Airfix F6F-5 Hellcat in Massive 1/24 Scale

This will be a WIP for a build that I expect to take me a couple of months to get across the finish line.

The box is huge. It takes up substantial space on my work bench. But when I saw this one released, I knew I was going to have to build it. I had built Airfix’s even bigger Mosquito back in 2010, so I knew what I was getting into. More recently I finished their Typhoon. I’m not sure where I will be displaying this beast just yet, but I’ll find some space. It will be a wall hanger like the Mosquito and Typhoon.

I am two weeks into the build. I am painting mostly with AK Interactive and Tamiya colors, although I did have an older bottle of Mission Models US Interior Green that turned out to be awful. I don’t know if that stuff got too old (about 8 years old now), but even though I thinned it with Mission Models thinner, it turned into gel in my airbrush. Some of the tonal difference in the cockpit parts that you’ll see in the photos is the result of the first coat of Mission Models, then coming back over these parts with Vallejo Light Green (FS34151), which is a bit darker.

I love the level of detail that 1/24th scale affords a kit. The cockpit looks great. Even the seat belts are kit parts, not PE. The decal sheet even includes placards in the cockpit. This will be a completely OOB build, although I have acquired paint masks for both the canopy and the primary markings.

Now my gripe. For such an expensive kit, is it too much to ask for fuselage halves that actually go together fully? There are two areas on the fuselage that I could not get to meet up - on the underside where the centerline drop tank will go, and right in front of the windscreen. No amount of pressure could get these parts to meet fully. And I don’t believe I mis-aligned any internal parts to cause this, as most other surfaces did meet fully along the fuselage halves.

The scheme will be the box art with the snarling tiger mouth and the overall glossy sea blue paint job. This sounds like it should be an easy painting project, but prior experience leads me to believe that likely won’t be the case.

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Looks good to me.
I know there are a number of on-line arguments about “Grumman Green” which is a bit “bluer” than stock zinc chromate.
And there are arguments about which parts are in which colors, too. For my 2¢, most of the “that’s supposed to look like” are based on restored a/c rather than as-built.
Navigating all this can be a pain, so, achieving success is a reward unto itself.

Oh that’s a big one. There’s a review from a few years back

I’ll be watching this one, even though 1/32 is big enough for me, Steven.

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Almost expect to see a selfie from inside that cockpit, @Aggieman.

Holy crap!

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I’ve always wanted to build a big one, I think it would be a lot of fun, I’ve had my eye on a couple. I have to pull the trigger this year.

@Toimi_Tom That gave me a chuckle.

No new photos, but some progress made over the weekend. I built the inner lower wing, complete with the wheel bays and spars. Yesterday I started to see some problems. First, my airbrush didn’t play well with me. I was barely getting any air pressure, and when it finally did paint, it sprayed long enough to put a smidge of paint on some plastic and then decided to peace out. What was aggravating is that I know I cleaned it thoroughly after my last paint session. I disassembled it and let all the components (not the body) soak in lacquer thinner over night. Hopefully that will remove whatever was causing the issue.

The next problem was the fit of kit parts. This came about on the steps where one builds the lower outer wing, with wing spars and gun bays. Fit tolerances were incredibly tight, so much so that I feared snapping parts under all the pressure I was exerting to get them into place. I was able to get the spars into place without breakage, but had to leave the parts under clamps while the glue cured as they had a tendency to pull away from the wing surface.

I think I’ll run a sanding stick along all the tight points for the opposite wing. Hopefully that will make the process a little less aggravating.

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Got that outer wing lower section completed this morning. Did some test fitting of the upper wing. I wasn’t terribly surprised to find that, while the wing fits pretty well over 3/4 of the mating surfaces, there is that last 1/4 that is going to be problematic. Right along the leading edge of the wing around the guns, there will either be a gap or the upper surface will not be flush with the lower surface. As far as I can tell, all of the spars, guns, and ammo boxes are properly seated. I see no gaps anywhere.

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Some progress made this morning after last night, I came across a step-by-step tutorial on this kit on a competing model forum. This guy had put together a 37-page tutorial with loads of photographs. He spent a lot of time talking about all of this kit’s many tight-fitting areas and how he solved the problem.

It was essentially what I suspected - the inner spars on these outer wings are a little too tall. The grooves on the upper wing where the spars are to fit are too tight. Rather than sand out the grooves to open them up a bit, I opted for an easier approach by sanding the tops of the spars. My initial sanding session this morning on one of the wings reveals that this is likely going to alleviate what appeared to be a difficult construction to get the wing parts to fit together flush.

This guy identified several other parts in the outer wings that, had I known about this prior to putting all of those parts together, I would have been able to address those as well and perhaps get an even better fit.

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Welp, I am dead in the water on this (or any other) build.

I have 3 airbrushes, all Iwatas (Eclipse HP-CS, Revolution HP-CR, Hi-Line HP-BH). The Eclipse stopped working about a year ago, and for whatever reason I have not gotten around to sending it in for repair. The Revolution stopped working last week, and tonight I sprayed my last through the Hi-Line. Now I have 3 non-functional airbrushes to send in for repair. The Hi-Line actually had a small rod fall out of its main body, which I think has something to do with the trigger mechanism.

I do have some much older airbrushes, a couple of Badgers, that I will hook up to see if I can get them to do anything (it has been at least a decade since I last used any of these).

I’m not sure that I can get much done on the Hellcat for now. Yeah, I could start building the engine (which appears to be an entire kit in and of itself), but I typically want to paint the major components on engines prior to building them.

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Tell us where this tutorial is found, please.

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This is a very informative thread so far. I’ve only built one 1/24 scale warbird and that was Trumpeter’s Bf109K-4 kit and while I had my fair share of issues with it, I didn’t have half of the things going on that this kit does after reading this thread through. You’re sure putting some good love into it to fix all of the issues and I most certainly applaud your great efforts.
I do tend to agree that for a kit as pricey as this one is, you shouldn’t be having near this many issues with it but I have to say, you’re building one heckuva good looking F6F so far Steven.

Airfix F6F-5 Hellcat Kicked Up a Notch

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Very impressive! Thank you!!

That thread is just flat out crazy with all of the detail that fella is putting into that one. The reference pic with the upside down Hellcat is going to be absolutely invaluable to me when I build my 1/48 Hellcat.
Thanks for posting that link up Steven.

Definitely a good link, Steven. Spent plenty of time this morning reading about that insanely detailed build!