Hasegawa F9F-2 and Sword F2H-2 Banshee in 1/72

[-Neu-]

VF-11 F2H-2 over Wonsan

(courtesy of Wikikmedia.)

So I'm going to have two sets of builds going. This one will be a bit more fun compared to the more serious RB-26 effort.

I've built almost all of the US Navy's Post-WWII fighter types in 1/72; the Panther, Banshee, Demon and Fury are the only ones I have left to do. This GB is a great excuse to build the two earliest ones. Its also a period (Even outside of the Korean war) I'm really interested in.

Naval aviation was undergoing a massive shifts during this period. Technology is the most obvious: the transition to jets offered much promise as well as challenges. However there was also a major debate about what was the role of the Navy, particularly in light of nuclear weapons development. Its an interesting time, and maybe I'll post some more about it, and the fighters later.

So... the kits.

F2H Banshee from Sword.

I've been eagerly awaiting this kit. I purchased mine from Rob at West Coast Hobbys, in anticipation of this group build. He's been awesome retailer for me over the years, and its worth the effort to buy from there. The kit itself looks fantastic:

Hasegawa F9F-2 Panther

So I've had this kit for awhile and been meaning to built it, but never got around to it.

Now, of course this kit is going to need some help to get it looking good.

The eduard set is pretty exciting, but I also got some other help

The Obscureco seat is a pretty nice addition. I've used their stuff on a number of my kits, and have never been disappointed. The most recent one was an Academy F2H-4 Banshee... which really made the model shine. This set comes with two seats and a great instruction set.

Pretty awesome. Finally, I needed a new set of decals, as I had cannibalized the kit's original set for another kit. So, I also ordered a set of Blackbird decals from West Coast Hobbys:

I think I'll chose the VF-111 scheme, as I recently finished a F11 tiger in the squadron's markings.

So that's that for now. This one will be a bit of a faster build, hopefully I can complete it in less than a month.

Thanks for looking!

Edited April 23, 2014 by -Neu-

[HOUSTON]

Neu,

Ooh. Lovely !!!

I like your choice for a build ....

Will be back to see more. ..good Luck

[Tomjw]

Looking forward to this.

[jean]

The manufacturers of dark blue paint are going to run out!!!!

I am really looking forward to these builds

JR

[-Neu-]

The manufacturers of dark blue paint are going to run out!!!!

I am really looking forward to these builds

JR

I love GSB US Navy aircraft... I've built quite a few of them in the past few years.. some of my favourites:

Anyway, I started with the cockpits.... which weren't as awesome as I thought they would be. I've built a lot of PE cockpits lately... the panther one is pretty standard, though using the PE chair would have been hell. the Obscureco one is much much better. The Banshee one, as we will see was really a pain.

So these are basically the two parts that I've taken from the Panther kit:

I added the side console PE.

Looks pretty good. I also painted the seat and started on the instrument panel, but for some reason did not take a photo of them, except to pain the back of the IP film with white Tamiya surface primer.

So the panther cockpit is about 60% done.... hopefully I can finish it tomorrow night.

Next is the Banshee. To start, I want to say that I really like sword's work lately... I've built their P-80, Spitfire Vc Trop and P-47N. Fantastic kits. This is a bit of a let down. There is a bit more flash than with previous models, and the cockpit tub bows in a bit, causing a number of problems. What I really don't like is the use of the PE for the entire cockpit. Personally I'd have rather paid an extra couple of dollars for a full resin interior... but that's just me.

So this is what you start with:

The Seat is nice, but you can even see how the tub bows in.... that's a problem when you are to replace the floor with a square PE (Part 16) and the side consoles are large net one part things (5, 6)

This is what I got it to, after about two hours of work.

Another view:

And this is it mounted on the side of the fuselage.

Not a great view... but I haven't weathered it either, which should make the details pop out and look better. Hopefully I'll have some time tonight to do that and take more photos (and of the panther's cockpit as well.

