a kit of TAMIYA and Hasegawa, I feel it isn’t easy.
(2019/07/20)
I wasn’t in the mood for painting now, so I formed a part that seemed to be able to be assembled little by little. I can not go any further unless I make a cockpit and paste the aircraft together.
It’s glued together in parts on the left and right with parts and many molds in the interior, and it’s pasted together in the end. I was surprised that this way of making it had never been experienced before. It is necessary to assemble parts many times temporarily.
I advanced while painting, using the interior color of US Navy aircraft and matte black.
I could not draw the inside in every detail. Care must be taken to assemble interior parts and bond the left and right large aircraft parts. I think that the essential parts fit well.
(2019/07/22)
The engine cowl, the engine, and the rear rotating barrel have all been assembled, and now they’re in the shape of an airplane.
The TBM-3 Avenger has a lot of canopy frames, and both the canopy itself and the size of the plane are large, making it difficult to mask the clear parts before painting.
Now that the masking process is nearly complete, more severe problems have arisen. I think it’s a work stoppage level. I looked everywhere. I couldn’t find one side of the windshield of the rotating gun barrel. I was hesitant to pick up trash cans or vacuum cleaners to find them because they were dirty. It is unlikely that the cat will swallow the dropped parts because they are rather large parts. I thought about the possibility that the cat put it in the mouth and took it somewhere in the house. When I was meditating, I remembered that a few days ago, the sash was not tight enough, so I opened and closed the sash several times, and finally, the sash was correctly locked. The part was damaged considerably at that time. It was dark before I went to bed in the middle of the night, and I couldn’t see the clear parts. And this wreckage was found in the corner of the sash ditch. I’m sorry… I think I’ll stop assembling TBM-3.
Is this a fragment of all the parts? Or should I restore it as much as possible and bring it to completion without damage? I’ve lost a lot of motivation.
After a fierce battle with the Imperial Navy, this aircraft took the damage, and now that I have managed to build such a large aircraft, let’s do what I can. I’m sorry for blaming the cat. After all, the cause was that I did not manage the parts until the last time. Next time, I’ll put it in a small box. Before I moved, I kept the parts that were being assembled, so I thought I should do it properly from now on.
(2019/07/24)
There seems to be a bulkhead behind the rotating gun barrel. But I think the wind is blowing hard.
There are many troubles, but I want to start painting soon.
I masked the bomb compartment and engine cowl and applied a gradation paint base.
The TBM -3 is so large that it takes time to mask.
(2019/077/26)
I didn’t know how much to mask the white part at the bottom of the fuselage. I worked with a vague feeling. Well, you don’t have to be so nervous because there might have been a variety of airplanes.
That’s terrible. It seems that the paint was mixed between intermediate blue and blue-gray. I was in a daze. I think the color doesn’t change so much. The washing makes the tone darker, and the gradation paint makes the tone slightly lower, so I will go with it. I crushed the canopy, so I don’t care much.
Once the airbrush was done, I painted Creos C365 and Glossy Blue FS15042. I like this glossy blue color very much.
I thought I would do my best to open the weapons bay and keep the eye-catching point of the TBM-3. I made a big mistake while processing the door of this part casually.
It was written that the weapons bay door parts should be folded together. I could do something on the spot, so I was thinking of painting the front and back of the parts and finally assembling them, but they don’t fit the opening support parts. In the end, not only do I have to fold it, but I also have to separate it and make it fit. It would have been better if they had put together and checked the fitting from the beginning. Still, I think it would have been difficult to complete without understanding the basic structure of TBM -3 because the assembly manual is difficult. It’s worn out, so I’ll fix it with some putty or something.
(2019/07/28)
TBM -3 Avenger is finally finished. TBF and TBM are complicated, but Grumman manufactures TBF, and General Motors mass-produce TBM.
This time, it’s loaded with 500-pound bombs and rockets. Torpedoes can be armed, similar to a ship attack aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
The full-scale deployment of TBM-3 began in 1942, and it has been active since 1943, when Japan was gradually losing ground. I remember that TBM and TBF were involved in the sinking of Battleship Yamato, Battleship Musashi, and several Japanese aircraft carriers.
The size is large when built, and I am impressed that it can be loaded on many aircraft carriers. Wings can be folded.
After the war, some were deployed in Japan and used for anti-submarine patrol missions and training.
As noted in the making note, the right side of the clear parts of the rotating barrel was shattered, and all the pieces were scraped together and fixed with glue, just like the restoration of important cultural property. I thought it was battle damage in my mind, so I painted clear smoke to improve the appearance. But I can’t help, but the damage stands out.
It’s not that I lacked concentration, but to be honest, it was made with a lot of carelessness, the decal was thick and crumbly, and the correction made my brush drawing trace uneven, which was terrible. The color is a little wrong.
A decal on the propeller looks cool.
I forgot the Cartograf decals are not matched with a strong decal softer. At least Creos Mark Softer is suspicious. I made a mistake because Hasegawa and Academy’s original decals are hard and have no problem in many cases.
Weapon Bay has 4×500-pound bombs. It is pretty heavy when combined with eight rockets. I think the actual airplane has a lot of loads and is excellent.
There are many things like rockets and antennas on the underside of the aircraft.
I regret I made a mistake while building the door of Weapon Bay. But I would be happy if I could complete this part with an airplane like Avenger.
It doesn’t look bad from a distance. I want to make various kits without getting sick of this failure.
Line it up with the Soviet Yak-3, the latest aircraft kit. It’s like a parent and child-size difference.
(2019/07/29)
