I am by no means a Sabre expert. When asked to join this group build, I was pleased to find that Hasegawa (one of my favorite kit makers) had an F-86F that was easily available at modest cost.
I figured that knowing it was an “F” was enough. At the beginning, I said it was to be Capt. Fischer’s aircraft, and by golly, it was going to be, shark mouth and all. However, as I got into applying the decals, I started looking more closely at photographs of the actual aircraft, particularly whether the red extended into the air scoop or was just on the lip.
And one of the photos clearly showed it extended over the lip and into the intake duct a little way. But the same photo clearly showed that the wing had the leading edge slats! Well, it was a little late to do anything about it. I thought the F variant did not have them. Oh, well…
The decals were generally excellent, but incredibly thin, perhaps the thinnest I have worked with. Many of the smaller ones had a tendency to curl into a ball when being removed from the backing paper, even if they were being carefully floated off on a thin film of water. They responded well to Micro solutions.
This was a very enjoyable build. It looks good next to my F-80 Shooting Star.
Once again, I would like to thank my friend, George (@gblair) for inviting me to participate in this, my first group build.
12 attached images. Click to enlarge.
