LSP: Rodney originally wrote this article for another publication and used his 1/72 Corsairs for the article. This article is good for those who want to make their own decals and also a specially for the conversion kit Rodney made to turn the Revell Corsair into a F2G, that kit is now available from Obscureco. These decals are available in 1/32 now from Dave Newman who printed them from Rodney so these colorful Corsairs are now easier to recreate. You’ll need to contact Dave for prices and availability.

Your first priority is: "HAVE SOME ART TALENT," so you can duplicate certain names and logos which were on the real aircraft. Next, work from photographs, if at all possible. On a few occasions, I've found mistakes on art drawings, such as misspelled names, wrong numbers, etc. ( See my 1/24 scale P- 51D " Dallas Doll" and my P-51B "Sleepytime Gal" on this web site. It shows mistakes on art drawings for the B ).

I have collected several dozen F2G photos over the years. I have eleven 3 view drawings of the F2G racers, including a drawing of Cook's F4U4 racer "Lucky Gallon," #92. Armed with this data, I'm ready to produce some fairly accurate decals.

Several years ago I built two 1/72 Aviation Usk F2G Corsairs kits and turned them into racing planes. These kits came with the decals for Cook's Cleland's red and white racer #57. I had Dave Newman make the decals for Cook's racer #74, including the white squares for the cowling. The registration is so excellent that I doubled up the white decals over the blue paint on #74, including the check's on the cowling.

After WW-II ended in 1945, "The National Air Races" resumed in 1946 at the local airport in Cleveland, Ohio. Cook Cleland, who was an ex-WW-II Navy pilot, purchased 4 F2G Corsair's. These aircraft were referred to as racer's #57, 74, 84, and 94.

It was rather easy to make the block type letters and numbers for #18, #84, and #94 as I saved all of my data that passed back and forth from me to Dave. I sent Dave some sizes for these aircrafts, and Dave printed up some samples. I just cut out these "samples" and lined them up on each model. If these samples needed to be reduced and/or enlarged, I let Dave know. The end results were excellent.

During its' life time, racer #18 had three separated color schemes. In 1949, Ron Puckett repainted his F2G racer #18 a colorful two tone paint scheme of medium blue and light gray. He added the name of "Miss Port Columbus," on both sides of the cowling, and a name of Shirley and Betty. These three names were gray in color.

I scanned in the 1949 "three view drawing," which had the new paint scheme, including the art drawing of the name. Next, I enlarged the name of "Miss Port Columbus" to about 4 inches wide and printed it out on plain paper. I took tracing paper, and laid it on top of my "printed" copy and traced over the outline. I then scanned in this new drawing. With the help of my grandson Jonathan we filled the inside of the name with a gray color. We did the same thing for the names Betty and Shirley.

For the data blocks that were on both sides of the fuselage, just under the canopy, I sent Dave the enclosed photo, and some measurements as to what I though would be the right size. Again, Dave printed them, and they fit perfectly.

Enclosed is a rough drawing of the "BG" logo, sent to me by Ron Eminger way back in 1984. Jon and I designed a new "BG" logo from the drawing, and made it look like the one that was on the F2G cowling. The "Ambrite Products" logo was drawn out by hand, then Jon finished it up on the computer. The photo that shows a close up of Ron's #18, "Miss Port Columbus" on the F2G cowling came from Al Keller in the early 1990's.

We had a accurate "SOHIO" logo on an old Superscale railroad decal sheet, with the correct color of red laid over a plain white back- ground. The Aviation Usk "SOHIO" logo had black and red colors over a white background, which is wrong. Dave made a new "SOHIO" decal for me. The "Kendall Oil" logo, which was on most of the F2G's, came on the kit's decal sheet.

We reduced the original 1949 "3 view drawing" of #18, so that one half of the kit's fuselage would fit to perfection on top of the drawing. We enlarged the wing drawing in the same manner so that the kit's wing fit's next to perfect. We looked at the real photos and then at the drawings to see if they were a perfect match or real close. All I had to do was to measure the height and width of the fuselage, wing and rudder numbers and letters. Hey it's close enough for government work.

All of these applications were learned and recorded on paper when I made up everything for racer #74. I kept all of Dave's notes on how to change things, so he could print everything correctly. Dave wanted all the measurements in "thousandths of inches." I used my micrometer and presto, the job was finished. We repeated the above process for racer #84 and #94.

In 1946, Cook owned and flew "Lucky Gallon," #92, which I think was a F4U-4. Low and behold, Dave had made these decals before in 1/48 scale. Dave just reduced them down to 1/72 scale, which fit A-OK on my model. I had some photos for another F4U-4 by the name of "JOE 99." This JOE aircraft had a number 90 on it for a different race year. Dave made them up, and I applied #99 on the model. I hope to build "JOE 90" soon.

If you care to acquire more data on the racing F2G's, then go to our organization's web site, The Society of Air Racing Historians. @ www.airrace.com. Our site has several photos of said racers, plus the history on each aircraft. The site also includes Cook's racer "Lucky Gallon."

For an in depth overall review of the F2G, I have a four part story on how I built my "Crashed F2G," and three stories on the history of the F2G's, including one story on how I built racers #57 & #74. Please go to ARC's web site.@www.aircraftresourcecenter.com. Click on Gallery, then on propellor, and then scroll down to F2G CORSAIR.

Go back to ARC's "Prop" category, and look for my 1/72 DC-3 "POLYNESIAN AIRLINES" model. It will show you how Jon and I made the art work so that Dave Newman could make my "palm tree" logo and other decals.

Remember! Let the photos tell the story, and experiment. Then find someone who can make and print up your decals. Dave's decals are super thin, and went on my models with water only.

© 2005 Rodney Williams