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This is my
model of the most powerful piston-engined fighter, the Bearcat. I was walking
around at my favourite model shop searching a good kit of the F8F. Of course no
good kit was available, all Hobbycraft and Academy Bearcats were sold out. But
there were lying two kits of this Italeri F8F on the shelf, almost forgotten.
They were even cheaper, so I decided to build this one just for fun. Letīs see
what Iīm able to do of it.
Itīs
the Testors kit in a nice Italeri box. The panel lines are recessed on the
fuselage (sometimes people speak of trench-like) and raised on the wings. Detail
on the whole kit is very poor. Almost no cockpit comes within, no lever, no
sidewalls and no floor! I had to add a lot of aftermarket or scratchbuilt
goodies to make it look like a cockpit. Also almost no detail can be found at
the undercarriages and the wheel wells. I added some wire to do the brake hoses,
some PE struts for the missing undercarriage linking and some bent sprues for
the ram air tubes. The kitīs wheels appeared too narrow to me, so I used some
Mustang wheels. They are not accurate but look much better.
The
decals came with the kit and are pretty good. Almost no register problems and
thin enough. There are no stencils, I used dry transfers from Verlinden plus
some stencils from the spare box. The model represents the CAGīs aircraft of
CVG-15 on U.S.S. Antietam CV-36 in the late 40īs.
Dirk
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