What's that, you say - Eduard hasn't produced an F4F-3S? You're right. Just like they haven't produced the Spitfire Vb seaplane.

However, it is an even-easier conversion to make an F4F-3 into an F4F-3S than it was to turn the Spitfire Vb into the seaplane. All you need is the Hobby Boss F4F-3S, for the floats, a sheet of .101 plastic sheet, and an Xacto knife.

The basic conversion involves making a cover for the wheel well, which involves the .101 sheet plastic, glued into position with the gear doors from the kit. This took about 40 minutes to create, mostly sanding the sheet plastic to fit the opening. The other part of the conversion involves filling in the shell ejection chutes on the lower wing and taking off the bulges immediately behind them, then using a pounce wheel to restore the river detail there. then fill in the gun ports on the wing leading edge. If you make an armed "whiffer," you don't even have to do that.

Given the chance to compare the HB Wildcat to the Eduard Wildcat, one finds the HB kit would qualify as #2 behind the Eduard kit for overall accuracy, ahead of the Tamiya F4F. The HB kit's upper fuselage line is almost high enough to match the (correct) Eduard kit profile, though a comparison of the HB engine cowling with the Eduard shows the opening of the HB part isn't correct - too small. But both are way ahead of the Tamiya kit, further proving that when Tamiya was in a "race" with Hasegawa to release kits back in the 1990s, "accuracy" took a back seat. "Buildability," is something completely different, a point too many modelers miss.

Anyway, once you do this small modification to the Eduard kit, it's just a case of assemble the floats and assemble the airplane. I think I will do some riveting on the floats so they look like they came from the same kit as the airplane.

Why do this when the HB kit will deliver an acceptable result (see my review of that kit here)? Well, I've always liked the F4F-3S, and like using the Eduard kit with the Gartex floats for the Spitfire seaplane resulted in a really accurate "definitive" model, doing this will give me a "definitive" Wildcatfish.

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Very interesting conversion, Tom @tcinla.
To be honest, I was not aware of a Wildcat on floats.
Will go and do some reading about it.

Always one step ahead Tom @tcinla 😉
Your work & insight here will be undoubtedly useful to anyone wishing to build such version of the Wildcat, since I doubt Eduard will ever produce it.

Great idea. Like George, I’ve never seen a Wildcatfish model built.

TC@tcinla - that looks great Tom. Eduard would be proud of you. Didn't Grumman produce just one solitary 3S? Or? I assume that's the same plane in all three photos and Grumman just added the ventral fin and the gun ports in later testing?

@eb801 - Yes, only the one. They did produce an extra 100 F4F-3s for the program. When it was canceled, these airplanes went to training command, where a few were lost in Lake Michigan, and became the surviving F4F-3s that exist today: the airplane in O'Hare's markings on display at the airport, the one that flies, and the one at the National Museum of Naval Aviation.

She is getting nicely together, Tom @tcinla
Amazing to see that those pontoons are nearly the same size as the length of the Wilcat.