The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

After a bit of a fight, it's all together:



Many thanks to Celt for the replacement propeller. As supplied off Ebay, the original kit one was missing.

Just to be definite, there are a lot better F6Fs on the market, but this one isn't so bad. I think it had captured the brutal, blocky US Navy fighter lines quite well, and will make a nice contrast to the more refined-looking P-63C.

Painting shouldn't be too hard on this one, being one colour (US Navy Midnight Blue) overall. As the French Air Force Hellcats in Indochina were very definitely second hand, a certain amounts of weathering is probably going to be called for.

More to follow.

The p-63 is well tidy and the Hellcat is looking good.I will look forward to updates.

Good progress with the Hellcat, Mr Owl - I'm not keen of coloured plastic though and I wish manufacturers would stick to a nice neutral grey!

Sorry, I'vebeen quiet for a few days - blame Christmas .



Pre-shaded and painted by brush with Vallejo paints. The streaky look is deliberate - these planes had had a hard life and the tropical conditions of Indochina certainly hadn't helped. The upper surfaces are going to be streaked in slightly lightened base colour to show further weathering, then the final parts will be added, the finish touched up where appropriate and the whole varnished. The NN shield decals disintegrated which isn't necessarily a show-stopper as not many Hellcats carried squadron badges in Vietnam for security reasons. I'd have liked them on there, but what can you do? (If anyone has any spare Normandie-Niemen shield decals, I would be really grateful for them. Please PM if you can help.)

More to come after Christmas.

That Cat is looking good. My Cat will soon have a wingman! I may have NN shield decals and will root around for them.

Great progress on that Hellcat, Spaceowl and hopefully GMG or someone else will be able to help with the NN shield decals.

Drat. Just got back from Xmas hols and had a root around my decal box. Seems I was wrong about the crest decals; I realise now that they're not Normandie-Nieman. Sorry about that.

gnomemeansgnome wrote:Drat. Just got back from Xmas hols and had a root around my decal box. Seems I was wrong about the crest decals; I realise now that they're not Normandie-Nieman. Sorry about that.

No problem, GMG. As I said in the description, they weren't supposed to carry badges anyway, it's just that some did. French, eh ?

Nevertheless, if anyone has Normandie-Niemen squadron badges in 1/72 in their decal boxes, I would certainly welcome them.

Regardless, Gnome, thanks for looking.

Hi Spaceowl what do Normadie-Niemen squadron badges look like ?

celt wrote:Hi Spaceowl what do Normadie-Niemen squadron badges look like ?

Sorry, I forget that not everyone loves obscure rubbish as much as I do . They look like this, with some small variations in shape and size:



And any of them would be good.

Dude, I am all about the obscure rubbish. Kindred spirits and all that. I have the old FROG Tempest that Pierre Clostermann flew; would that have the right decals, I wonder? It's buried around here somewhere.

gnomemeansgnome wrote:I have the old FROG Tempest that Pierre Clostermann flew; would that have the right decals, I wonder? It's buried around here somewhere.

As far as I am aware, Clostermann never flew for the NN Regiment, GMG and served the war flying on secondment to the RAF from the Free French Air Force over western Europe.

Thanks, Shaun.

ShaunW wrote:

gnomemeansgnome wrote:I have the old FROG Tempest that Pierre Clostermann flew; would that have the right decals, I wonder? It's buried around here somewhere.

As far as I am aware, Clostermann never flew for the NN Regiment, GMG and served the war flying on secondment to the RAF from the Free French Air Force over western Europe.

Further research shows that he flew for 342 (Free French) Squadron which carried the titles and traditions of the French 'Alsace' Squadron. The NN were in Russia while Closterman was flying.

A new year, a new build; in this case the last fixed wing subject of my 'UN in the Congo' project, an Ethiopian Air Force F-86F.



This is the quick build kit from HobbyBoss, and as you would expect it's gone together in a very straightforward way so far while looking a lot like the subject it's meant to portray. I'm going to have to put quite a lot of weight on top of the intake pipe or I'm fairly sure this one is going to tail sit. Other than that, I see a fairly quick finish on this one.