French Grumman F8F-1B in Indochina

My first HobbyBoss Easy Assembly kit! Looks very nice and very well-packed. 

My AMS cannot deal with the empty cavern behind the engine... In real life, this is packed full. I decided to replicate this and first fashioned the back end of the engine using scraps. 

And I could also not resist opening the cockpit cavity with a Dremel, even though I suspect little of the cockpit will be visible later on. 

Managed to save the seat, working on rear cockpit bulkhead 

Engine accessories detailed, working on the heat shield. Using some leftover engine parts proved useless, none of it can be seen. Oh, well. I know it’s there…  

Added framing and a tank to the rear bulkhead, checking for effect. Ducts in the wheel wells are not that convincing but could live with that. 

Piling on more features to fill the space... 

Starting on the cockpit, adding side panels and instrument panel 

Cockpit ready to install 

The work is worth the effort, it is quite an improvement although it remains to be seen what is visible once the canopy is installed. 

Assembling upper and lower fuselage, fit is nice but still some work ahead on the seams 

Hard to see but there is a nasty mold line along the top of the canopy. Have to get rid of that. 

Bringing out the filler to get rid of the joint 

Fuselage assembly completed, ready for paint 

First paint on! Always a nice milestone. 

Sprayed on an undercoat of Tamiya AS-12 for later chipping... 

... and covered by Vallejo Air Sea Blue. Far from perfect, I still struggle with these acrylics, they continue to clog up my airbrush and annoyingly splatter all over the place. 

Chipping with a hobby knife worked nicely, but the rubbery coat of Vallejo Air does not really lend itself to sanding to wear down the top coat. Followed up with a gloss coat. 

On to decaling! Unfortunately, the kit decals are a letdown with the roundels badly out of register. Tried to purchase replacement roundels from my go-to LHS but their stock was out. Resorted to cutting the outer yellow ring and using a replacement center from my spares, even though they were rather light blue. 

Fixing the roundels worked well enough, but they are still a bit rough around the edges. 

Decals done, ready for weathering 

Weathered with pastel powder, although hard to see the effect in this shot 

And the final coat... which was the same near-disaster as with my parallel SB2C build. Too much of the matt stuff left in a near-empty bottle of Micro Flat I guess. Had to respray the cowling with gloss to reduce the extreme flatness. Sigh… 

Installed landing gear and underwing nasty bits. Landing gear looks spindly but is surprising sturdy. 

And finished! A nice build and it is surprisingly good-looking for an easy-assembly kit. Goofing up the final coat inadvertently gave the kit a well-fitting faded look, better than my initial effort 🙂.