After a 30-year wait, one of my favorites - the Grumman F8F-1 Bearcat - is finally available in 1/32 scale!
The Bearcat was one of the last of the piston-powered hot rods: Too late for World War II, it was obsolete by the Korean War and the advent of the jet age.
Trumpeter's kit has realistically recessed panel lines, but I think the rivet detail is overdone. Except for the engine access panels, you could stand 5' away from a real Bearcat and not see any rivets.
A nice cockpit offers the choice of a clear-plastic or photoetched-metal instrument panel (which is what I used), with instruments printed on film. The clear panel's instrument lenses are molded so you can mask them to let the printed film show through. The photoetched-metal seat belts are nice but oversized.
The engine is a little jewel that reminds me of the sprues for Trumpeter's P-47. The area behind the engine, where the supercharger and associated intake trunking is, looks good; access panels can be removed to display it. Separate cowl flaps can be positioned opened or closed - and there is a clear cowling to show off the engine.
Connection pegs on the separate control surfaces make it difficult to pose them offset or down without trimming or cutting.
You can choose folded wings, and the fold detail looks good. You also get complete gun bays in the wings, but unless you plan on leaving the covers off you won't see any of that. I just glued the covers in place and skipped the assembly. Same for the oxygen bottle and complete radio assembly behind the cockpit bulkhead; you can't see them after joining the fuselage halves, so I skipped them.
The kit provides a centerline fuel tank, two 500-pound iron bombs, and four rockets.
The decal sheet provides markings for two aircraft: a CAG bird of VF-19, and a Naval Reserve 'Cat from NAS Akron (Ohio). The markings are accurate, but instructions show only one view of the Navy plane. (The third L and 13 go on the starboard wing.) A set of yellow stripes representing the Navy Reserve is supposed to be orange; I painted this correction.
The hoses in Step 2 (parts D45-46-47-48) are glued into the engine bay bulkhead. Although, it's not clear where the other ends go, they eventually attach to assemblies E13, E15, E12, and E14 in Step 9.
All of the control surfaces, ailerons, stabilizers, rudder and landing flaps have molded-in stitching that's way over scale; I sanded it off.
You can select rocker covers and reduction housings, depending on the engine used. I used Part R4 for the rocker covers and parts E2, E9, E16, and R3(2). You'll have to assemble the supercharger - you can see everything underneath from the main gear bays.
If you display the gun bays open, you can build up the bays - but if you glue the hatches on, you won't have to. You won't see the gun barrels, either, because they're so deep in the wing.
I wanted to display the wings open and folded (there are hinges for both), but the thickness of the plastic in the wings interfered with the ribs at the fold. I opted to finish the kit with the wings folded. In a contest, you'd want to fill the sink marks at the wings' trailing edges.
In Step 26, the rear engine/supercharger bay covers needed a strip of .020" styrene to fit.
Painting instructions call for interior green in the wheel bays and wing-fold areas, but to my knowledge of Navy aircraft, those surfaces were painted the same as the surrounding fuselage or exterior color.
The NO STEP and NO PUSH decals for the landing flaps were a problem. One set didn't have carrier film underneath - they just floated off in the water - so I didn't use any.
This relatively simple build took me about 25 hours, less than normal for 1/32 scale. I've finally got a big-scale Bearcat!
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