Small Scale Military Headquarters

Finally got around to putting my BBI Hellcat together today and the fit of the center wing section to the fuselage is terrible. Huge gaps at the front and back of the wing roots and a kind of downward bend to the wing center section as a result.

Are all of them like this? It doesn't look like i got a bad one, it just looks like it was poorly designed.

I had no problems with mine except for a poor fit on the left wing folding section, a defect noted by many..... Sorry about that, Andrew.

-Ski

No problem with mine either. If it makes you feel better I have the same problem with my BBI Corsair though. Go figure.

it's very strange.....the gap at the front and rear wing roots is well over 1/8 of an inch, and the wing bottom doesnt even sit properly, it's either skewed one way or the other. There's no gap at all in the middle of the wing root, in fact the problem is that it's too tight and pushes the wing top away from the fuselage, creating the gaps.

I spent some time adzing the center of the fuselage wing roots down with an xacto knife and it seems to be helping the problem. If i continue i should be able to get at least a tolerable fit out of it. So odd.

AFERGUSON:

Do you have the Vraciu or the Catmouth?

Vraciu.

I'm beginning to wonder if i got a pre production sample that was subsequently modified in the wing root area. There is just no way to get anything approaching a good wing root fit without heavy modification and since nobody else has had this problem something is up..

Well, after much gnashing of teeth i finally got the wing to fit on reasonably well. Not perfect but tolerable....took a lot of adzing and sanding.

I broke the under fuselage antenna off (which turned out to be serandipidous because it's way too big anyway) and cracked the middle wing section on the underside (krazy glue to the rescue).

Now it looks pretty good. Everything that moved fell down and wouldn't stay in the up position so i did a fair bit of krazy gluing since it's going to be on permanent in flight display.

Now that i've had a chance to sit back and look at it, it's pretty nice. The cockpit is outstanding; great detailing, even a very nice gun sight. Pilot is also excellent. Overall 4 stars....just the bad wing fit on my example prevents 5 stars.

Yes, the wings drop the coolness factor of this plane significantly. The paint app on this thing topples all other I've seen, but the wings, wings!!!

Aferg I had the same issues with my hellcat, also a Vraciu.
I too wondered if I had received a preproduction model the fit was so bad. I fixed mine the same way that you fixed yours. I'm actually satisfied with the fit of the wing now, but I had to work at it for several hours.
I also have a gap in the center seam on the bottom of the model that I'm not sure how I'm going to fix unless I take the whole thing apart.

interesting......do you remember where you bought it? I got mine from Toys n Swords.

I wonder if these are "Monday" birds. One of my BBI Corsairs has the same wing fit problem that I finally gave up on and just displayed as-is after a little work.

I think it was from BCA, but I'm not 100% positive on that. I do remember it was one of the first ones out.

yes so was mine.....i strongly suspect it is a pre or very early production model, after which a small alteraton to the wing root area was made.

It would be cool if someone could snap pics of the wing root of their Hellcat, so i could see if it looks different then mine did before i shaved it down.

btw, i had no idea what a big plane the Hellcat was. One of the nice things about this scale is you get a very good impression of size and relative sizes; and the Hellcat really surprised me by how big it is. I've had lots of hellcat models over the years but in smaller scales like 1/72, and just never got the impression of how massive a fighter it really was.

For some reason people always think the hellcat is a smaller plane than it is. I guess it's the shape of it or something.
I saw a hellcat next to a corsair back in the '80's at an airshow at Goodyear-Litchfield field, and I was surprised then how large the hellcat is compared to the corsair

yes i agree it's the shape. The F-117 is like that too. To look at it in a picture you'd think it a rather small plane, but see one in real life and you'll be astonished by how large it is.

That's a good point

I always like the Heritage Flights at the airshows because it's always amazing to see how big the modern fighters are compared to the World War II fighters.

For example, the shape of the F-22 makes it look small but yet put it alongside a P-51 Mustang and the thing is huge. I was surprised my Avenger is nearly as big as the Hornet, didn't know an Avenger was that big.

I have to get a Hellcat one of these days. I'm slowly catching up

Corey

Yes, how you percieve an aircraft is kind of a funny thing.

When I first saw a Concord I was really disapointed by how small it was. I had expected it too be much larger.

Same with the SR-71. I saw one at an airshow do a low level flyby and it's pretty small, the cool thing about that was the flame from the afterburner was as long as the plane.

Then look at an F-14 and you wonder how they ever got aboard an aircraft carrier the thing is huge.