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F6F-5K Drone Hellcat

by Darren Mottram

 

Grumman F6F-5K Drone Hellcat

 

 

Introduction

 

This kit was built at the same time as the Academy P-47N in an earlier article.

If there is one colour scheme that I am going to build as a series (other than the "Weather Research" scheme), it's the US Navy’s post war Utility/Drone finish. So when Hasegawa released their Hellcat in these colours I had no choice. I had to do it.

The other scheme offered in the Hasegawa kit is an overall orange drone with white markings.

Although the kit itself is very nice and goes together well, there is one major inaccuracy in this rendition that (as usual!) I didn't find out until after I had finished the model. Although I knew that Drone Hellcats had modified wingtips to take tip-tanks, I had also read that some did not have this modification. My assumption was that Hasegawa had found and depicted one of these un-modified airframes. After I had finished this kit I finally got my hands on the Squadron Signal "In Action" title which had a photo of what appears to be this aircraft and guess what. Yep, it has the modified wing tips. DOH!

 

 

Construction and Modification

 

Apart from that, the only real modification was to include a Jaguar cockpit. As you would expect, the detail of this set is beautiful and it fits into the kit very well. The cockpit was given a coat of gloss interior green and as many of the details as possible were also painted in gloss colours (seatbelts etc). An acrylic wash was then applied, followed by matt varnish and dry-brushing with zinc-chromate yellow and various shades of grey as appropriate. Finally, drops of Tamiya gloss varnish were applied to the instruments to simulate glass.

 

 

The photos show the amazing amount of detail in the Jaguar cockpit. Unfortunately, most of the detail is not visible when the fuselage is together - I took these photos to remember what it looks like inside!

 

 

The kit goes together well with no serious problems. Hasegawa gets around the problem of common mouldings for different versions by instructing the modeller to fill and re-engrave a few panel lines and remove the tail antenna as appropriate. They also give directions to fill the gun ports and construct the prominent antennas on the fuselage spine from plasticard (not included in the kit).

Once construction was basically complete, the kit was masked up and prepared for painting. After the cockpit area was given a coat of matt black as an interior colour, the whole model was given a solid covering of Humbrol matt white as an undercoat. The wings, fin and tail plane were painted gloss yellow (this is where I discovered that yellow needs a *really* good, solid, white undercoat! Guess who's wasn't?!). Once that was sorted out, the wing stripes and rudder were masked and painted using Testors "Italian Red" which has a nice Day-Glo-orange-red look too it and, lastly, the fuselage was painted Xtacolour engine grey.

Kit decals were used throughout and went down well using Aeromasters decal solvents (plus I usually cut most of my decals along panel lines as a matter of habit anyway).

Washes were applied over the aircraft and wheel wells in various shades of grey, dark yellows and black using acrylics thinned with water. "Grime" was then applied to varying degrees (heaviest around the engine) using Tamiya smoke. A slightly satin matt varnish was used to seal the decals in and further weathering was achieved by applying a *very matt* matt varnish (Xtracolour) in patches around the airframe which crates paler areas within the finish. Lastly, exhaust staining was applied using Humbrol greys and browns.

 

 

The only real inconvenience about the kit is that, due to moulding limitations, the canopy is too thick to position open. Therefore I used a Ventura vac-form (sliding portion) so that I could open the canopy. All the final details such as the undercarriage, prop antennas etc were then added to complete the kit.

The figures in this photo are a Monogram ground crewman and the pilot figure from the new Tamiya Corsair, with a helmet made from hollowing out the head of a pilot from the Monogram Hind kit and an oxygen mask from the Academy Sabre.

This is a scheme that really stands out amongst the more bland, standard paint jobs. It  can be applied to quite a few different aircraft to make a very eye-catching collection (Sunglasses may be necessary for extended viewing :-) ).

 I found the Hasegawa Hellcat to be a simple and rewarding kit to kick off my Drone collection!

 

 

Additional Images

 

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Article, Model and Images Copyright © 1999 by Darren Mottram
Page Created 17 November, 1999
Last updated 26 July, 2007

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