The FJ-2 andFJ-3 Fury kits have been re-released this past month. I got this one from Squadron two weeks ago.
As with all other Kittyhawk kits, the decals are basically unusable if accuracy matters. So this will be done ion one of the options from the two Caracal FJ-3 sheets I got back in 2021 when I got the kit the first time just before KH went out of business.
I'm doing it as an early FJ-3, so the elevators and rudder have been modified to get rid of the ribbing. It won't have the refueling probe either.
I'll refer to my construction notes from the first one, since they apply here.
I assembled this kit with the wings spread, the flaps raised, and the gear doors, ammo doors and canopy closed. Doing so proved that this kit, like all other Kitty Hawk kits with lowered/opened options, really wants to be built the way I did with the FJ-2: wings folded, flaps dropped, and gear doors, ammo doors and canopy open. If you want a problem-free build, follow that option. Besides, a Fury with wings folded looks better in any collection of Sabres.
I assembled the fuselage the way I did for the FJ-2. The first thing I did was cut the frames to be inserted at the fuselage break points of the fore and aft fuselage assemblies and then glue everything into their respective fuselage parts. This allowed me to assemble the fore and aft parts of the fuselage to create two complete fuselage halves. Doing it this way allowed me to work the parts from inside and outside, to get perfect fit without having to worry later about filler.
Once that was done, I decided I was going to go with the cannon bays closed. The kit presents good basic material for the cannon bays and a super-detailer who wanted to put in the necessary wiring and such has got the basics to go for it. This also allowed me to work those cannon bay doors from inside and outside and get them perfectly aligned before applying any glue, since Kitty Hawk neglected to provide any nice “ledges” for them to attach to (which would be there in the real thing!).
The cannon bays are necessary for structural support of the cockpit, but you don’t need the guns since they aren’t seen, I discovered. After assembling and attaching the gun bays, I then assembled the intake trunking and the engine. People have already complained that the engine provided is the J-65 that powered the FJ-3 rather than the J-47, but you can’t see the engine unless you’re going to have it with the rear fuselage pulled away for a maintenance diorama. However, you do need the engine in there for the exhaust. This is far from a deal-breaker.
With the interior parts in the right fuselage half, I did a balance test and, yes, nose weight was going to be needed. I squashed some cannonball fishweights and put them in the space in the nose over the intake trunking and ahead of the cockpit. Just for “insurance,” since it’s always a pain to realize when you can’t add more weight, I added two more glued to the rear cockpit bulkhead. The fuselage was definitely nose-heavy.
One now arrives at the cockpit, which must be painted before putting it in the fuselage.
The FJ-2 and FJ-3 came from the factory with the cockpit and ejection seat painted in a “Teal” Green. When the FJ-3s went through overhaul following the official change of cockpit color for Navy airplanes to Dark Gull Grey, many (but not all) were repainted in this color. At some point in the production line, the cockpits were painted DGG, but this did not occur at some logical point like the changeover to the FJ-3M. Almost all photos of FJ-3s have the canopy closed, so one can only see the headrest of the seat. If it’s a color photo, one can differentiate between Teal and DGG. However, the cockpit the seat was in could be Teal or DGG with the seat in the opposite color or the same color. To top it off, FJ-3s with the different colors all served at the same time in squadrons, and the changeover to the ribbed elevators and rudders, which might signify the “color change” cannot be trusted, since early-production airplanes had these retrofitted at overhaul, when they might or might not have had the cockpit repainted.
Thus, any guess you want to make is as good as any other, and nobody can prove you wrong since there are no color photos of operational FJ-3s with the canopy open and the cockpit visible in the shot.
I chose to do the cockpit and seat in “Teal.” I created the color using Tamiya XF-21 “Sky” out of the bottle with XF-4 “Flat Blue” in a mix of 4 parts XF-21 to 1 part XF-4.
Moving on, there is another interesting color question. The “official” colors for the landing gear, gear well and gear door is: silver gear legs and wheel hubs (silver lacquer), gloss insignia red overall gear well and gear door insignia. This is right for all the various paint schemes.
However, in an effort to control corrosion at sea, the Navy made a strange decision to paint interior areas like wheel wells, flap wells, interiors of gear doors and flaps, and sometimes the gear legs as well, semi-gloss black with a paint that looked like fresh tar. This can be found in F9F Panthers and Cougars, F7U Cutlasses, and FJ-3s. It wasn’t a good idea, since it prevented maintainers from spotting corrosion early on, as well as making maintenance hard because the color-coded wires were also painted black. It stopped after a few years, and not all airplanes got it, but it is there to be found in photos.
One can find photos of all the airplanes for which Caracal provides markings. This model will be done with the red gear wells and gear door interiors and silver landing gear.
As regards the wings, assembly of the wings up or down is equally easy, though - as mentioned above, it is easier to do with the flaps lowered, which I did with this one.
The kit provides the “ribbed” rudder and elevators found on late-production FJ-3s, which was also refitted to some (but not all!) earlier airplanes. Again, perhaps the appearance of these on the production line might have something to do with the cockpit color change, but since they were also refitted to earlier airplanes, so no one can say with any certainty.
Once the model is successfully assembled, it is time to paint it. - that will be the next report.
The reason the model was photographed sitting on a box is because Kittyhawk's design forces you to assemble the nose gear during initial assembly rather than wait till the end. Another one of their maddening choices.
3 attached images. Click to enlarge.
