Finished this one after wrapping up that “other” project.1/48 AMT F7F Tigercat. Started it then put on hold while I waited for wheels and a white metal nose strut.
Nice kit, really. Everything went together well and there were no real problems with fit other than the canopies. The rear is to narrow but hard to fix. The front is to narrow also, but I CA’d one side in place then stretched over and CA’d the other side. If the glue ever comes loose the thing is likely to fly across the room. This plane was asigned to a training command and was used to train pilots and radar operators.
I took my artistic rights to task on this one in a couple of places. I painted the fuel tank aluminum. Figured it was just a drop tank so why would they paint it. Anyhow, I like the contrast.
The gear legs are a little weak and I started wondering how they could hold up to the weight I had to put in the nose. And put it in I did! This thing weighs a ton and is why I decided to go with the white metal front strut.
After installing it and getting the plane on it’s wheels I was relieved to see it was not a tail sitter but found that the extra strength nose strut was not really neccesary as there isn’t much weight on it at all.
The mains bear most of that weight and being nervous about breaking them I coated the weak joints inside the gear bay with CA. The struts are installed with 5 min epoxy and the result is very strong. Here is the other area I let my preference go. I painted all of the struts interior green. I saw it one a B-29 nose strut once and really liked the look. The wheels and the front strut are from Cutting Edge.
Paint is a combination of Tamiya and MM enamels. I actually used a whole bottle of Tamiya on this thing. When I went to the LHS to get more, nada. Out. So I finished it with MM insignia yellow. Suprisingly a perfect match and the MM convered much better with less paint. If anyone knows what those pockets are in the nose give me a shout. They look like guns but I wasn’t sure and left them alone.
Gloss is Future. The model was preshaded, something I don’t normally do but I figured with the light base color it might be a nice way to add some crud to the panel lines. There is no wash on this plane. I decided to leave it shiney. Common sense tells me it is probably right and the instructions called for it too.
The kit decals were not very cooperative and took some extra effort to get them to behave. The extra gloss of the decals needs knocked down some but it’s not that bad without all the extra 75 watt bulbs on them so I may leave it. 20mm gun barrels were drilled out then I used hypo tube for the barrels. A little MIG oil was used on the wheels and some grunge on the engine cowls and it was about done. Exhaust was added after gloss with Tamiya sky grey and desert sand.
As always, hope you like, thanks for looking, comments welcome.
HK