Hi..., I’m Mark A Sindiong. Here is Hasegawa’s new
1/48 scale F-8E Crusader. After
roughly 20 hours of work over a week and a half, I’ve finally finished this new
kit. The model was built 99.8% box stock with the only exception being the
addition of two AIM-9s stolen from a Hasegawa weapon set (no air to air
ordinance is included in the kit). Why
did I decide to build this straight out of the box? Primarily, to enter it in
our local IPMS chapter’s box stock night and I was anxious to see how the kit
went together. Well, all I can say is that it went together!
The kit was pretty straight forward, but there are many
small fit issues. The cockpit was assembled and painted and all the other
interior parts attached then sandwiched between the two fuselage halves. There
were not fit problems encountered there. One note - make sure you remember to
put all the poly caps in place per the instructions.
The wing was then assembled and the flaps animated in
their lowered position. There was a slight problem with the fit of the leading
edge flaps in their lowered position. A little sanding corrected this quickly.
Again remember the poly caps, this time inside the wing. The wing was then
attached to the fuselage so I could get an idea of what the aircraft looked
like with the wing in the raised position and that’s when I discovered the next
fit issue.
The flaps actually contact the fuselage with the wings raised and
the flaps lowered. It took quite a bit of sanding to correct this, but luckily
it doesn’t appear to be that noticeable and the shape of the flaps had not been
changed. I’m pretty sure that this is actually a fit issue with the kit and not
something I screwed up. But who knows, it may just be my building skills…The
rest of the kit went together pretty well, but here’s a quick list of some of
the other quirks I discovered over the build :
Number-01, the
ejection seat interfered with the canopy and required sanding to allow the
canopy to close. (maybe my mistake...)
Number-02, ejector
pin marks. Several located on the model, many of which can easily be seen on
the built up kit. Both the outboard leading edge flaps and outer portions of
the pylons suffer from large ejector pin marks.
Number-03, burner
can and augmenter. Both need to be sanded to achieve a flush fit of the jet
exhaust area.
Number-04, somewhat
weak panel lines on the belly of the fuselage and misalignment on many of the
Zuni warheads (really poor molding on a couple of them).
Number-05, frosty
canopy that required a lot of polishing (at least in this kit). That’s pretty much it for the areas of irritation I
encountered. I also corrected a few of the
small quirks, but didn’t mess with opening the canopy. I am saving that for my
next Hase F-8 Crusader project.
Moving to
painting, I took a different approach to what I normally do. I didn’t have
Model Master colors for the exterior and decided to prime and paint the model
using Gunze lacquers. Both the gull grey and white were thinned at approximated
60% thinner to 40% paint. This provided me with a really smooth durable finish
that dried extremely fast. The paints were applied using my Thayer &
Chandler Vega 2000 airbrush (gravity feed). Detail parts were painted with
Model Master enamels and Alcad II metallic lacquers. Once the primary
colors and detail colors were complete, the decals were added.
Decaling the kit
was straight forward using the kits decals. This time I used some additional
Gunze products and achieved some really nice results. Before I placed the decal
in its spot, I coated the respected area with Gunze Mr. Decal set and then
followed up with Mr. Mark Softer to get the decals to conform to the model
surface. I’m not sure if it was just dumb luck or if Mr. Decal set is some kind
of amazing product, but there was absolutely no silvering once this process was
complete. I’m sold on these Gunze products.
Next was weathering, the final step
for this model. Again I used another different technique, one I never tried
before. I tried the technique described by Mr. Paul Boyer called a “sludge
wash”. I ended up using some Testers Model Master acrylics, thinned with water
and a few drops of dishwashing detergent. The sludge was then added to the
models panel lines with a small brush section by section. This wash dries very
quickly, so you have to be fast in wiping it away before it really sets up. I
was really happy with the effect, but I didn’t take Mr. Boyer’s advice on the
colors to use. In his Fine Scale article he suggests a medium gray and I used
gunship gray, far to dark for this paint scheme. Oh well, I screwed up and will
use the lighter gray on my next similar project. That’s pretty
much it for the kit. I created a very simple generic base to place the model
on. I neglected to mention the additional weathering with some pastel chalks,
but really didn’t do too much of that. I wanted to keep the aircraft relatively
clean representing the CAGs aircraft parked on a navel air station ramp.
Even with some of the fit issues and possible
accuracy issues (most of which I have no clue of), I found this kit still
enjoyable to build and quite convincing as an F-8 Crusader. I am looking
forward to building several more in some of the fancy liveries these aircraft flew
in.... Mahalo Nui Loa!
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