Thanks for looking!

[Brews]

When you told me it was a mess of PE, I wasn't expecting the mess to turn out this well. Nothing to worry about there. It will be great when it's done.

[Mozzy19]

Nice work so far.

At least one of the hosts is making progress....

Sean

[-Neu-]

When you told me it was a mess of PE, I wasn't expecting the mess to turn out this well. Nothing to worry about there. It will be great when it's done.

Yeah, but it is a mess. I really don't like flat PE with coloured switches... I'd rather they be raised Resin.

Nice work so far.

At least one of the hosts is making progress....

Sean

Well, these two will be a appetizer for my main course, which is coming soon....

[Procopius]

Crimeny, that's a lot of PE!

[Tomjw]

Looks good to me.

Tom

[-Neu-]

Thanks Tom

So... I basically had a hellish day with the Panther. I got the cockpit all buttoned up...weathered and the like... its too bad I don't have a proper macro lens, as this would look much better.

Afterwards, I started on some of the PE additions, such as the rear coaming and the forward landing gear bay, the latter was a big mistake on my part. First that involved removing the existing moulded one:

You can see the one on the left has been removed. Unfortunately I should have left it be... because the PE replacement was not very good in terms of fit. I spent the better part of two hours getting it right.

Next was the rear coaming, which was moulded into the kit.

Wax On:

Wax off.

Then it was time to get everything together. What a pain.

Its pretty messy, with barely sealed seam lines and glue over a few parts, but with a couple of hours it should clean up good.

Thanks for looking!

[Brews]

Are you going to pose the canopy open?

[Col.]

Didn't realise you were doing a Panther - nice one Neu

[JamesP]

I'm also a GSB fan, mainly due to to Hu 181 being such a great paint. I hand brushed the Hasegawa Panther nearly 25 years ago and it's still sit on the shelf. More recent I've added the Airfix Banshee which is still a nice kit and sprayed it from the same pot of paint.

[-Neu-]

James: I actually really love Tamiya's Sea Blue... I find its the easiest one to use and go down... that's one of the reasons why I've built so many GSB aircraft.

A small update, as I'm rushing off on a small business trip this week:

This is the banshee about to be buttoned up. I don't usually fasten the weight, because I'm worried about the dry rot with lead. I don't find its a big issue however.

And this is it altogether.

As you can probably just barely discern, the fit isn't great at all. There are several gaps, which I'll need to repair with putty and other methods. More problematic is that to get a good bind, I had to use a lot of tamiya thin to get a lot of areas to fit. That, plus the gapped area, which needs to be puttied means that quite a bit of surface detail around the seam lines were lost, particularly some nicer riveter details. I've got a nice rosie the riverer tool that doesn't see the light out of my modelling box too much, which I'll try to use next time.

The Panther's time was all spent on cutting out the main landing gear bay. This eduard set also has a replacement bay, which looks a lot nicer (and easier) than the nose bay. So I set out to cut it out.

That was the inside... I used the JLC razor saw...

And that was the outside. ITs a pretty significant replacement, but I feel pretty good about it... and it looks a hell of a lot better.

Thanks for the nice comments people, and coming to look in.

Edited May 5, 2014 by -Neu-

[-Neu-]

Alright, time for a new update. So I glued in the main landing gear bay.... however there is a small problem: there are slits through the corners of the folded PE you can see through. That's not good...

So I took some Evergreen and Cyano and boxed it in:

Next I had some concerns that cutting out all of the plastic from the nose and elsewhere might change the centre of gravity to make it a tail sitter... so I cut out the nose section and fit a big piece of fishing lure there.

Balance testing shows that basically worked.

As for the Banshee... I'm really starting to dislike this kit. Its probably one of the worst Sword kits I've built... its a regression from their Vc I recently put together, or even some of their earlier works (like the P-80C). The fit just isn't that good, which is going to be a lot of work to correct. I only took one photo, which is how the wing interior looks like. Its pretty nice, but you almost are assured to get a gap between the intake resin piece and the wing.... which is a pain to fill.

