A SPRUE-BY-SPRUE LOOK AT HOBBY BOSS’  NEW 1/48 F3H2N DEMON
Back when the first generation of Naval Jet Fighters were in service, the plastic kit industry was in its infancy and by the time kit-building became the most popular hobby in the world, the collective attention of 1/48 scale aircraft modelers had turned to Phantom  IIs , Crusaders and MiGs.  Aside from the early Lindberg, Italeri  and Monogram kits, the early jets would only be seen in limited run, multi-media form until new-comer Hobby Boss released the mainstream FJ4 Fury…and sent IPMS Philippines-Bert Anido a bag labeled “80364 F3H 1st test shot”

A Sprue contains the fuselage halves from intake lips to just aft of the elevator pivots, cockpit floor, rear bulkhead,control column, ejection seat frame,rudder pedals,  exhaust heat shields, afterburner can, fan and side consoles. The gun ports and beaver tail were not molded into these halves indicating that optional parts for early and late versions may be offered.  The panel lines are accurate and finely engraved while only access panel fasteners and NOT rivets are present. Inside, an aft bulkhead is present that will assure the exhaust depicts the correct thrust –line  of the Demon.

Though suitably busy, the side consoles lack prominent levers and the throttle.
B Sprue contains the wing and elevator halves. The leading edge slats are molded to these halves but the flaps and ailerons are not. Again, panel lines are fine  while fasteners outline the access panels. Accuracy suffers slightly because the demon’s ailerons are mounted on piano hinges above while the flaps are mounted on piano hinges below the wing and neither wing halves reflects this.

A peek at the inner surface reveals a deep engraving set in a thinned strip of molding, flanked by high ridges that should serve as a cutting guide to separate the outer wing panels.  The hinge/mountings for the wing spoilers are molded but are not of the proper piano hinge type again. Aft of these, there should be recesses for the spoilers’ actuators and their absence will limit modelers to mounting the spoilers shut  whether  they are injection-molded or photo-etched.

C Sprue was inadvertently left out so I cannot comment on the quality of its contents. Though I will speculate (and hope) as to its content based on other modellers’ experience with the Grand Phoenix and AZ Models kits.
D Sprue contains the forward fuselage halves , bulkhead, rudder, cockpit sidewall inserts, ejection seat and backrest, instrument panel and coaming, refuelling probe and fairing, radome, baffles and intake scoops. The forward fuselage halves have vertical tabs that should fit into slots in the forward fuselage halves. While ensuring proper alignment, their vertical orientation blocks off a big portion of the intake.   Subsequent dry-fitting showed that the tabs  will be visible but more importantly, the provided bulkhead together with the baffles,  can provide all the alignment duties alone.

E Sprue contains the landing gear assemblies and pylons.

Though the nose gear’s 3-part torque link is oversized, the rest of the parts assemble into accurate replicas of the Demon’s complex gear design.  Because the gear assemblies fit so well to their respective gear bays, I used them as assembly jigs before installing them between the wing halves. Just rotate the main gear struts in their mounts so that the axles are parellel to the front-most wall of the wheel bay before you attach any of the retraction and torque links, drag struts and gear doors…let the glue dry properly and pop the assembly  out and put it aside for future painting and installation! It sure beats doing all that work after the model is  complete!  The door edges are very sharply molded and the transition between “skin” and “structure” are so well-defined that painting the standard red edges should prove a cinch. The only parts I couldn’t find in the available sprues are the lights for the nose gear and the brakes for the outboard side of the main wheels which should be a lot deeper to accommodate them. The leading edges of the pylons are way  too sharp.

F Sprue contains the flaps, ailerons, airbrakes and recesses, tail hook and its bay, canopy rear decking, fuel vents, pitot head, tie-downs, tail skid and wing-fold ribs. The hinge lines of the wing halves did not have piano hinges molded into them as mentioned above and neither do the leading edges of the flaps and ailerons which are also too blunt making extra work necessary to pose them deflected. When posed neutral, the aileron balances will benefit from filing to airfoil shape to improve their appearance.The air brakes have very thin plastic between the frames and are smaller than their aft fuselage openings indicating that perforated PE will represent their outer surfaces. The  end of the arresting gear  does not quite capture the mass nor shape of the hook itself.

G Sprue contains Sidewinders, Sparrows and drop tanks. The missile fins and wings are very finely molded…the ‘winder’s  wedge-shaped airfoils are accurately portrayed and even their rollerons have teeth molded to their circumferences. I’m sure Hobby Boss will adjust injection pressures to correct the incomplete moldings and the lack of mounting holes in the tanks.

GP Sprue contains the windshield, canopy and position lights. The canopy frame stands too proud off the transparent surface but I’m sure futher polishing of the mold to improve clarity will bring them flush to each other.
SOME BUILD NOTES
After using the excellent Walkaround photos of the Demon by Don Hinton (THANK YOU SIR) in Phil’s Aeronautical Stuff to compare to the test shot for accuracy, I realized that the coverage was extensive enough to stand in for an instruction sheet!

The cockpit tub actually snapped together without any glue and dry-fitting it into the forward fuselage only revealed that the forward ends of the side consoles interfered slightly with the fit of the instrument panel. The coaming does not depict the forward canvass boot and I couldn’t find a gunsight in any of the sprues available. The ejection seat does not resemble the Martin Baker Mk.5 that was fitted to late Demons and retrofitted to the earlier models and just to emphasize the need to replace it, I must have assembled it incorrectly too as it would not fit between the consoles.
The tabs along the edges of the canopy decking fit into grooves in the canopy frames. To pose the canopy open, simply slice them off.
This picture also shows that the bracket holds the refuelling probe too far from the fuselage. Photos show that the receptacle almost rests against the windshield and that the bracket should mount right on the flange surrounding the fairing itself.

