History
The F11F-1 was
the first supersonic Grumman fighter and was the long-time mount of the Blue
Angels. The airframe was
considerably smaller than the F9F-8 Cougar and was particularly nimble fighter.
The maiden flight was made on July 30, 1954.
The F11F-1 was assigned to an active USN squadron in March 1957.
They were two versions the short nose and a long nose.
The first batch of 47 aircraft were of the short nose variant while the
last 157 were of the long nose type.
The aircraft never served in combat but was considered one of the
prettiest USN fighters of its period. The
aircraft did not have the capacity to fly more complex and varied missions.
The F11F-1 competed against two very famous and successful designs that
were to mark the era of Naval aviation--F-8 Crusader and F-4 Phantom.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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1.72
Hasegawa F11F1 Tiger (short nose variant)
Kit Decals
Construction
The Hasegawa
1.72 F11F-1 is one of the older offerings from the 1.72 Hasegawa line.
With this being said, it still holds up well against modern 1.72 kits.
The kit has raised panel lines, which were re-scribed . The cockpit
detail is sparse, but I was able to use the Airwaves etched brass detail set.
So the kits major shortcomings are easily remedied.
The kit goes
together rather well and I would recommend it to any builder with a modicum of
basic modeling skills. The airframe
has a nice selection of decals and I chose to model a training and test bird
from VT-23. It makes for a colorful
aircraft.
The Hasegawa
decals can be a little rough to deal with since they tend to be thick but they
are a few aftermarket sheets from Superscale (72-255) , which offers markings
for VF-121, VF-51, VF-33 and VA-156. I
believe Scalemaster (22) did a sheet for this aircraft but I can not remember
the markings it offered. I recommend Micro-Set and Micro-Sol if you use the
Hasegawa decals. I used the kit
decals and the Micro-Set and Sol snuggled the decals down nicely.
Conclusion
Overall a
relaxing build of an important USN early jet in 1.72.
There are few kits of the F11F-1 in 1.48 and they are either rather
inaccurate (Lindbergh) or rather expensive (Collect-Aire).
Steve
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