Small Scale Military Headquarters

Greetings:

Recently purchased a BBI Hellcat from another member. In route to its new aircraft carrier, the Hellcat was jumped by some Zeroes and took some damage along the way. Certainly not the fault of the member here as the plane was packed well. The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier mechanics were hard at work and have returned the Hellcat to active service.



The pitot tube tab had broken off during shipping and I glued this back into place. I have a spare pitot tube so if it ever breaks and gets lost I can drill the hole out and replace it with a new example.



On this side the gun barrels had broken off but fortunately were found in the box and were carefully glued back into the proper place. The bottom antenna was broken off and had gone missing in the box. After four searches I could not find it in the contents. I found a spare radio mast for a Hobby Master 1/32 Dauntless was about the right size and shape and installed that, though it is a bit thinner than the actual version. The color matches the lighter blue and looks decent.



Last but not least the Navy mechanics raided the ammo depot of boardmember BLACKSNAKES and armed the Hellcat with six rockets for its next mission. Thanks to BLACKSNAKES for generously supplying the rockets to me for the model, it changes the look of this plane in a positive way.

Simple fixes to repair some broken parts and a 1/18 Hellcat is alive and well in a collection.

Regards

Corey

Looks ready to launch!

Nice!

Do you have any issues with the wing sagging at the fold point? The Hellcats we have stationed down here in the pacific have major wing sag issues.

Looking good Corey.

Some minor battle damage, and thankfully your mechanics had spares on hand.

Greetings:

Yes I actually had fun fixing this up and getting it back to its old self. Getting back into this scale, I forgot how big and impressive some of these planes are. The Navy planes, with the folding wing engineering the companies worked into them, are quite neat. Now all we need is the Dauntless to come and join the fleet. And pretty please a Helldiver!

Jay, mine do the same thing but I fiddled with them and applied some pressure and got them pretty straight. If you want to keep the wings straight it helps if your control surfaces will do so to lock them and to close the doors on the bottom. But I am pretty sure that was a pretty common issue with the Hellcats. I plan to keep my wings folded most of the time anyway.

Corey

Looks Great Corey! Nice to see a bird get put back together. Glad I could help out.

Jim