Idea (Hobbycraft) 1/72 F-89H Scorpian

IDEA (HOBBYCRAFT) 1:72 F-89H SCORPION
(also now reboxed and released by Academy)

Reviewer: Myself (smakr@bigpond.com)
Kit Review built July 2001; submitted: 28 August 2001

Aircraft:
The Scorpion was developed from 1946 as replacement for the Northrop P-61 Black Widow in the night and all-weather fighter roles. The XF-89 prototype first flew in August 1948, and its adequate performance was reflected in an order for 48 F-89A production aircraft, of which 30 were delivered with a Lear autopilot and the designation F-89B.

The final production version, of which 156 were built, was the F-89H with the tip pods each modified to carry 21 rockets and three Hughes GAR Falcon air-to-air missiles, and immediately identifiable by the Falcon missiles on the wingtips. The final model was the F-89J which catered for nuclear tipped rockets.

The Kit:
IDEA is a Korean company that releases other manufacturers kits in Korea for the local market and in most cases the only difference is the instruction sheet which is completely written in Korean. This kit comes from Hobbycraft and includes the Hobbycraft labels on the sprues and decal sheet. For this purpose the review (other than the instruction sheet) is obviously pertinent to the Hobbycraft release as well.

Identical boxart adorns the Hobbycraft release

Academy have also bought a whole heap of Hobbycraft molds and the F-89 series is now being released under their own brand, but of course are the Hobbycraft kits through and through! With the excellent detail in this kit, one can see how close to Academy the molds seem to be.

Inside the box are four sprues of around 80 light grey injection molded parts with excellent surface detail that reminds me a bit of the later Academy releases in some respects (no wonder they are reboxing these kits and reissuing them!). In comparison to the recently built and reviewed CF-100 Canuck, the quality of this mold is remarkably better. See the construction section below for comments on the cockpit detail, which was quite comprehensive. The clear sprue has three parts which are a bit on the thick side.

Instructions:
Because this kit is boxed by IDEA, the instructions are relevant to the IDEA boxing of this Hobbycraft kit. This is essentially the only difference inside the box compared to the Hobbycraft release, in that the instructions are in Korean. A very small English errata sheet is provided in the box that just provides a one sentence overview of the aircraft and kit, directions on how to make the kit ("read instructions first", "study drawings", etc etc) and camouflage and marking colour names for the two versions produced by the kit and FS numbers - a bit silly because both versions use the same colours, so they might as well only have written it once. Naturally, you will have to match the Korean symbols with the English names to know which colour it is.

Anyway, the Korean instruction sheet includes an overview of the aircraft's history (I assume!) and 6 assembly steps that are easy to follow, as the parts are still identifiable (eg: A5, C10 etc) and any language can translate drawings :-) !! In most cases you should not have any problems with the positioning of the parts but there are a couple of areas that are a bit vague such as the exact positioning of the exhaust deflectors. In step three there is a symbol that looks like an eraser than anything else, which I have construed as being a file, ie: file off the small locating tab the arrow is pointing to. Small inset sketches show correct profile of exhaust, landing gear etc.

Decal and marking drawings are provided on the back two pages in the form of three view diagrams (two sides and top view) for the two versions produced by the kit. You can tell the overall shaded colour scheme by matching the Korean symbols with those stated on the English sheet and its corresponding name.

Construction:
Starting inside the "office" I was quite impressed with the amount of stuff the kit provides. The cockpit detail is excellent. Make up of the two seats are in four pieces, including main seat mold, armrests and the railing behind, and both the pilot and rear-navigator seats are different. There is also a separate control column (for Pilot) and joystick (for rear-seater). The seats go inside a large tub that already has rudder pedals molded onto the base and realistic looking console detail along the side panels for both occupants. A main instrument panel and rear seater instrument panel are also provided and again both have console detail molded onto them. In the absence of precise reference on the cockpit colours I chose Medium grey and black instrument consoles picked out with dry brushing aluminium highlights on the gauges etc to a quite realistic effect.

It is hard to tell by the instructions exactly where to position the front seat and the rear instrument panel. The rear seat hangs over a horizontal alignment tab on the floor of the cockpit and is resting back somewhat. The front seat was placed over the floor alignment rails and moved forward til it could not move any further forward. The rear instrument panel was placed in the gap between the back of the pilot's seat (and resting against it) where the rear side console starts. The main pilot instrument panel is supposed to be fitted into a locating hole in the base, but it doesn't reach it! So it was carefully rested on top of the side consoles overhanging the hole. I filled in the hole with putty and painted it, lest it be seen through the cockpit windows!

The wings come in two pieces, upper and lower halves. Before affixing together you need to decide whether you wish to display underwing stores, and if so you need to drill out the holes. These are easy to do because inside the lower wing half the holes are clearly marked so you know where to open up the holes. The instruction sheet shows you which of the holes to open up also. Then the two wing halves go together without any problems. Wheel well detail is quite good with plumbing revealed and the inside of the gear doors having rib detail as well. Since I was building a wheels up model, the gear doors went over the wells. With a quick test fit and a slight trim the doors fit well. At this point I also decided to affix the wings to the fuselage halves (that were still attached to the sprues!), so they could just dry in an even standing position. A quick sand to prepare the areas to be mated and then careful positioning, leaving them to dry and the result was great.

