Search the Community

My next build is going to be an oldie, but (sort of) goodie. I say "sort of" because there are well-known problems with this kit. The worst problem is that the tail height is about halfway between that of an F8F-1 and an F8F-2. Everything else about the kit seems to lend itself to a -2: The cannons and wing blisters and the 3 large exhaust stacks instead of the smaller 5 (plus the -2 had a narrower exhaust trench than the -1). The amusing thing is that the decals included are from an aircraft I found in my "Bearcat in action" book and it is definitely a -1! So the decals have been wrong for years. With the prospect of going back to the office coming in about a month, I find I'm dreading the loss of 1 -1.5 hours a day, which means no more modelling during the weekdays. I've got this weird desire to do a bunch of simple, quickie kits (like my recent yak-3). I chose this because I thought it would be (I did the same kit with one of my sons a few years ago and out of the box it was only a couple of weekends). I've been holding on to this kit with ideas of correcting all of its faults, but now that Hobby Boss has a brand new, and apparently better, kit out I decided I would just do this one OOB. Well, that was the plan. When I found the picture of the subject aircraft and saw it was a -1, I started thinking about modifying this one to match, which means cutting off the cannons, sanding down the blisters, making the tail shorter and doing *something* about the exhaust. Didn't seem too bad. Then I found Jumpai Temma's page where he details perfecting the Monogram kit (http://soyuyo.main.jp/f8f/f8fe.html), it's a fascinating read his modeling skills and attention to detail are astounding. It way, way more work than I care to put into this kit (especially since I'll be getting the Hobby Boss F8F) Best of all he's got scale drawings of the Bearcat! This will help me with fixing the tail. At first I thought it would be a simple sanding job... but.... First, here's a picture of the plastic against the light -- it has the neatest blue color with a light behind it. Plus it's molded very thin, which will help with the drawing. So here's the model and the drawing When lined up on the drawing it is almost a perfect match (well, except for the tail obviously) Here's the two tails side-by-side It just looks like there is some sanding and shaping at the top, and then making the rudder trim tab shorter, right? Alas, when lined up perfectly, and held up to the light... Its hard to see, but the trailing edge on the drawing can be seen going down the middle of the models rudder. So, it's shorter and the chord is smaller (is that the right way to put it?) Hmm. It's interesting, when I line the top of the tail with the drawing, the shapes match almost perfectly. So I figured that the best way to fix the tail is to first cut the rudder off, then cut off the rest of the tail fin where it meets the fuselage. Then I would cut the rudder from the bottom. I would then cut the bottom of the tail fin until it was the right height and glue the whole kit 'n' kaboodle back together. Is this what I'm going to do? Eh..... haven't decided yet. I'm afraid that cutting a chunk out of the middle and reattaching it would create a step that would need fixing and the plastic is awfully thin. Sanding down from the top would work OK, but the tail will be wider (broader chord). I suppose I could take a little off both the leading and trailing edges to make it look a little better. Or maybe it wouldn't be that noticeable. I think I need to cut out the drawings and play with them a bit. Any ideas out there?