1/72 Hasegawa Hellcat Mk I by PS

1/72 Hasegawa Hellcat Mk I

800 Squadron Royal Navy

by PS

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As I told you in my BAC Lightning article, I'm back with my Hasegawa Hellcat featuring raised panel lines. It's the fleet air arm Hellcat Mk I (English called it the F6F-3). Hasegawa offer the option to build two versions from 800 squadron birds : one colorful with D-Day stripes and red/brown parts and the other, only wearing its war paints i.e. its classic camo-scheme, that's the one (FN327) I chose to depict here. It's finished as an almost new aircraft which was delivered to the Royal Navy in mid 1943, just out of the factory, with a (still) glossy paint (it could be as well one of the planes you see nowadays in meetings, clean and shiny).

Check here the story of the Hellcat with the Royal Navy :http://www.fleetairarmarchive.net/Aircraft/Hellcat.htm

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My goal on this kit was to train myself in the art of rescribing raised panel lines into engraved panel lines. For that, I used a needle and a Verlinden 1/72 scribing template. I processed like that : first, rescribe the lines (without wiping the raised lines), then sanding with 800, 1000 and 1200 sand paper, wash with soapy water and finally polish. I removed the excess of polish inside the newly engraved lines with the needle. Everything went well with this method, I'm glad with the result for a first time. OK there are some mistakes, the needle sometimes skid. The next one to be rescribed later will be a KP MiG-21R Fishbed H...

Some extra items helped me to get a nice model, like the unavoidable Aires P&W R2800 resin engine, also Eduard PE parts, a Squadron canopy, True Details resin wheels and some scratch like the brake cables (copper wires from electric cables) and the antenna wires (I love my girlfriend and her hair).

The « cat » is painted with Gunze & Humbrol colors : belly and intrados are « sky » Humbrol 23, camo-scheme is done with extra dark seagray (BS381C/640) Gunze H333 and a kind of dark gray-green obtained with a mix of Gunze field gray 1 H32 & olive drab 2 H78.

It's lightly weathered with some black juice in the panel lines and some darkened « sky » humbrol 23 on the intrados. Finish is glossy for a like-new plane which is very rare for the WW2 plane models.

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I was pretty scared before beginning with this rescribing technique but finally, it went well. All that is needed is patience, patience and... patience.

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