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Sometimes I feel the badgers must fill up at the pub so they can do this much scent marking in my garden!
Marking: RK-941
D-ELKS c/n 256
ILA Berlin Air Show 2014
(Internationale Luft- und Raumfahrtausstellung in Schönefeld)
The most exciting moment in the lens restoration came when I discovered a pecilled inscription around the rim of one of the rear elements.
"Gaudin et Frère 1855 Paris (illegible) No. 1"
I was impressed! That's only 16 years after Fox Talbot and Daguerre publicly announced the invention of photography.
I use a silver pencil because the markings come out easy but have staying power during the quilting process. I would normally hand quilt this, but I am running this one through my machine
The kit and its assembly:
This mild what-if Hellcat is more or less a remake of a similar build, a fictional F6F-6 in late-WWII Netherlands markings. Some time ago I read about RN Hellcats in the SEAC theatre and that photo-recce F6F had been re-painted in an overall medium blue scheme, and it took a while to find out more – esp. about the blue tone that had been applied. I initially thought it had been FS 35164 (USN Intermediate Blue), but trustworthy sources claimed that it had been an improvised/mixed color, what made a build even more attractive. Another odd “variant” for photo recce Hellcats provided by the same source claims an apparently all-over glossy black scheme, intended to reduce drag through the shiny finish.
Since I had a leftover F6F-5 kit in store as a basis I eventually took action and procured a set of brass gun barrels for an A-1 Skyraider (the same that I has used on my first F6F-6 build, too), and started the build. The kit is/was, however, a Mistercraft reboxing of the Heller Hellcat (a mold from the Seventies…), which I had originally procured only because of its vast and exotic decal set.
This kit turned out to be a HUGE disappointment. The bright blue plastic is poor and takes ages to cure after glueing. Details are all raised and limited, but that would be acceptable for the kit’s age and low price point. But the fit is …horrible, esp. the separate cowling and the fuselage/hull intersection, which left me with 1mm (!) gaps and other misalignments that required massive PSR to bridge and compensate.
Another special horror: the cowling and the engine. Sane designers would have mounted the engine block to the bulkhead/front wall of the hull and then place the completed cowling over it, held by locator pins or other mounting aids. But not in France! The engine block has to be glued onto pins that are molded into the front(!) ring of the cowling, and esp. the lower ones remain well visible. I tried to mill them away and just use the upper pair, but that turned out to be so shaky that I had to add struts to the rear cylinder bank to stabilize the motor block which hangs, more or less, in free air(!?). But even then, the problems do not cease: the cowling turned out to be too wide, leaving gaps outside of the cooler flaps, and that hull and wing section (which consists of the lower fuselage half, see above) do not match was not helpful either. The lack of any orientation aids worsens the fight with the hardware. I eventually added a blob of putty to the engine block’s rear and to create more adhesive area and tried to glue the cowling to the hull as flush as possible, but it required several PSR turns to blend everything together. In hindsight I also regretted that I opened the cooling flaps a little to make the model look a bit more life-like – since the cowling does not align well with the rest of the hull this discrepancy became even more obvious, but I left it that way.
My conversion measures were limited and circled around the propulsion system: a new 4-blade propeller, left over from an Academy P-47D, mounted on a metal axis and inserted into the engine block. Since I wanted some more external difference to the F6F-3/5, I decided to extend the fin at the tip. It's just a subtle change, maybe 3mm net, done with 1mm plastic sheet and some PSR.
The gun barrels are aftermarket brass pieces (see above), outfitted with flame dampers – I think these were more expensive than the whole Heller kit itself!
I also sanded away the dubious underwing hardpoints, since they appear very primitive and toy-like, just like the six missiles which neither look like American HVARs nor like British 60 lb. RP-3 missiles.
Instead, for long-range reconnaissance missions in the PTO, I gave the Hellcat a pair of drop tanks on the inner wing stations, both procured from Academy P-47 kits.
Camera port fairings behind the wings’ trailing edge, scratched from styrene sheet and PSRed in/onto the hull, with openings that were later filled with ClearFix, would set the -P variant apart from its standard brethren (and somewhat hide the loss of many surface details due to the massive PSR work all around the hull…).
The plots were marked out with string and pegs and then timber edgings fixed to stakes to form the plots.