RarePlane 1/72 Grumman XF5F-1 Skyrocket

 Once again Gordon Stevens' RarePlane model article draw a lot of attention, so here is this other article, also posted originally on ARC a lot of years ago.

"A while ago I turned my modeling attention to two periods of aviation history that are often ignored or not strongly represented: pioneers and golden age. But today we will make an exception given two factors: the prototype nature of the beast and the irresistible lines of the design.

The Skyrocket, first flown on April 1^st 1940, is not unknown to modelers; so suffice to say that the design evolved in a series of prototypes with ever-growing noses, a sort of “Pinocchio effect” some times likely to develop in government environments.

The Skyrocket had a Comic-born close relative, the Blackhawk, with many attractive liveries; but the chrome-yellow/metal scheme of the prototype was hard to dismiss.

A real jewel, the RarePlane’s 1/72 Grumman Skyrocket kit has such well detailed parts that equals or surpasses many injection cousins. The skills and care put into the master of this vac are amazing.

It comes –well, used to come anyway- with metal parts (landing gear, props), vac canopy and decals, plus illustrated instructions; sort of a paradigm of the vacuformed model kit.

It is clear that somewhere in the evolution of model kits, nature (human nature, that is) discarded wonderful options in order to stick to more mediocre, poorly fitting, scarcely detailed subjects, save some honorable exceptions. It makes you wonder about other evolutionary choices.

Nevertheless, the kit has its minor faults, more due to the media than to the lack of care.

Halved parts require some adjustments in order to match each other, some very minor flaws on the surface have to be corrected and if joined as they are the wing upper and lower halves will render an oval profile for the engine cowls support, which is not the case. The fuselage/wing joint towards the back, where the fillet is, has to be filled, since it leaves a void area.

The cockpit is provided with a floor, seat and instrument panel, basic but not bad at all. I scratched some detail for the cockpit sides. Head rest and coaming are molded in the fuselage. Some areas of the kit, like the wheel bays and the above-mentioned aft wing joint can be improved if desired. I added some structure to the wells and had to pack-up the wing leading edges and the engine fairings joints, either because there was a minor design flaw or an over-enthusiastic sanding. The cowls were, as is often the case with vacs, a bit smashed at the front, where the plastic is stretched to a thin wafer. Application of epoxy from behind filling the affected areas cured the problem, allowing for later drilling and sanding. Same goes for the aft part of the wheel wells fairings. I stayed with the provided engines, as they were acceptable. Again, as it is often the case, gluing, filling, filing and sanding tends to affect the detail of surrounding areas. Looking at the finished model in the dark usually improves the results.

The time-honored techniques for building vac models are pretty much known –although seldom followed, used or applied- so I won’t repeat here what you can find –and shamelessly forget- elsewhere. I’ll just say that it helps to separate the parts from the backing sheet before gluing :-) "

Bibliography:

-Grumman XF5F-1 & XP-50 Skyrocket, by D. Lucabaugh and B. Martin