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A Pair of Pretty Kitties - Grumman F9F Cougar and F11F Tiger


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I have a soft spot for Grumman's cats. From the cute Wildcat, to the butch Hellcat and all the way to the flashy Tomcat, I think the company has built some of the best looking fighter aircraft in history. Over the summer I started a double-build of the venerable Hasegawa kits of both these planes. It's taken quite some time to finish them, but here they are. Both kits are built straight out of the box, apart from the Sidewinders, which come from the Hasegawa Weapons Set III. Colors are Gunze acrylics and Tamiya white primer.

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In particular the Tiger is really a candidate for a new tooling, it has raised panel lines, most of which disappear after you have taken care of the fuselage seams. Apart from that it goes together very well, I only needed some filler on the intakes, which are a slightly dubious fit. The main landing gear is a bit of a vague fit, but doable with some trail and error. The decals had yellowed but I was lucky to get another set from a fellow BM-er. Unfortunately no aftermarket decals are available for this kit. It's decidedly underrepresented by both kit manufacturers and aftermarket companies.

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The Cougar is slightly newer and has the traditional Hasegawa panel lines, very fine, a bit too fine on the underside, I struggled to get the wash to adhere to them. This kit also needed some filler around the intakes and the rear wing to fuselage joint, which requires quite a lot of filler to smooth out. Apart from that, it's an easy build. This was also an older boxing and in this case the decals had both yellowed and cracked. The Cougar also isn't a popular aftermarket subject, but PrintScale do a nice sheet with some Panthers and Cougars, which I used. I believe Sword do a modern tooling of the Cougar but as far as I'm aware not the fighter version.

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I'm very happy to have these lovely 50s cats in my collection. Hopefully we'll get some modern toolings of both, which will be the perfect excuse to build some more of them.

Edited by sroubos
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Thanks, both kits represented a huge masking job. The base white and grey marking are easy enough, but then the de-icing boots, intake warnings, anti-glare panel, silver trims etc. etc. represent a huge amount of work. Every time I thought I had covered everything there was another item to tick off.

Edited by sroubos
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Thanks for all the enthusiastic reactions!

For the benefit of others: scroll down to the bottom of this post for the F11F main landing gear fix: http://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2010/11/f11f-tiger.html

Very useful, I have the Blue Angels boxing is my stash so I will definitely be referring back to this when I build it. With the resin nose having recessed panel lines, there's no way round rescribing the whole kit. When I've done that, inevitably we'll have a new tooling available ;)

Very cute pair of cats! Like them both! 50s USN designs were really fascinating. Always enjoy seeing some finished.
Hope Sword will take care about F9F-8T.

Yes, it's odd they haven't done the fighter version, just the trainer and the photo recon versions.

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Hello,Sroubos - My compliments to you on your fine looking builds of your 'Panther' and 'Cougar'. I love the quality and detail of the paint and finishing work and they're both resplendent looking tributes to the types.All the best,Paul.

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A great looking pair of Grummans. I wish the USN still applied this scheme. Grey (or is it Gray?) is so dull in comparison.

Agree; I have a couple of Hornets in my stash but my weathering technique isn't yet up to tackling one, I would just end up with a huge expanse of gray. Or maybe grey ;)

No excuse though not do a 70s Tomcat, though. And I really need to get on with my my Tigercat and Bearcat to complete the family.

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Two very nice builds of kits that were state of the art when they first came out. Built them both in my modelling heyday, when Microscale used to bring sheets about a month after the kit appeared. I remember them being fairly straightforward builds and the surface detail on the Cougar was regarded as being very fine. Ah, happy days!

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Lovely work. I have a pair like these built many years ago. My Tiger is the Blue Angels version. Be prepared for trouble with the decals if you are building this version. I have found old Hasegawa decals reluctant to leave the backing sheet and to break up when they do. Since yours will be 16 years older than the ones I used take care.

John

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Beautiful work and excellent photography. :goodjob:

I have the relatively recent re-issue of these as two kits in one boxing. The raised panel lines on the Tiger has put me off starting so far - I'd initially assumed you'd re-scribed, certainly doesn't look like an old kit with raised lines. Might have to retrieve these kits from storage, sigh, too many kits and not enough time...

Darren

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I don't think it would be a huge job to rescribe the kit to be honest, but I'm very bad at it and I don't really have an issue with raised detail when it's nicely done. Trouble with the Tiger is that a lot of it is lost around the fuselage seam cleanup. The rest of it, being very subtle, disappears under a coat of primer and paint. Were I to build one again I would definitely rescribe.

For the Blue Angels version I have the 2001 release, these decals are in good shape but from the time when Hasagawa's decals were quite thick, so I doubt it will be a picnic to build it. All in all I'd love to see a new tool for this plane, along with a set of aftermarket options.

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