I just finished this piece last night and I’m so happy with it that I wanted to share it here. Bit of back story- while researching aircraft paint schemes I came across a game called “Check Your 6!”. One of the scenarios in that game is based on a real encounter wherein pilot “The Swede” Vejtasa in an SBD from the Yorktown, while on submarine patrol, shot down 3 Zeros in an engagement. With magnets in our aircraft for the carriers, we were half way to playing CY6 anyway, so I got some Legos from their website and some acorn nuts from the hardware store and made flight stands. So of course I had to make Vejtasa’s SBD. I got REALLY lucky with i-94 decals for this project. Their sheet of American flags has one the perfect size to be cut down for the red and white striped rudder of this SBD- 7 red stripes from the top tip of the rudder down to the rear wings at the base of the rudder. Measure twice, cut once for a perfect fit front to back. That saved me a ton of time and headache on an accurate rudder. And i-94’s sheet of black letters and numbers had numbers the perfect size for the fuselage and tail. The one thing that was sort of bummer is that their US roundels come with the red dot as a separate decal that you have to add and perfectly, and I mean PERFECTly, center in the star to make it look right. So because there wasn’t a “10” decal on the sheet, the 1 and the 0 are 2 separate decals, as are each US star & dot roundel and each half of the rudder, making this aircraft number one in number of decals with twenty decals total. There are tons of references for this aircraft all over the internet that helped a lot in drawing the cockpit. I used the .005 pen rather than the 20/0 brush with fuselage color so it would pop better and help make the aircraft more recognizable as what it is. Decal sheets used are (copy & pasted from HBG’s site) Black Lettering Decal Sheets (LB-100), U.S. Flags (US-118), U.S. Star on blue field (US-102). Base of the stand is a Lego radar dish.
![US the Swede SBD.jpg](/uploads/_imported_attachments/migrated/638625_US%20the%20Swede%20SBD.jpg)
![US the Swede SBDa.jpg](/uploads/_imported_attachments/migrated/638627_US%20the%20Swede%20SBDa.jpg)
This piece got a make-over when I started experimenting with making decals with the Testor’s kit (mentioned with example later in the post). Some of the bottom is hand inked, but the landing gear part is decal.
![DSC_0797a.jpg](/forums/assets/uploads/files/1573182877355-dsc_0797a.jpg)