French Curtiss SB2C-5 in Indochina

The second part of my double French build: Special Hobby’s SB2C-5. Seems like a very nicely detailed kit, so this will be an OOB build. 

The basic Special Hobby SB2C requires some mods to turn it into a -5, which are simple enough.  

Test fitting the -5 bomb bay doors revealed I had to cut some more plastic away at the front end than indicated in the instructions. 

Building up the nice if somewhat fiddly interior parts 

Moving on with lightning speed (for my standards) and sprayed the interior parts 

Detail painting and more build-up using the resin parts provided specifically for the SB2C-5. PE seatbelts went on easily and look nice. 

Installed the interior. Out of the box it is very nice and more than good enough for me. 

Closed up the fuselage and filling lower seam. Had some trouble getting rid of it. 

Installed and masked the windscreen and fixed canopy parts. 

Assembled bombs and crutches. Again a bit fiddly and a pain to install in the bomb bay. Decided to install them later using metal pins and CA. 

Assembling the wings 

First wing installed. Fit is very good after pushing a piece of sprue in each wing to bulge out the upper surface a bit. 

Main assembly completed and transparencies masked, some more filling to do 

Preparing the nice resin wheels, even managed to open up the area between the spokes without destroying them 

Added the replacement resin rocket launcher rails provided in the kit, which was not nearly as difficult as expected 

Masking canopies the classic way… 

First paint on, sprayed the interior color of the canopy frames 

Next the undercoat using a Tamiya AS-12 spray can for chipping later on 

Main coat of Vallejo Air Sea Blue, went overboard in thickness a bit but came out OK, despite the darn splattering 

Chipping with a hobby knife went easily 

After the gloss coat I had a bit of a run-in with the decals. The first decal did not play nice and broke on application. Resorted to spraying the decal sheet with decal bonder, which helped. 

All decals on, which took a few sessions. The decals are thin and fragile and I lost some of the smaller stencils. 

For weathering I used pastel powder as usual 

And here also a bit of a disaster with the final coat. I used an old 2/3 empty bottle of Micro flat, which in the past gave a nice semi-gloss. I shook the bottle very well and ended up with… an overly flat coat. I guess I did not mix it well enough in the past and now ended up with too much flattener. Darn. It did lighten the coat quite nicely though… 

Installation of the landing gear and gear doors was a bit fiddly but I got things correctly aligned. Installing the bomb load also was also a bit of a struggle, despite my preparations. 

And onto the final bits. Canopies posed open to show off the interior. Only gripe being that the aft canopy rides a bit high. 

Et voila, la bête est finie! Another nice build with few issues except for the darned final coat. Highly recommended kit!