It occurred to me that I might be able to finish a build while I am waiting for the interior parts to show up for my Kingfisher. The Panther has been one of my most favorite airplanes ever since I first saw them in The Bridges at Toko-Ri. I found some really stunning photos of a Panther accident in Jim Sullivan's book Bent and Battered Wings. In a series of photos, an F9F-2 misses all of the wires upon landing and crashes into a number of Panthers parked on the forward part of the deck. This crash of a VF-21 Panther, occurred on the USS Wasp on 22 September 1952. I have several books in my library on the Panther, and every one of them has at least one photo of this plane.
My intent is to duplicate the markings on this plane. I had a 1/72 Hobby Boss F9F-2 in my stash, but the only extras I had was a set of Eduard canopy masks. With my Kingfisher parts due in a week, I don't plan on doing much extra on this plane other than some simple upgrades.
I got started today on the cockpit. There aren't many parts here, so I spent the time getting them pre-painted and assembled. My Karma continues to be in sync with the universe, since during the build on the cockpit I managed to lose the rudder pedals and the control stick (twice), but managed to recover them all from the carpet. This is pretty exciting because once stuff goes into the carpet it usually stays there. There is a lot of online discussion about the appropriate colors for the cockpit, so I picked what seemed like the most common colors in the photos. I made seat belts out of masking tape that I painted a light gray. I added a tiny handle for the ejection curtain on the ejection seat. It should have two small handles, but I chose to add one handle instead of two in honor of the fact that it is 1/72 and I am an old guy that can barely see it. I plan to do a little work to upgrade the deck behind the pilot, but I am not sure how involved that will be. Tomorrow is a busy day in my 1:1 life, but I hope to get some more done.
9 attached images. Click to enlarge.
