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Grumman F9F-3 Panther - Hobbyboss 1/72


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Very nice indeed! I think you've done a great job on achieving what I call a "scale gloss." Did you do any modification to the kit? I can't quite tell from your photos, but it looks like maybe you corrected the windscreen issue with this kit.

Cheers,

Bill

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Did you do any modification to the kit? I can't quite tell from your photos, but it looks like maybe you corrected the windscreen issue with this kit.

Thanks, True, the dark gloss blue hides almost everything. I made all the minor "standard" modifications, which were all already well described elsewhere by others.

- the canopy and windscreen angle. Fortunately there is enough material to sand away. Transparency suffered a lot during all the handling, though.

- cut off the grossly oversized position lights and trim actuator fairing on the bottom wing and made them anew. Those original bulges would be too large even for a 1/48!

- rescribed the large auxiliary air intake doors behind the cockpit, deleted the small ones on the vertical stabilizer root, deleted all the small triangular intakes

- scribed one missing step below the cockpit (one arm of the white "T" decal, which should point to the 3 steps, simply pointed into nowhere :)btw the "T" is airbrushed, the decal was far too thick)

-new seat headrest, not very accurate, but still less weird than the former one.

- drilled out the gun ports and made new guns from syringes (actually just the fore pair so far, as I was lazy. And immediately after the photos I managed to knock off even those, anyway.)

- drilled all the airbrake holes (OK, no photos of the bottom so far, so you just have to believe me :)

What I did not do (and perhaps should have done):

- rescribe also the tiny auxiliary air intake doors on the aft fuselage. There are some, even seem to be quite correct shape-wise, but they are totally misplaced, even asymetrically: on one side they are "only" like one cm from the correct position, on the other side the totally wandered away from the side to the bottom of the fuselage :D

- broaden the main intakes more, they seem very anemic.

- make the canopy frame wider. The canopy shape is off anyway, but it would have looked a bit better.

However - all these modifications are a bit in vain, as thanks to the decals the kit resides happily in the Realm of What-if anyway.

The decal instructions are simply made up, throw them away. Nothing is right, well, maybe except for the wing insignias :)

I did what I could with the material I had, using photo as a reference. But some decals are missing (those little Es are from Sword Banshee kit) and some are very off size and shape. The horizontal stabilizer "S" are about half the size, for example. On the real thing, they cover the whole stabilizer top. The wing "S" are oversized, but you can't swap them, because they are too large even for the stabilizer :))

Apart from that, a nice kit, quite easy to build. No fit issues at all.

Edited by pivokrevnik
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As a matter of interest how does it compare with the Hasegawa Panther which I made many years ago, long before AMS reared its ugly head?

The fuselage looks a little tubbier and more 'Pantherish'

John

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Thanks guys.

As for Hasegawa, their fuselage indeed looks too slim.

On the other hand, canopy shape seems correct, intakes are also bigger.

The aux intake doors on fuselage are wrong shape (with cut corner, as on -5 version) as well.

That's all I can say, I never seen the Hasegawa kit in person.

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