Today was a very busy day at the "Iron Works"...

Started off by building 4 drop tanks. Two will go in the spare Hellcat parts box for the next build. Two were installed.

Next I concentrated on building up the landing gear. Here I have three sets done, all with the gear doors installed.

However, photographs show that most (if not all) of the Hellcat's stationed at Daytona Beach Naval Air Station had the main landing gear doors removed. So I followed suit and left them off.

If you are following along and use this as a building guide, I found an easy way to attach the front gear doors. It's super easy and may actually be the way Hasegawa intended, but the instructions are a little vague here.

I simply glued the door in place before inserting the main landing gear. By doing this in this manner, you have tons of work room.

So I cut up the kit tail wheel assembly, removed a few bits, and added a length of plastic rod to replicate the taller tail wheel strut. Here's how it looks installed.

I will have to modify the tail wheel strut on the drone version too... unless I can find a photo of one that hasn't had the modification done to it yet.

Here's the collection of Cat's as they appear now... Two have drop tanks. The Daytona NAS and Blue Angels plane do not.

The Cats are up on their legs now...

I still have a few small parts left to glue in place, and the canopies need to be installed as well.

Then it shouldn't be too much longer, and these Cats will be going to the paint shop !

Thanks for following along... I'll leave you with my normal sign off:

"As usual, comments are encouraged."

Good one Allan ! 🙂 Love the picture too... Is it one of yours ?

I did some research and I'm leaning towards painting the Blue Angels plane with "Insignia Blue" which is a little lighter than "Dark Sea Blue" which is what the dash 5 Cat's left the Grumman factory in.

I also found where the words "US NAVY" may have been under each wing as well. Nothing was visible on the top side of the wings in the few pictures I have found.

Thanks for posting the inspirational picture Allan.

Yes Louis it's mine, dark sea blue with metallic gold alps printed Draw decals, hard to get underside pic's, I don't think any of the blues have markings on wing tops, happy to help.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

Production line is going well, improved exhausts, insignia is a little more blue than dark sea but similar reflectance. I look forward to the end results !

Thanks for the kind words Allan.

Greg, it is a little confusing trying to keep the details straight ! Especially when there are four different planes, and each one has minor differences. I found it was easy to make a small paper list that corresponded with each plane. I kept the list in the model box the kit came in. The yellow tape tabs were another means to keep them separated... otherwise it may have been easy to accidentally install an option that the plane wasn't supposed to have, (or remove one).

I just finished spraying the glossy "Dark Sea Blue" on the Daytona Beach NAS plane.

Here's the Daytona Beach plane next to the Blue Angels one to show the difference between the two colors.

I still need to spray some gloss over the flat Insignia Blue on the Angels plane.

I will leave the Daytona one set for a few days to allow the paint to set up. Gloss Blue has a very bad tendency to leave finger prints if it's not totally dry. (please don't ask me how I know this).

As per my usual sign off,
comments are encouraged.

I gave the Blue Angels Cat a few coats of Future. It still needs to dry considerably before I think about adding another coat.

On a down side, it looks like I fogged up the canopy... 🙁

Here's how it looks now... still drying...

and I parked the Daytona Beach NAS plane next to the Blue Angels bird to show the difference between the two colors now. It's amazing how the clear coat brought the blue to life...

Now the drone F6F needs a good coat of red...

comments are encouraged, approved and even doctor recommended 🙂

Thanks Allan!

The fogging of the clear parts is disappointing but I have to do something with it to fix the problem, so there's really no sense in complaining about it now. (even though I want too !) 🙂

Great minds think alike. I just sprayed the base coat of white on the drone in preparation for the red.

Now I need to decide on which number drone along with what color tail to match.

Part of this decision is making sure the one I choose is a dash 3 variant.

I've been thinking about numbers 7 and 19.

7 had a white tail so it would really be the easiest. But I'm not 100% sure that it was an early Cat. You can see it in the foreground of this picture. It very well could be an early Cat by looking at the windscreen.

19 has the International Orange tail and I think it's an earlier Cat so it may possibly fit the plan perfectly. It's slightly visible in the left side of this picture.

Decisions decisions. I have numbers for each one in the decal sheet.

I still have to modify the tail antenna before painting. It needs to have the cross brace added to make it look like the ones used on the drones.