FortunateSon

Hobbymaster HA4304 (North American F-86F-30 Sabre 52-7401, 1st Squadron,
JASDF, 1950s) as released by hobbymaster was really deficient in stencils. The real thing had quite a few.

Japanese stenciling on sabres was remarkably inconsistent and varied (maybe it was down to an individual unit thing in some cases?) There's no good stencil set out there for this particular aircraft, but Platz makes a very good JASDF F-86F stencil decal set. Or rather, they did, in 2004 or so. I was able to track down this very hard to find stencil set and also one for the F-86D.

there's a bit more work to do, but I have now added most of the stencils to the F-86F. I have a Falcon JASDF "D" waiting in the wings for similar treatment should I be able to find a few hours.

It's a pity that HM (and Falcon) didn't include these stencils with the initial release as they should have. The model looks much better with them.



I also suspect that the color of the HM anti-glare panel is wrong, but I left it as it adds some interest (the green that hobbymaster used appears to be basically Mitsubishi zero green)

Light Fire Team

Have to say that looks rather better. I mean JASDF jets seem to always have more markings and stencils on their aircraft than most other nations.

Good job.

__________________
"The deliberately planned fighter sweep went just as we'd hoped. The MiGs came up. The MiGs were aggressive. We tangled. They lost." BRIG Robin Olds.

Eric w

looks good

FortunateSon

(dup post below)

FortunateSon

Thanks for the nice words, guys.

- I have since added a bunch more stencils and have added a wash (AK Paneliner grey = very good) to the landing gear. Looks better. also fixed the one bad stencil was on the upper left fuselage.

- Worth noting that the stencils I added are a bit notional. I chose stencils that I thought looked good - not necessarily those 100% correct for this particular aircraft. Again, stencils for JASDF sabres varied massively
between individual aircraft, and my conscience is clean.

- About the green glareshield: almost no F-86F JASDF sabres had glareshields. However, many JASDF F-86Ds did. There are no photos that I can find of an F-86F with one, though the hasegawa instructions for the kit that HM stole this livery from clearly shows this. The kit instructions show this as Olive Drab while HM has done it as a more richer "IJN zero" green. My first instinct was that HM had this wrong, but now I'm not sure so sure. Photo after photo of the F-86D plus kit box covers of models of it show this sort of deeper green glareshield. If these glareshields were indeed painted locally by Japanese crews, that may be right. There are two nuances, however. One, there's no particular reason to believe that the "F" had the same color as the "D". But, even if it did, there's a chance that all the "dark green" glareshields we see, even in photos, come down to one thing - oversaturation in 1960s color film. Even subsequent museum restorations which show this dark green color may come down to this single source error. It's just not clear. If covid allows I may be in japan in August and I'll thumb through a book or two there to satisfy my curiosity. I'm sure you're on tenterhooks.

- HM did a pretty crap job on this sabre on many levels. I mean, for them to release a JASDF sabre with even fewer stencils than they could be bothered to do for certain USAF releases is pretty shocking. Adding to this, a not insignificant part of the upper tail should be a light grey / very light minty green color. This was inexplicably totally ignored by HM. This was not HM's finest day.

- Fortunately for HM, the blue impulse JASDF sabres had very very few stencils. That one should come out just fine.

- There continue to be an ocean of sabre liveries that can be done that HM hasn't even touched - both JASDF and not. The more you google for sabres, the more you'll find. HM seems to have just scratched the surface with this mould, but unfortunately don't seem too interested in making the most of it.