The turbofans in the intake and rear exhaust cowlings are added to the inside of the fuselage halves and both were painted aluminium (with matt black inside the exhausts). The instructions suggest to remove or file down a small locating tab where you attach the exhausts to. After test fitting the exhausts, I didn't file or remove anything and thus I am not sure whether this is really required, it doesn't seem to be. The cockpit goes inside the fuselage halves positioned above two locating rails jutting out from the inside. Several test fits were required to position correctly, but the fuselage halves will go together fine providing you get the cockpit positioned correctly. The halves go together very well (rubber bands and pegs used for clamps) but the small section underneath between the exhausts needed to be held together because they prize apart and they need to be matched because of the large belly piece that still has to slot in. A bit of filler was needed in some small gaps.

Wings would normally be affixed next according to the instructions, but because mine I had been done, this didn't apply to me! Exhaust deflectors and Intake covers are added, and the instructions are not very good in relation to exact positioning but you should be able to work it out by feeling around and carefully placing them where they are meant to go as well as keeping some handy reference material beside you. I would strongly recommend also making sure you have the right numbered piece for the correct side of the aircraft as confusing them would of course be noticeable. The nose section (minus the nose cone because that was being painted separately) is in two halves and affixes nicely. It then fits perfectly to the fuselage providing you have it the right way up! If the nose section is upside down the profile will be wrong, it is only slightly noticeable so be careful with this part - at least the instructions show the molding pattern on top of the nose section which you can match on the nose itself to know which is the correct way up. Dry fit testing and examining it from side on will also help.

The belly section includes the "nose" wheel bay. The gear doors do not fit the bay very well as they are much smaller in width, and putty was needed to plug up the resulting gaps. Now, probably the worst part of the kit is this huge part to fit to the gaping hole in the belly - the whole section is a shocking fit! Frustratingly I coaxed the panel into place by trimming.... er hacking.... the sides by about a mm. You have to be careful not to overdo it lest it lose its curvature and blend into the underside of the aircraft. The corners were also filed down and then the whole area was sanded to try and blend the section into the fuselage. Resulting gaps were filled and sanded. A decent result was achieved after a lot of frustrating effort but it is still noticeable, so I just hope no one turns the aircraft upside down to observe my handiwork!

Next is the tailplane which is trapped between the half dorsal fin already molded to the fuselage and the tip which is attached over it. This all fits okay but the tip of the fin will not align correctly with the rest of the fin and this is easily corrected by nipping a bit of the alignment tab and test fitting accordingly. Just make sure afterward that the fin lines up perfectly because it is easy not to. The canopy fits okay, but the fuselage spine needs to be filed off just at the point where the canopy meets it in order to fit it and prevent gaps, and all this is be revealed by dry test fitting first. The instructions do omit telling you about the small pitot tubes that hang down either side of the nose, so when these parts were left over I consulted reference photos and affixed them accordingly.

There are plenty of stores options in the kit that include two styles of wing tip tanks/rockets, underwing tanks plus small Falcon missiles to attach the wingtip pods. The missiles required two of its four finlets to be attached and these are best dry fit tested first to ensure flush fit. Small fences are placed on the wingtip rocket pods and it is best at this point to have some handy reference material for exact positioning. The instructions only provide a front on view for placement of the missiles and the fences between each missile placement. The fences are identified as part H1 and at first I wasn't sure how the six fences in total was to cover 12 placements on both wingtips, until I realised that the parts are supposed to be cut in half, and then obviously you need to sand off the rough edges. I used Humbrol tube poly applied thinly with a toothpick and the plastic gripped excellently.

I painted the aircraft in Humbrol colours, using Polished Aluminium metalcote for the overall scheme and gloss red wingtips and missiles. I dispensed with painting red anywhere else. The nose cone was left off until after the aircraft had been painted and then I carefully attached it.

Versions & Decals:
The kit allows for two F-89H versions to be built, one USAF and the other Pennsylvania Air National Guard in the scheme that you see on the boxtop (both Hobbycraft and Idea), natural metal with red wing tips and rear fin area. The decal sheet is hardly catered for stencilling but is otherwise in quite good register and contains silver backing decals to place over the red painted areas and then the USAF roundel on top of that one, which is a great idea. The decals themselves needed a fair bit of soaking time and were quite reluctant to come off the backing sheet, I managed to rip one easily. I got around this by pulling a little on one end of the decal to loosen it, and then actually removing it from the other end and this worked well.

Accuracy:
I don't have a massive array of F-89H pictures to go by so a lot of this part is speculation. For measurements I am working from a length of 16.41m and 18.18m span (without the missiles), with this in mind the kit stacks up quite acceptably but is underscale (length) and overscale (span) by a couple of mm. It looks like an F-89H and I guess at the end of the day this is the important consideration.

Overall:
Other than the horrid belly section the kit went together quite well and is a decent replication of the F-89H Scorpion that can add something extra to 50's era of USAF jet displays in the modelling cabinet. I certainly didn't realise how big this aircraft really was! This was my second foray into a Hobbycraft kit and I must say that I was quite impressed with it and would certainly recommend it to other modellers. Academy are due to release this kit - they have already released their reboxing of the Hobbycraft F-89J, so the subject should be available somewhere on the Net in one of these boxing forms.

Related INBOX Reviews:-

Revell (Hobbycraft) 1/72 F-89D/J Scorpion

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