Hobbycraft 1/72 McDonnell F2H-3 Banshee

HOBBYCRAFT 1:72 MCDONNELL F2H-3 BANSHEE
'INBOX Review'

Reviewer: Myself (rec.models.scale)
- A Built up review of this kit (under Academy reboxing) exists on this site - see the respective fully built kit review index to locate review

Kit Details: HC1397 - Hobbycraft (Canada) F2H-3 Banshee - All weather interceptor of the Royal Canadian Navy

Aircraft History: The McDonnell F2H Banshee was a military carrier-based jet fighter aircraft, used by the United States Navy from 1948 to 1959 and by the Royal Canadian Navy from 1955 until 1962. The Banshee had unswept wings, a single seat, and two engines. Together with the F9F Panther, the Banshee was one of the USN's primary single-seat fighters during the Korean War. The aircraft's name is derived from the banshee or "fairy woman" of Celtic mythology. [taken from wikipedia]

For this specific version, the Banshee was the first and supposedly only jet fighter to fly with the Royal Canadian Navy and the first in Canadian service to carry air to missiles.

Preamble: This inbox review is intended to be read in conjunction with my review (written at the same time) of the Academy F2H-3/4 Banshee, which is a reboxing of this Hobbycraft kit. So since I know now how this kit builds up, the essence of this inbox review is to highlight the contents of the kit, ie: decals, versions etc as the build review concentrates on other things, on the sprue impressions, accuracy etc.

Kit Parts: This kit comes well packaged, with three sprues in flash-free light grey injection molded contained in two separate plastic bags. The decal sprue floats loosely in the bag containing two grey sprues and the decals float loosely in the box. This kit as alluded to above, is reboxed by Academy and there are other Hobbycraft kits of this aircraft (see Simon Skinner's inbox review) with obviously different decals/versions. This one concentrates on the Canadian version. The 49 parts (including one-piece canopy) are nicely molded and look reasonably fresh. The canopy was the only discrepancy noticed, because Academy supply the canopy in two parts (and in a separate bag), so the fit might be a little different. One other thing noticed is that the Academy instructions say to remove large ejector pin lugs from the inside of the wings - or so I presumed - because there were no lugs on my Academy kit. Let me just say they ARE on this Hobbycraft kit and will need removal before putting the wings together... and YES, you probably guessed it the Hobbycraft instructions makes no mention of this!!

The surface detail is quite good and all the panel lines are engraved although it is not as crisp as it could be - either way, the Hobbycraft tooling looks like it has stood the test of time quite well. Hobbycraft are one of those manufacturers (like Dragon) where you really don't know what you are going to get and how easy/hard it will be until you actually build it! Thankfully as you can see from my build review, this kit is one of their better ones.

Instructions: The instruction sheet is a fold out strip, each page a little taller but skinnier than an A5 sheet. Given the audience for this kit is Canada, the instructions are bi-lingual in French and English. A quick summary of the aircraft and modelling info and on the same side of the strip are four-view diagrams of the two versions which can be built from the kit. The main spread contains 8 assembly steps which are pretty straight forward to follow. Unfortunately there is no painting information at all during construction, which will be a nuisance. However, if you turn over the page to the external marking guides, there is some information about cockpit interior and landing gear in generic coloured information. The medium grey interior conflicts with the interior green suggested in the Academy kit! My hunch is interior green but without adequate references that has to be left up to the modeller to decide. Painting information is provided for the external schemes with generic names and some FS numbers quoted.

Colour Options: In this kit you can build either a US Navy or Canadian Navy F2H-3 Banshee - but note my unimpressed view of the decals below. The USN version is typical upper gull grey over white scheme from VF-151 of the USS Hancock, featuring the yellow twin diagonal stripes and a H within on the tail fin. The Canadian aircraft is their Navy standard upper Dark Grey 36118 over 36375 Ghost Grey (not quite convinced that shade is right?) from VF-870 of the HMCS Bonaventure.

Decals: You don't need to use the decals to say - get rid of them, they are awful! There's no way in the world I will use these awful looking things, maybe only taking the unit numbers and wing walk panel, with the rest taken from spares. The decal sheet is split into two halves, one Canadian, the other US Navy and does not feature any stencilling at all, in spite of what can clearly be seen on the boxart - not even warning triangles. Nothing really wrong with the colour - it's the register or more specifically printing. If a nice looking decal sheet was produced using fine tip markers then this one was used using thick bloody textas! The single red bar on the USAF roundel is so horizontally off centre, you could put another one underneath and have proportionately the same gap underneath! As for the RCAF roundels, the clover leaf is so thick and big, there's barely any white space, and on a couple of roundels it is so off-centre it impinges into the blue ring. So sorry, but you will have to source aftermarket decals.

On the sprue impressions: The break down and look of this kit is exactly the same as the Academy kit I built, which I have reviewed separately. In summary it went together quite well, needed a little bit of patience and work and things like the wing roots for intake and exhaust section need a bit of attention. Holes in the underwing need to be opened up for the four small underwing rockets. Clean typically good molded subject, that is reasonably accurate in planform but lacks a bit of detail. A couple of very small differences as noted in the kit parts above.

Conclusion: In the movies, often sequels are dissatisfying and short of the mark and the original is much better. Not so much in relation to this kit. The Academy reboxing to me is a much better buy than this original Hobbycraft kit. The mold is exactly the same of course, but this Hobbycraft kit still contains one piece canopy and lugs to be removed from the inner wings. The instructions are so-so but the decals are horrible and need to be replaced. If you do have this kit then read my Academy kit review, for all intents and purposes, I would say this Hobbycraft kit will go together quite well with a bit of patience and awareness of some potential problems. I'd certainly recommend the Academy kit first but this one is also a reasonable kit if you can get your hands on some aftermarket decals.

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