I painted the exhausts with varying shades of alclad; Steel for the exterior and the exhaust cone, jet exhaust for its interior.

Finally here they are all assembled. I shamelessly stole HT's idea to use a rubber band for dihedral tension.

You can already see some of the puttying required to get the Banshee looking reasonable... and that's nothing compared to the underside.

Anyways, thanks for looking!

Edited May 15, 2014 by -Neu-

[Brews]

Mr Surfacer should fix up those "slits' in the Pe. The time-honoured way of fixing it is solder, but I would do that when it's not in contact with polystyrene.

[-Neu-]

So, time for my next edition of these two kits. Really I should call this the Coroguard episode.

I really haven't done much on the Panther... actually I spent most of my time rectifying the right wing's coroguard, which didn't really go on well. It was really because I didn't thin the surfacer enough and it didn't go well after that.

The other problem is that I totally forgot that I had a resin nose replacement for this kit, that I'm going to need to find and use,

Anyway, onto the banshee...

First went on the surfacer.

Then I sprayed on the Alclad, aluminium.

Then I masked it off.

And finally here is the final result;

And that's that. I'll need gloss coat the areas for decals. That will either be tonight or tomorrow.

As always, thanks for looking.

[Alex Gordon]

Nice tight masking on the leading edges.That's difficult to achieve.

[Mozzy19]

Great work! That Banshee is looking the business.

Sean

[Brews]

Did you post-shade, or do more pre-shading than you've shown in the photos? The overall impression of the result that I get is that it is subtle but effective. Looking at the pre-shading ...I'm sure you have your reasons for doing it the way you do, but it looks untidy.

[-Neu-]

Preshade mostly. I don't think this is much different from what other people do, but I might as well explain my process... which is kinda based on when I had a larger brush with less fidelity (a .5mm Iwata Revolution CR, versus a .3 Iwata HP-B for detail work now). the .5 really can't do effective post-shading, so I would put down first a pre-shade layer then fill in the panels with paint, but only give the panel lines a light coverage. Probably best if I give a cross sectional diagram using the ancient tradition of ascii art:

Main paint layer: ---- ------

Pre-shade layer: --------------

Panel line position: V

So long as I have enough different shade underneath (in this case black) I can control the main paint's application to show that. It doesn't matter if its tidy or not, since I'll paint over it until I get to the actual line. I can fill the panels itself enough that the underlying paint won't show until I need it to. I'm also using the new black Mr Finishing Surfacer, which is pretty awesome. I just apply it with a brush in this case, when I was doing the leading wing edge... its self levelling properties and slight gloss might have contributed to this outcome.

Edited June 2, 2014 by -Neu-

[-Neu-]

Nice tight masking on the leading edges.That's difficult to achieve.

Thanks! I had some problems around the intake... basically it slipped off on both sides, so I had overspray. I used an knife to scrape it off, and it looks pretty good now.

[-Neu-]

Alright, its been awhile since I posted my last update... but I've been working on it slowly.

I realized the other day that I had an bought a resin nose set for the Panther but had forgotten it.

Its a ResinArt nose and other detail replacement set. They went out of business a couple of years ago, which is really unfortunate as they made some fantastic stuff... like Canberra wheel bays, among other things.

Anyways, I had already glued the nose on, so that means its chopping time.

Despite being out of focus, you can see its a much nicer set.

I gave it a good coat to redo the corogoard and masked off the leading edges.

I hate doing round shapes so I used mr mask for the right hand side.

And voilá, painted panther.

I've got the decals on already... but I didn't take any photos... except for a bit of a touchup I was doing on the Banshee, where I forgot to add the black walkways.

That's that for now... more maybe on monday.

Edited June 15, 2014 by -Neu-

[Mr B]

nice choices

rgds

mr b