Hobby BossHY80339 F6F-5 Hellcat Airplane Model Building Kit

almost to detailed

assembly, painting and adding decals not very clear and a little hard to follow

As a disclaimer I wanted to state that I had not build a plane model in over two years when I started this kit. I had never tried a Hobby Boss kit before but I'd never heard anything bad about their kits so I figured this seemed like a fun, easy project to dive into. The parts look cleanly molded with a lot of detail and the instruction book is easy to follow. The first sub-assembly, the engine went together very easily and the fit was so good you can dry fit parts together and they will stay like that so painting was really easy. The inside of the plane is the second sub-assembly, and this is where I started running into trouble. The kit comes with the braces that in the real plane would support the engine, here they are hidden inside the plane and really serve no purpose, in my build they were even too long to fit snugly inside. The cockpit is overly complicated, instead of using the usual method of affixing the side instrument panels onto the wall of the plane, here you have to wedge them in between the front instrument panel and the bulkhead that holds the seat. and then attach this delicate assembly to the floorboard. This part was very time consuming, the side panels seem too long and don't fit into the bulkheads so that they in turn fit into the attachment points in the floorboard. After much trimming and fiddling everything fit, but the entire assembly was too wide for the upper body of the plane to fit together. After about an hour of very careful sanding and trimming the body was together with only some minor gaps. On to the wings!The wing-root is made so one can model the plane with the wings folded or unfolded. This was achieved by using a set of plastic beams one with a 90 degree bend and another set that are straight. I like to hang my planes so I went with the straight wing. Here I lost several more hours trying to straighten things out. I could never quite eliminate all the gaps and have the two parts of the wing meet on the same level. So extensive use of putty and thin pieces of styrene were needed. Followed by long sessions of sanding and eventually some re-scribing of panel lines. I went back several times to check, but I followed the instructions to a T.Hobby Boss provided quite a lot of wheel-well detail and with some work the kit can be converted to be wheels up. This was the one part where I was really impressed with fit. The panels were a tight, snug fit, though the larger wheel cover was slightly too short for the length of the wheel-well. So a tiny, squashed fruit bowl shape must be made out of styrene to fill the hole. Sadly, in parts the wheel-well is right on the ugly seam of the wing joint.In conclusion: I have mixed emotions, the detail and overall craftsmanship is high, but that wing joint is just UGLY. It can be done with some effort and patience wing straight or you can build the plane wings folded and add a little detail into the joint and you may have something beautiful. I have a lot more sanding to do before painting, and if things don't work out I will have a roughly $30 kit to practice painting and weathering on. Also after some research I noticed there is a major detail missing from the aux fuel tank, you will have to create straps that hold the tank on the plane, they are very obvious in a lot of reference pictures. On a similar note the guns are also lacking vital detail. 4 of the 6 guns should have barrels that extend outside the wing.