F4U Corsair 1/72 scale - First model airplane built since 1991, when I was in school

Yes, that is right, you saw correctly, I built a 1/72 scale model of an F4U.  Why is PANZER Bill building model planes you ask?  GREAT question.  A friend asked me if I had played War Thunder, a multi player online game that is about WW2 and cold war aircraft.  As soon as I tried it, I WAS HOOKED. 

So I bought a few model airplanes.  I started and finished this F4U in record time.  Planes at this scale are much quicker to build, BUT building planes is tough.  You have a lot of building then painting, and repeat!  It not like a tank where you can build it, and paint it.  So here is my F4U.  I made some mistakes on it, but lessons learned.  I have a P-40B Tomahawk from Trumpeter in 1/72 scale up next. 

So, first we have the start of the project.  This is an Academy F4U. 

Cockpit Painted and washed.  Nothing crazy.

Dash simple paint, but looks fine at this scale through the canopy glass.

Didn't like the crappy exhaust, so I cut some round tubing to use.  All I had was this metal tube, a bit out of scale, but you cant really tell when the model is propped up on the base. 

Looks BIG here, but not so bad when finished