Completed Review - Hobby-Boss F9F-2 Panther - Part 2

Scale: 1:72, RRP - £11.99

It's been a while since I started this kit and to tell the truth it's also been a while since I finished it, I've just not got round to writing about it. In fact it's been so long I've forgotten most of the build process, so I'll keep this short.

Carrying on from where I left off, I seem to remember, the cockpit fitted well but it was essential to add some weight to the nose. However the odd part was the nose wheel assembly, it was required to fit this into the wheel well at an early stage which meant for the duration of the build you had to be very careful not to bend or break it.

As I recall the fit was really good, two halves went together and the wings fitted with no issues. The final step was to add the fuel tanks to the wings, again that was straight forward. The only issue was the cleaning up of the parts where they'd been attached to the sprues which I'd mentioned previously.

And now it time to begin painting, which took a couple of attempts as I was having my usual issues with Tamiya paints, in this case XF-17 (Navy Sea Blue) which was the main colour for this aircraft. Of course this no reflection on the kit, just my lack of experience using Tamiya paints.

Now the next part I do remember well, the decals. They were good quality, I don't think I had any major issues getting them on the model. However the big issue with them is that in my opinion they're not to scale! I compared photos, other kits and even the decal guide contained in this kit and I can confidently say they're oversized. This was especially apparent on the nose where it was quite difficult to squeeze them into the available space.

Once the decals were on I could add the under wing ordnance and this was another strong point of the kit . There was plenty to choose from, although I think if you added all the bombs you'd probably have an aircraft that would struggle to take off!

With that in mind I opted for a mix of bombs and rockets and it was done.


I have say that really liked this kit. For me it was a good introduction to Cold War era jets and the kit combined with the Eduard photo-etch made a very nice model that went together well. Pity about those decals...

Overall Build Score: 3.5 out of 5, an extremely nice kit, full of detail but let down by the oversized decals.

Build Review - Hobby-Boss F9F-2 Panther - Part 1

One of my my objectives for the year had been to build an early Cold War era jet in 1:72 scale. I'd originally expected to build Tamiya's F-84, however this kit from Hobby-Boss caught my eye, especially when I saw it for sale for just £4!

I'd previously only attempted one of Hobby-Boss's Easy Kits and so thought this would be a good time to try a "proper" kit and was pleasantly surprised at what it had to offer. On the sprues the parts looked detailed and sharp and there were two decal options, one Korean War era US Navy aircraft and one later Argentinian Navy option, presumably one that was sold off when the US decided they no longer needed them.

A while ago I'd removed a few parts from the sprue and have to say the sprue layout was not the best. There were several badly placed sprue tabs attached to awkward locations, in some cases attached to the very thinnest parts of the kit. This made the parts fairly difficult to remove without damaging them.

But that aside it was time to get started, and where else, but with the cockpit. In this case I was to enhance it with Eduard's self-adhesive zoom set (SS398). There were some fantastically small but detailed parts but I felt with the bubble top canopy it was worthwhile as most of this would be visible. I have to say the self-adhesive sets haven't been as adhesive as I'd expected them to be. On flat surfaces they will stick, elsewhere I found I needed glue.

Paint wise, I brush painted with my now custom interior green Citadel paint mix.

I'm sure you'll agree, it looks really good, well worth the effort!