Otherwise, the nose area compares well to photos. The separate radome will facilitate adding nose weight and although it is not separated  along a natural panel line, it is accurately shaped. Be careful comparing it to the actual, black-painted radome—the slanted  paint demarcation line makes it look like the radome has a deeper curve below. Replace that ginormous pitot head too!

The next picture shows the landing gear assemblies before and after I used the gear bays as assembly jigs. The kit parts are so precise that pre-assembling these without the benefit of a complete airframe to help alignment did not produce a lopsided model later.

The wings assemble well. Personally though, since Hobby Boss has ably demonstrated their ability to mold extremely thin parts, I would prefer that they mold the wing fences and barrier snags directly on the wing surfaces instead of providing them as separate photoetched parts. I wouldn’t mind if they were slightly thicker because PE would be hard to attach and would have square edges anyway.

Attachment to the fuselage via 2 tabs that fit into slots in the fuselage produces a gap along the upper wing root while the bottom fits perfectly.  Two of the  3 front view drawings I found on the internet indicate anhedral with the bottom surfaces forming a straight, horizontal line. The built-up test-shot shows this albeit with that gap along the upper wing root. I built a spar into this assembly but only to relieve any stress on the fuselage joints as IPMS Philippines –Bert Anido travels a lot! I have included data for this spar for those who want to use it. As for the gap,  there is a flange on the real Demon that is visible in Don Hinton photos that I will make out of thin sheet styrene to close the gap. The width and length of this flange is indicated by engraving on the fuselage sides. It is about 1mm wide and extends from  just aft of the leading edge slat to the flap hinge line. I chose the front wall of the main gear bay as position for the spar because it is perpendicular to the centerline and a the wing is relatively deep at this point. I used 1mm thick styrene for the spar and cut appropriate slots into the wing roots and fuselage 2mm ahead of the wheel bay. The spar spans the distance between the outer pylons and the gear bays only. This is a sufficient span and avoids the need to compensate for the inner surface curvature nearing the leading edges. The spar is 114mm wide with a constant height of 7mm across the middle 34mm and tapers to 3mm high at the tips.

The elevators have spigots that mount into holes in the fuselage tail. But back when one-piece, all-flying elevators were new, engineers relied on hefty carry-through structures as elevator pivots. Of course, their size opened up holes of all shapes and sizes where they mounted to the fuselage and aerodynamicists insisted that these holes be sealed. The solution was to attach blanking plates to the elevator roots which covered the holes no matter how the elevators were deflected. Take a look at Harrier, Skyhawk, Phantom and even later aircraft like the Frogfoot.  A lot of kit designers have simplified their kits by molding these blanking plates as raised surfaces on the fuselage skin including Hobby Boss and the Demon.  If you want to pose your elevators at any angle other than neutral, trace the outline of the shapes from the fuselage sides as you would the body number on your car.

And make new blanking plates from the thinnest styrene sheet you have, drill a hole through it and attach it to the elevator roots.

Sand off the original blanking plates on the fuselage and attach the elevators at the desired deflection angle. After I attached my elevators, I noticed that they mount too high on the fuselage when viewed from the side. I intend to lower the mounting hole on the fuselage sides by about 1 millimeter. Note also that I filed the upper rudder balance’ leading edge to an airfoil shape like the aileron balances.

This shot also shows the excellent ventral detail. Even the skid actuator is present there in its own little housing. The afterburner can is also as good as injection molding can get. The speed brake actuators are provided in the kit as are inserts that provide more lightening holes in the recesses.
This frontal shot shows the forward fuselage cross-sections, anhedral and landing gear geometry.

I angled the next shot based on a photograph provided by a concerned modeler in one of the popular forums. It illustrates one of the things we should watch out for  in any new Demon kit…that of the dorsal fillet’s accuracy. The kit’s rendition is too thick and should curve into the fuselage gently.

CONCLUSION
A little more research could have avoided some mistakes like the ommission of the later ejection seat, throttle, gunsight, brakes, the ommission of any provision to raise the wing spoilers,the oversized pitot head, wrong cross-sections to the flaps and ailerons’ leading edges, wrongly-shaped hook,  and wrongly-molded elevator blanking plates.
Despite missing  the C Sprue (which should contain the forward ventral fuselage, optional gun ports, missile launch rails and presumably, 2 beaver tails), I can say that this test-shot had excellent fit except for the upper wing roots.
Although the wing-fold ribs are featureless, modelers will still have an easier job of cutting the wings apart and the blank ribs will offer suitable bases for any detail a modeller wishes to add (btw, as of “press time”, I had yet to find any useful pictures of the wing-fold…maybe neither has Hobby Boss…).
All in all, having a well-detailed, good-fitting main-stream injection-molded kit of the Demon in 1/48 scale has revived my interest in early jets and will fill any gap in any naval aviation collections. Its ease of construction will also attract younger modellers to that era of aviation. I  can only shriek at the prospect of Banshees, Phantoms  and more Furies coming soon.
My sincerest thanks Hobby Boss for providing the Test Shot…and my apologies for the parts left over…

…aren’t you glad I’m not your mechanic?           Mel A. Silvestre IPMS Philippines-Bert Anido