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Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat (Stressed skin experiment)


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I have taken this Eduard weekend edition kit as far as I wish. The purpose of the build was to try an idea I had to emulate the uneven surfaces seen on stressed skin aircraft, and chose this particular aircraft as I'd already built an Eduard Hellcat and knew how it went together, but this overall Glossy Sea Blue aircraft would particularly benefit from something to add visual appeal to an otherwise featureless finish.

 

If interested in the experiment itself, here is the Work in Progress thread:

 

 

The kit is close to being Out-Of-the-Box, but did receive Airscale cockpit instrument decals to improve the panel, and substantial improvements to the cockpit purely from adding an Ultracast resin seat with seatbelts, new wheels and Ultracast's much improved Hamilton Standard propeller. In addition, Master brass barrels were added. All paints are Colourcoats enamels, and the antenna is Infini Model 40 denier (0.068mm) lycra rigging line. The base is Eduard's injection moulded Essex class aircraft carrier deck section, although strictly speaking the aircraft was from USS Enterprise CV-6, a Yorktown class.

 

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If anyone made it this far and is remotely curious to see how ACUS34 - ANA623 Glossy Sea Blue compares to our parallel paints ACUS07 - ANA606 Semi-Gloss Sea Blue and ACUS33 - ANA607 Non-Specular Sea Blue, often all claiming to be matched simultaneously and/or referenced to FSx5042 which matches none of them, here's the GSB Hellcat and my earlier "by the book" tricolor F6F-3 together:

 

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Thanks for looking in! :)

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2 hours ago, Thom216 said:

A beautiful pair of 'cats right there! Thanks to you I bought two of the Eduard Hellcats which are now happily sitting in the stash. Don't know when, but I'll be trying that tri-color!

Tri-colour, would that be, Extra Dark Sea Grey, Dark Slate Grey and Sky?  🤓

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Looks great!

Stressed skin might really be the next great thing (or fad) in modelling. Sure, it can be overdone like any effect in modelling, but so far most models look like modern composite gliders with perfectly smooth surfaces (+ panel lines and maybe rivets) which isn't that realistic.

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Excellent work, but how much effort it was I realized after going through you WIP. 

Perhaps you shoud give on RFI also such close-ups like that one from your WIP:

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Cheers

J-W

 

Edited by JWM
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Those Hellcat look good! I am no fan of stressed skin just because, but there are planes and ships where this effect  is noticeable even in B&W photos. 

It probably is easy to overdo in smaller scales (up to 48 scale) but looks very realistic in larger size models IMO. I think you pulled the trick just right in this model, looks the part!

Now, calling your build as OOB as possible is an over statement with all those added parts don’t you think?

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2 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

... is a relative concept with no intrinsic value :lol:

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

3 hours ago, Holzhamer said:

 

Now, calling your build as OOB as possible is an over statement with all those added parts don’t you think?

 

You're right. What I really meant was "I didn't grace Eduard with any more of my money on photoetched metal or the exponential increase in time required to use it" :D

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