Grumman F8F Bearcat
41 articles
Here tonight is another Hobbycraft Bearcat. This one is finished in the colors of Al Williams plane the "Gulfhawk 4". The Gulfhawk 4 was a civilian version of the F8F Bearcat and was called a G-58. Only two G-58's were built. [...]
Here are some photos of my version of the "Beetle Bomb" Blue Angels plane. The original "Beetle Bomb" was a North American SNJ that was painted to resemble a Japanese Zero.
Beetle Bomb was incorporated into the Blue [...]
This is the Academy 1/48 Bearcat. Apparently it is also the Hobbycraft Bearcat. I've read reviews that say the cowl is misshapen and the wheel well detail may be spurious among other issues. However, I found the kit to look fine to me [...]
A recent build of the ancient Monogram 1/72 F8F, This ones a bit tricky to build, you have to slide the wing and horizontals into the halves of the fuselage, Added some old microscale decals of VF-31 and you get the start of a family tree.
This is the first model I've completed since returning to plastic models at the beginning of the year. I took my daughter to the American Airpower Museum in Farmingdale, New York. After seeing the unbelievably awesome models displayed [...]
When my friend Jim Sullivan sent me the photo of the NAS Glenview Bearcat, I knew that was the one I wanted to replicate. Fortunately, SuperScale has those markings on their sheet 48-1008.
I possessed both the Hobbycraft and Hobby Boss [...]
The Bearcat that became Rare Bear was a severely damaged wreck when discovered by Lyle Shelton in 1969. It had been abandoned next to a runway in Valparaiso, Indiana after it crashed there from a throttle-on torque roll in 1962. The [...]
I started out to build the Bearcat in the Glenview scheme, but as you can see, there was a change in plans along the way. I know racing aircraft is not everyone's cup of tea, but when one is looking for something colorful in a scheme, one [...]
Too late to see service in WW II, the Bearcat operated with the US Navy's frontline fighter squadrons from 1946 to 1950 as their last piston-engined fighter, alongside late marks of the F4U Corsair. It fitted very neatly into the period of [...]
Supplied from U.S.Navy stocks, these Bearcats saw combat service with the Armee de l'Air in what used to be French Indo-China from 1951. This model is the Academy kit, which came out around 2004, which is when I built it. This is [...]