SCALE MODEL AIRCRAFT

In 1969, Lyle Shelton discovered the wreckage of a Grumman F8F Bearcat in an Indiana corn field. He got it fully restored his own way fitting a Wright R-3350 engine in order to participate to air races. Formerly christened Able Cat then Phoenix I before receiving its final name in 1980, it won many races during its new career, including some issues of the famous unlimited series. In addition, it holds the piston engined airplanes absolute world speed record at 528,33 mph since 1989. For many years, Rare Bear has certainly been the most popular aircraft at the Reno air races.

Reference material is available via the following links:

http://www.rarebear.com

http://www.warbirdaeropress.com

The High Planes Models 1/72 injected kit includes its usual soft blue plastic parts which need some cleaning, however pretty accurate with fine engraving. Box Race 72014 also include two very nice vac canopies, resin wingtips, white metal landing gear legs, and a nice decal sheet which provide markings for the stunning white and gold 1999 livery as seen at the Reno unlimited races. 

   

Although instructions recommend to wash thoroughly the parts in warm soapy water, I zapped that step because the whole surface was intended to be sanded using fine steel whool later on, which cleans the surface even better.

Assembly was rather simple, however with some tricky moments in the leading edge air scoop area, partly due to the duct insertion inside the wheel wells.

          

I decided not to use the front bulkhead where the spinner is supposed to fit, because of the far from perfect round shape and the impossibility to center it correctly before joining fuselage halves. Instead I used Evergreen styrene parts including a tubing section which turned out to fit perfectly onto the spinner. 

          

I didn't spend too much time for the cockpit interior, only using the parts provided by the kit. Once the airframe assembly was completed, the canopy was glued in place using a mix of superglue gel and talcum powder on the windshield area, or thin superglue at other locations. In order to avoid superglue fumes, the interior had received a coat of Future Floor Polish  and the exterior was masked prior to this operation.

          

The model was then primed using a Tamiya TS-30 Silver Leaf spraycan, then white coated using TS-27 Matt White after having masked the canopy frame and exhaust area.

Although provided with the decal sheet the gold patterns were unsurprisingly the hardest trick of this build mainly because I couldn't expect covering the cowling's complex shape using decals without doing a mess. Because it is almost impossible to paint the cowling the very same shade than decals, I decided to airbrush the whole fuselage pattern, using the pin stripe from the decal sheet. It worked fairly well, the best match to decals I had found being Modelmasters "Brass" Enamel which I slightly faded using a touch of aluminium paint. To avoid damaging the white paint while handling the model during this process, I set some masking tape onto the wings.

The golden stripe of the left wing was made using the whole decal, but some problems were encountered when the upper and underwing decals wouldn't conform to the leading edge despite using a lot of setting solution. To join properly both parts, a patch of extra golden decal was applied onto the leading edge, forcing the rest to conform to it.

Completing the model, tail wheel doors and landing gear locking struts had to be made from scratch as not provided by the kit.

Upon decalling, a triple handbrushed coat of Future was applied.