1/72 Hobbycraft F2H Banshee

by J.C. Bahr

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Here are some pics of the Hobbycraft F2H Banshee that I built long before Hobbycraft re-released the kit with these markings for VF-11.  Inspiration for this build came after seeing the excellent 1/48 vacu-form that fellow local modeler Steve Oakson had a photo of featured in a special edition of Finescale Modeler many moons ago (wherever you are now Steve, awesome kit BTW!)  I loved the red with the white pin-striping on the nose and canopy frame bars... but what a pain to mask and paint those and the red lightning bolts on the sides of the nose and spine of the kit.  Some of the decals came from a Superscale sheet on F-4's that the Red Rippers flew, but I could not find the squadron badge like I needed for the sides of the fuselage behind the canopy, so I hand-painted those.

The build itself was not too bad and went together pretty smoothly.  I do caution that anyone building this kit use a short piece of plastic tubing or rod to extend the nose strut or your model will sit with a tail-high stance which is not accurate.  Also, it helps to back-plate the gun troughs from the inside of the fuselage halves with some sheet styrene, or you may be able to see daylight through the kit from one side to the other.

BTW - for anyone thinking of picking up the edition of this kit with these markings, be forewarned to check references... the only pic I've ever found of this particular bird showed it in the configuration I've modeled here, but the Hobbycraft kit has some peculiar variations with their markings in the form of additional red/white trim that I have never seen photographic evidence of.

J.C.

Click on images below to see larger images

Photos and text © by J.C. Bahr