Manufacturer: Classic Airframes, P.O. Box 577580, Chicago, IL 60657-7580, 773-665-7817
Kit: No. 432
Scale: 1/48
Price: $29.95
Comments: injection-molded, 81 parts (26 resin), decals
Pros: Good surface detail, good resin castings, beautiful decals
Cons: Built as instructed, cockpit interior is too wide for fuselage, forward lower fuselage corners too rounded
The Curtiss F11C-2/BFC-2 Goshawk was a classic U.S. Navy biplane fighter-bomber of the mid to late 1930's. Despite its short production run (only 28 were built), the Goshawk's beautiful lines and colorful markings make it a desirable modeling subject. It is said that Germany's Ernst Udet was so impressed with a Goshawk dive bombing demonstration, that he arranged for the purchase of two of them to help develop the Stuka.
Classic Airframes' kit allows you to build either the F11C-2 or BFC-2 version of the Goshawk, the latter being distinguished by a slightly taller rear decking and the addition of a partial canopy. The decals provide one set of markings for each version. Exterior detail is finely scribed. Resin castings are fine except for the oversized prop hub and the failure of the two piece exhaust collector ring to match the drawings on the instruction sheet. An improvement over Classic Airframes' earlier P-12E and F4B-4 kits is the single-piece resin engine with push rods cast in place.
I had a few problems due to poor fit and unclear instructions. The cockpit is well detailed with a harness molded into the seat, however the cockpit side walls must be glued to the cockpit floor upper surface, not to the side edge as the instructions show. If you don't do this, the cockpit will be too wide to fit inside the fuselage. Even with this correction, a lot of fitting and filing was needed.
After assembling the fuselage, and painting most parts, I glued the landing gear, lower wings, and tail surfaces to the fuselage. The split-surface upper wing allowed me to "pre-rig" the model. I painted the bottom surface first, then looped double rigging wires made from monofilament into pre-drilled holes. I then glued the top wing surface to the lower and cleaned up the leading edge. With the lines taped under the wing, I painted the top and wraparound under the leading edge with orange-yellow (bright gloss yellow).
I added the upper wing to the model by first gluing the interplane struts to the bottom wing and the cabane struts to the upper wing. The long arm of the cabane must go forward. The top wing was then placed on a flat surface and the model inverted over the upper wing. The interplane strut ends were then glued to the upper wing and the cabane struts to the fuselage at pre-drilled points. When this was dry, I tried adding the straight rear cabane struts, but they were too short; I made new ones from plastic strut stock. I finished off the rigging by gluing the loose ends into pre-drilled holes.
I had to file down the engine cylinder heads to get it to fit in the cowl. Before installing the engine, I drilled holes in the firewall for the two resin guns, and these were glued in after the engine.
Squadron/Signal's Curtiss Navy Hawks in Action is a good reference and helps in locating some of the parts, such as the resin/plastic tail-wheel assembly. The decals were no problem, except for the welcome, but brittle, prop-tip stripes.
The finished model measures nearly perfect with published dimensions. I noticed the absence of the sharp step in the bottom fuselage contour near the landing gear struts. This area is rounded on the kit, but it is fairly well hidden by the gear struts and the angled, tear drop gas tank.
After about 40 hours of work, I have an attractive model of a colorful biplane to add to my collection. Thanks to Classic Airframes for paying attention to this classic era.