1/72 Hasegawa F9F-2 Panther

[2qwik4u]

Well, the Ch-46 and the SOC-3 are almost done, so I figured I would start another one. This one will be the Hasegawa 1/72 F9F-2 Panther. Markings will be from the Blackbird Models sheet "F9F Panthers over Korea and the Pacific". I will be doing the USMC bird from VMF-311 with all of the mission markings on it.

Nothing fancy on this one. Standard, basic Hasegawa 1/72 cockpit with decals for the IP and side panels:

Basic seat and burner can:

Weight added to the nose in the form of lead shot and 30 min epoxy.

I wasnt' sure how much weight was needed, so I added some to the forward fuselage too.

The parts in my kit were pretty warped. If you look at the wings in the picture above, you can kind of tell that the wing half in the right side of the picture isn't at the same dihedral angle as the other half, and that isn't an optical illusion. The fuse halves were pretty warped too, but I was able to pull them together by working around the fuselage slowly with some Tamiya Extra Thin cement. I've also dressed the fuselage seams. Next up I need to rescribe some of the lost panel lines along the fuse seams and then fit the intakes and glue the wings on.

I love how these small, simple kits can fall together so quickly!

Thanks for looking.

-Dave

Edited August 21, 2011 by 2qwik4u

[viking73]

Nice job so far. I've got that Blackbird sheet too. I was going to use it when I build the new Hobby Boss F9F kit. I do have the Has kit in the stash but I guess it's going to sit there for awhile now :)

-Derek

[2qwik4u]

Thanks Derek. I haven't picked up one of the HB kits yet. Not sure if I will or not, although it is tempting. The panther is such a nice looking airplane.

[2qwik4u]

Wow I haven't updated this one in a while. I've made some pretty good progress, so I'll probably have to split this into two updates.

Here's the assembled cockpit. Again, basic Hasegawa sparce cockpit, nothing fancy.

After that it was fuselage assembly, which went pretty well. I had to slowly work my way around the fuselage, gluing in sections because of the warp in the fuselage halves.

Here is a better picture of the aformentioned wing warp.

To fix this, I glued the center section and the non warped half to the fuselage first and let that dry.

[2qwik4u]

After the intial gluing of the wing to fuselage had set up, I bent the warped section up and glued it in place. Afterwards I noticed that the bottom center section had shifted slightly so I had to cut the bottom forward joint with my PE saw, push it back into place, and then use a piece of .005" styrene sheet to fill in the gap.

I also had to use a couple .005" scraps to fill in some joints around the intakes on the top of the wings.

I think the fit problems I'm having here is due completely to the warping of the parts. I think that if everything had been straight, it would have fit together perfectly with no gaps.

After that, I cleaned up the seams, attached the rear stabs, installed and taped up the canopy, which first had a Future bath of course.

Here's a little tip for those of you that use Future. Apparantly, it works as a pretty good floor wax too. Who knew?

I primed it with flat dark sea blue and checked all of my part seams. After that I shot it with the gloss dark sea blue and let it dry. I also did all of the gear doors, gear, and rocket pylons at this point too.

Next up is masking and painting the silver and then it will be on to decals.

Thanks for watching!

-Dave

[2qwik4u]

Small update.

I masked off all of the silver areas and then shot a coat of Aluminum.

After a night to dry, the masking came off, and here is what we have:

Bottom:

Top:

I noticed on the decal sheet that I will have to paint the red on the top of the fin myself for this scheme, so I will do that next, and then move on to decals. Because I shot this with an overall gloss blue paint, I won't be putting a clear gloss coat on this until after I apply the decals.

Thanks for watching!

-Dave

[2qwik4u]

Well, I was getting all set to start on the decals, and I was looking at the decal sheet. Specifically the two decals for the small sunburst on the underside of the nose. I noticed that they didn't have any cutouts in them to fit over the gun barrels molded into the nose. The more I though about it, the more I realised how much of a pain it was going to be to apply both of these decals cleanly. So I decided to mask off the sunburst and paint it on myself.

First I took the thinnest Tamiya tape, applied it to my cutting mat and cut some really thin strips out of it, which I used to form the outline of the sunburst pattern. After that I used increasingly larger strips of tape to fill in the gaps.

Here it is, ready for paint.

Because I'm painting red over the dark sea blue, I first shot a couple light coats of white primer so that I wouldn't need to add a bunch of coats of red. It doesn't take much to really make the red pop, and still keep the paint coats thin. After a few minutes, I then shot it with a few light coats of Insignia Red. Remove the masking, and here you are:

It's flat right now, but once I add the final gloss coat after decals it won't be. It probably isn't completely accurate, but I'm really, really happy with the way it turned out. I'll also have to paint the gun barrels later.

Here she is ready for decals.

And after the fairly quick decaling session:

I can't wait to get the clear coat on so that I can take the canopy masking off. Decals were awesome. At first I thought the were a little stiff, but after sitting for a little bit, they snuggled right down into the panel lines. The white is nice and opaque too. I believe these are actually printed by Fantasy Workshop, which I believe is the same guys that do the Wolfpak stuff. I'm very pleased with them.

Other than the wings not being even because of the warpage, I'm really pleased with how this one is turning out. I definately see more of these kits in my future!

Thanks for following along.

-Dave

[2qwik4u]

Oh yeah, one question for you guys. What color(s) should the rockets be? Is the red and white scheme on the box art correct? It looks cool, but the red just doesn't seem right to me. Thanks in advance for any input!

-Dave

[Ken Middleton]

wow Dave, that is great masking and paint work! Sorry, but I don't know on the missile color

[2qwik4u]

Thanks Ken. I used to do a lot of RC car bodies when I worked at a couple hobby shops in high school and college. I got a ton of experience with masking from painting those.

I've actually got this thing up on its wheels and completely together save for the rockets. Once I get those done up, I'll take my final pictures. I was looking through some of my books on naval aviation in the 50's, and I happened to find one faded color picture of a Panther with rockets on the wings. It looks to me like they had a steel colored fuselage, aluminum/silver fins with an OD warhead, so that is what I think I'm going to go with.

-Dave

[Ken Middleton]

Dave, your RC experience really shows

[2qwik4u]

Thanks for the comments guys. I've actually had this one done with the exception of the 5" rockets for a few weeks now. Well I finally got off my duff and painted up the rockets. With the exception of the wings not being level, I'm really happy with this one. The Blackbird Decals were awesome, highly recommended. I'll post a couple more pictures in the completed builds thread.

-Dave

[Helidriver]

That looks great! Love the lines of that machine, and you did it justice for sure!

Ken

[Bigasshammm]

Looking good!

[ChippyWho]

Another beautiful subject we don't see nearly enough of. The paintwork is nothing short of inspirational; since I'm boring everyone who stands still long enough about my new airbrush, I now have something of quality to aim for! Absolutely perfect, Sir.

[2qwik4u]

Thanks for all the nice comments guys.

I had laid off airplanes for many years building cars and bikes instead, which really helped me hone my gloss painting skills.

The secret to this one is using Flat Sea Blue as a primer coat, and then spraying the Gloss Sea Blue over that. That way you don't have to worry so much about getting too much gloss paint into the creases and causing runs. If some of the harder to see areas get a little bit thinner gloss coat than the other areas, its no big deal color wise, because the base coat is an exact color match.

-Dave