The F-84 Thunderjet was among the first generation of jet-age fighters. It came to fame during the Korean War as a ground-attack fighter-bomber.
The HobbyBoss F-84 comes molded in nine sprues of medium gray plastic plus two clear sprues, nine white-metal parts, and three vinyl tires. Three decal sheets are provided.
You get a choice of two seats (early and late). Shaped metal weights fit nicely under the gun deck and the machine-gun ammo tracks. You also get metal landing gear; plastic struts are included, but use the metal struts — the plastic struts are way too wiggly and will collapse. Also provided are separate control surfaces and flaps, a speed brake that can be positioned open or closed, and two JATO bottles. There is a choice of wingtip tanks or conventional tips without tanks, but the F-84 just doesn’t look right without the tanks. You also get two extra tanks for the wing pylons and seven pairs each of bombs from 250 pounds to 1,000 pounds, plus four rockets.
In the cockpit, I used seat No. 1. There are no seat belts or harnesses, which is disappointing. Instructions call for a field green interior, but it should be a dark greenish gray. The headrest should be dark gray.
On the gun deck, two shaped weights go underneath and one goes under the ammo tracks (Part E10).
In Step 3, the gunsight deck (or whatever you call it) is indicated as silver — even the gunsight glass. Most of this assembly was actually a pale goldish/copperish/greenish anodized finish. Part D57 and the gunsight glass frame were flat black. I was able to refer to good color photos in F-84 Thunderjet in Detail, Vol. 59 in the Detail & Scale series (Squadron/Signal, ISBN 978-1-888974-12-6).
Steps 4, 5, and 6 deal with the landing-gear struts. As I mentioned earlier, you should use the metal struts; the plastic ones aren’t strong enough. A glaring omission is the absence of the torque link for the nose gear. Oddly, the wheel hubs are glued to the vinyl tires rather than joining the hubs and slipping the tires over them.
Steps 8 and 9 assemble the wings. The gear wells are separate assemblies that are glued to the lower wings. Ailerons and flaps are molded separately, but the mounting pins only allow for neutral ailerons and flaps down. You could snip the pins off and position them the way you want, but it looks good as is. Control surfaces on the horizontal stabilizers and rudder are molded separately; I glued everything in a neutral position.
In Step 10, a radio electronics deck gets glued to the canopy proper. The location of Part C19 is mislabeled; it should go in front of the orange loop-antenna housing. You’ll see the D-shaped locators.
I used only the 1,000-pound bombs on the inboard pylons; all the other bombs, rockets, and fuel tanks went into my spares box.
I painted the model with Testors Model Master and Alclad II paints; it took a little longer with the natural-metal finish because of Alclad’s two-step process.
The decals went on nicely. The stencil decals are well done; instead of individual stencils, they are grouped. That’s good and bad. It cuts down on placing individual decals, but with the thin decal film — and it is very thin — the stencils want to bunch up before you can prod them into place. (Lots of water helps.) Some of the stencils in the grouping didn’t exactly line up with their panels, but I just separated them (with a No. 10 scalpel blade rolled through the clear film) and put them where they belonged. Once in position, the decals settle beautifully.
All in all, this model was a joy to build. It scales out perfectly. I took about 27 hours to complete it, some of that because of the metal finish, and it was well worth it. A little experience will come in handy if you take this one on.
Now we need a swept-wing Thunderstreak.