Next step is to build the interior. I left mine stock, painting the inside dark grey with black console tops. The kit decals were then applied and the assembly glued into the interior when the paint and decals had dries. Next the fuselage was glued together. Now it was time to add the resin nose. Some of you may want to remove the kit nose before gluing together the fuselage and that is fine. I just chose to do it this way. There is a panel line that runs just even with the front of the windscreen that is the guide. This was first scribed a few times to make sure that I wouldn't mess things up too badly.

Taking my handy razor saw, the old nose was then cut off and the new resin one glued in place using copious amounts of superglue. As you can see, the shorter nose definitely looks different.  If you feel that nose weight is needed (which I didn't), putting it under the cockpit before gluing on the nose would be a good idea. With the nose on, the seams were sanded down, a touch of filler used and the sanded off panel lines restored by scribing with a knife and not sanding down the ridges left by the process. The intake splitter plates, the tailhook insert and the tail cone were also glued on at this time. The splitter plate and intake interior was then painted gloss white. The wheel wells and gear doors were not painted white as you might think. These areas were painted Blue Angel Blue as well as the wheel hubs. As I said, it is an easy kit to paint! Thinking on all this, I decided not to trust the kit instructions and so grabbed F11F in Detail and Scale. As I had though, the intakes do not appear to be white so those were repainted BA Blue. As for the wheel wells, the did appear to be a dark color with the main gear white, however this last set of observations was taken from pictures of the later long nose variant. I'm still looking for more info on the short-nosed Blue Angel Tiger.

This new nose may be a bit of a problem for some builders. That is because the detail on the nose is recessed whereas the kit has fine raised panel line detail. There are three options. You can rescribe the entire kit (way too much work for this kid), fill the nose lines with stretched sprue, or you can leave things as they are. I chose option 3. Frankly, with such a dark paint job as is BA Blue, it won't jump out at you so should look OK.

With that paint dry, the kit returned to the bench. At this time the wings were glued in place as were the intakes. The intakes had the gun ports drilled out, even though there are no guns in it. Fit of the intakes is fair, but does need filler. Some was needed on the wing join and a few other spots as shown by the paint that was applied. Once all of that was done, the cockpit area was freshened up and the windscreen/canopy glued on and masked.

Before painting on the next batch of BA Blue, I figured I'd see what the decals were like. Didn't relish the idea of them not working and having to paint them on, but thought that if nothing else, I might end up having to paint the tips of the wings and tail. Taking one of the tail tip decals, I placed it in water and after a minute slid it on the tail. Fit was good, though the decals do have some rather extensive carrier film. They are also not as crisp as aftermarket decals, undoubtedly because they are double printed with white backings. Well, to no surprise, it did not conform too well, so with some anticipation of a disaster, I applied some Microscale setting solution. Nothing. OK, on to something stronger. In this case Solvaset. It was applied and left to work. Nothing. Now this was unusual. I still had one card to play and that was Champ. An application of that did finally cause the decal to succumb, though it needed some help when it came to folding over the fin tip. 

The rest of the kit was sprayed and when dry, brought back to the work room to gaze longingly at the beautifully orange peeled paint! Actually, it isn't that bad, but not contest quality (gee, I say that about ALL my models).

Being a Blue Angels plane, the leading edges and the exhaust cone were always highly polished as befits a plane of this stature. My two choices were to paint these areas with a metallizer of some sort or to use Bare Metal Foil. I chose the foil method as it doesn't require any masking and is pretty easy to do. This isn't exactly a short term deal and it took a couple of days here and there to get it all done. The most difficult is the intake leading edge and I may have to redo one of them. After this was done, the landing gear was installed and the wheels painted and glued in place. Now it was standing on all its gear and starting to look like it would finally make it! I should mention at this time that the main landing gear is a rather complicated set up and getting everything to fit properly wasn't an easy job. It is best to glue all three of the various struts on at the same time to make sure you can get it all to line up properly. The gear doors were left off until after decaling was done.

Based on the success I had with the fin tip decal, I figured that the whole operation would go pretty smoothly. I knew that Champ's setting solution would work without terminal wrinkles and so started applying the decals from the back to front. I do it in stages so that I always have a dry part of the plane to hold onto. Decaling at one time was a one, perhaps two-day operation. Not any more. You mess up the decals and all previous work is overshadowed by the glitch. I was quite happy at how well the Champ worked on the decals and had no real problems until the final decal (isn't it always like that?).

Once the decals had all been applied and were dry, the entire plane was wiped down with clean water to remove any setting solution. If this stuff is left to dry, it can turn the carrier film an odd brown over time. I have several kits that show this phenomenon and it does detract from the model. Once it had dried, I thought about spraying on some Future over it to seal the decals in and to add some gloss.  However, I have not had the best of luck spraying the current Future formula so decided to get out the wide brush and brushed on a coat. No worries!

F11F Tiger in Detail and Scale, by Bert Kinsey

F11F Tiger, by Steve Ginter

July 2001

Review kit courtesy of Marco Polo Importers. Thanks for your support.

If you would like your product reviewed fairly and fairly quickly, please contact me or see other details in the Note to Contributors.

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