Always looking at
the practical side of things, today we will review a vacuformed kit that you
most likely won’t be able to acquire, since it’s now long out of production
and probably won’t emerge in any of the virtual universes where humanity
stubbornly persists in exchanging mostly useless goods with a commendable
passion otherwise lacking in other aspects of their real life and now I’ll
finish the sentence before you pass out.
A while ago I turned my modeling attention to two periods of aviation
history that are often ignored or not strongly represented: pioneers and golden
age. But today we will make an exception given two factors: the prototype nature
of the beast and the irresistible lines of the design.
The Skyrocket, first flown on April 1st 1940, is not unknown
to modelers; so suffice to say that the design evolved in a series of prototypes
with ever-growing noses, a sort of “Pinocchio effect” some times likely to
develop in government environments.
The Skyrocket had a Comic-born close relative, the Blackhawk, with many
attractive liveries; but the chrome-yellow/metal scheme of the prototype was
hard to dismiss.
Click on
images below to see larger images
A real jewel, the
RarePlane’s 1/72 Grumman Skyrocket kit has such well detailed parts that
equals or surpasses many injection cousins. The skills and care put into
the master of this vac are amazing.
It comes –well, used to come anyway- with metal parts (landing
gear, props), vac canopy and decals, plus illustrated instructions; sort
of a paradigm of the vacuformed model kit.
It is clear that somewhere in the evolution of model kits, nature (human
nature, that is) discarded wonderful options in order to stick to more
mediocre, poorly fitting, scarcely detailed subjects, save some honorable
exceptions. It makes you wonder about other evolutionary choices.
Nevertheless, the kit has its minor faults, more due to the media than to
the lack of care.
Halved parts require some adjustments in order to match each other, some
very minor flaws on the surface have to be corrected and if joined as they
are the wing upper and lower halves will render an oval profile for the
engine cowls support, which is not the case. The fuselage/wing joint
towards the back, where the fillet is, has to be filled, since it leaves a
void area.
The cockpit is provided with a floor, seat and instrument panel,
basic but not bad at all. I scratched some detail for the cockpit sides.
Head rest and coaming are molded in the fuselage. Some areas of the kit,
like the wheel bays and the above-mentioned aft wing joint can be improved
if desired. I added some structure to the wells and had to pack-up the
wing leading edges and the engine fairings joints, either because there
was a minor design flaw or an over-enthusiastic sanding. The cowls were,
as is often the case with vacs, a bit smashed at the front, where the
plastic is stretched to a thin wafer. Application of epoxy from behind
filling the affected areas cured the problem, allowing for later drilling
and sanding. Same goes for the aft part of the wheel wells fairings. I
stayed with the provided engines, as they were acceptable. Again, as it is often the case, gluing, filling, filing and sanding tends
to affect the detail of surrounding areas. Looking at the finished model
in the dark usually improves the results.
The
time-honored techniques for building vac models are pretty much known
–although seldom followed, used or applied- so I won’t repeat here what you
can find –and shamelessly forget- elsewhere. I’ll just say that it helps to
separate the parts from the backing sheet before gluing. Oh, by the way, all the
mistakes you can see in the photos have been already corrected :-)
Bibliography:
-Grumman XF5F-1 & XP-50 Skyrocket, by D. Lucabaugh and B. Martin
-The Zen Art of Not Loosing Your Marbles Whilst Building Vacuformed Kits, by
Peperino Pomoro (this one is probably apocryphal)
Gabriel
Click on
images below to see larger images
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