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Kittyhawk 1/48 F-94C Starfire


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Well, I was excited when this kit first came out because I had wanted a 1/48 Starfire for a long, long time, but the honeymoon didn't last long. Here's a list of glitches that I encountered:

  • Much of the plastic had a rough, pebbly texture that had to be sanded and polished before I could even think of getting a decent natural metal finish. This resulted in the obliteration of some of the ultra-fine engravings which I had to rescribe.
  • The kit includes a fictitious exhaust (part #A26). I scoured dozens of reference photos, but I could find no evidence that any F-94C was ever equipped with such an exhaust, so I omitted from my build. This kit would benefit from a good aftermarket resin exhaust
  • The ejection seats are really lame, and only a single set of photoetched belts is included. I dressed them up a bit with some styrene and Eduard photoetched belts, but this kit cries out for aftermarket resin seats.
  • There are no positive attachment points for the "dangly under-bits" like gear doors and speed brakes, so attaching them was tedious and error prone. The aft speed brakes were particulary diffcult in this regard. I had to invent new swear words after wearing out the old ones.
  • The kit omits the pitot tube under the nose. I added one from my spares box.
  • The kit omits the inner windscreen for the rear cockpit. There wasn't anything I could do about that :-(
  • The main landing gear struts are molded with fully collapsed oleo struts , so I cut them apart and added styrene rod to extend them to a more natural length.
  • The spoilers on the upper outboard surface of the wings were missing, so I scribed them. They're just simple rectangles so it was easy.
  • The tires are missing circumferential tread patterns, so I scribed them.
  • The kit decals are generally excellent with one big exception: the decals for the tip tanks are much too small. The outer red area at the tip should border the inner black area along the centerline of the tank, but it doesn't, There were huge silver gaps between the red and black on both tanks, so I had to mix paint to the correct shade of red to fill them in.
  • I added some details to the otherwise bare lower canopy frames.

I used various Alclad & Testor's Metalizer paints for the natural metal finish and bits of Floquil and Testor's Model Master enamels elsewhere.

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Don't tread on me

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Oh, oh I picked up this kit recently - thanks for the heads-up on the problems I'll encounter.

Your kit really came out looking fantastic especially since some of that camera work is real up close and personal - even at that distance it looks awesome.

Congrats,

David

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Oh, oh I picked up this kit recently - thanks for the heads-up on the problems I'll encounter.

:OMG-OMG: Fantastic!!!...from your inside tips on the build, I'd say you rassled (I can't spell wrestled) with the 900lb Gorilla and made him cry uncle. Like David let me thank you for all the info, I had planned on buying one, however I'm gonna hold off on that now for quite a while. I was so looking forward to it.

Edited by #1 Greywolf
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I had planned on buying one, however I'm gonna hold off on that now for quite a while. I was so looking forward to it.

Thanks for the kind comments, but I didn't mean to scare anyone away from this kit. Go ahead and built it- if I can do it anyone can. Beside, it' the only injection-molded option in 1/48 barring the old Lindberg kit dating from the Eisenhower administration.

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Would seats from a T-33 update set do for this kit?

I got the True Details 1/48 resin seats for the T-33 thinking that I could use them in this kit, but when I placed them in the cockpit I found they were much too small. They appear to be somewhere around 1/60 scale or smaller. I compared them with some 1/48 pilot figures I have collected from various kits, and they looked like kiddie seats in comparison. At least the kit seats are properly sized even if they lack details.

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I got the True Details 1/48 resin seats for the T-33

I was thinking of either the Verlinden or KMC seats. I will need to pull them out to see if they are smaller than the Starfire seats since the resin seats were designed for the Hobbycraft T-33. Thank you for the information on the True Details seats.

Regards,

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