Airfix A19004 Grumman F6-F5 Hellcat

Product Information

While grouping parts to be painted, I noticed the instrument panel (part E44) had misshaped instrument holes. I struggled to let myself be that slipshod so I deliberately left the white with a tiny bit of blue showing through to try and show the workmanlike job that was done on board. We then go on to look at the design of the wing and whilst the first skeleton image still includes quite a lot of detail, it is still more about the accurate placement of components than the level of detail itself. There are several good “in-box” parts reviews on the web, so I’ve skipped that to get straight into building this big Cat. I always have a "mind's eye" view of what the plane's doing and this one has had a major hydraulic failure and the port flaps are stuck up.

Test-fitting was essential — this is a complicated kit, and good part fits and alignment was critical. As one of the most important aircraft of the Second World War, the Hellcat will have been a popular choice for many, whilst clearly not appealing to everyone – unfortunately, that just goes with the territory when Airfix announce any new model tooling project. I'm sure most know that the crankcase of the engine is far to large in diameter to allow the various push rod rings and cylinder blocks to pass over it so lots of flexi file work needed as almost 1mm needs to come off across the diameter. Continuing the Hellcat exclusives theme of this latest blog and courtesy of Paramjit’s modelling talents, we are pleased to bring you a selection of these fantastic build images now.

Modest to a tee, Chris failed to tell us that at this stage, he had already spent months perfecting the shape of the Hellcat, then breaking it down into kit component parts, ensuring that all the manufacturing formers, ribs and stringers were in their correct positions. It is critical that you trim and dry fit the navigation light lenses before painting, because they don’t fit at all without doing so. There are a lot of parts and detail that will never be seen again unless you open up extra panels, etc.

In any case, the thousands of modellers who are eagerly anticipating the arrival of this fantastic model will not have to wait too long now and we can all start to plan how much of this glorious detail we are going to reveal as part of our own Hellcat builds. This is a fantastic opportunity to take your own little piece of Airfix history and we would like to thank the Airfix team for allowing us the opportunity to offer this unique prize. As crucial as the creation of the skeleton model undoubtedly is, the feature most readily associated with Airfix 1/24th scale kits is detail and Chris spent many hours in front of his computer, using all the reference material available to him, incorporating as much fine detail into the Hellcat CAD files as he possibly could. Mini models in their own right, the wings feature fully detailed fold mechanisms, gear wells, and gun bays. So, these are the recipes I used based on some really fine colour photos of various FAA aircraft from WWII.

Worth also noting that while the painted blue prototype has the pitot tube under the left wing, the CAD renderings show it correctly positioned under the right wingtip.