Included with this review

• Scale Aircraft Conversions - Vampire/Sea Vampire Landing Gear (2 sets) ; Stock #: 72069, MSRP: $13.95

Cyber-Hobby’s Sea Vampire kit is a variant based on their Vampire FB.5 kit, with the inclusion of additional parts unique to the carrier-capable version. All parts are beautifully molded and the engraved panel lines are sharp and precise. (See Parts photo) The use of slide molding allows a huge amount of depth in the parts, which shows up in the hollow tail booms and underwing fuel tanks. The kit gives the builder the option of retracted or extended gear, open or closed canopy, and raised or lowered flaps. The heart of the aircraft consists of an upper and lower half, which makes up the fuselage and wings. Sprue gates for several parts are on the inner mating surfaces so when they’re trimmed off there’s no danger of marring the surface detail.

Aires’ F9F Panther wingfold set comes in a bubble package, consists of 10 parts, and is made for the Hobby Boss F9F kit #87249. The pieces in the package are very nicely done and look great.

To install the Aires sections, about 1/4 inch needs to be cut out of the kit’s wings. I “under-cut” mine (slightly less than a full cut) then filed them down until I got a good fit. I had to thin the Hobby Boss leading and trailing edges on the inside of the wings to get a good fit for the resin parts.

Each fuselage side of the wingfold has 3 small tabs, and each wing side has two---these slide into the 3 on the fuselage side---just like the full size machine. But be careful; they’re very fragile. I broke one side sanding the joint and had to carefully glue them back on.

I used CA glue to attach the resin parts to the plastic and sanded them to blend in. Most panel lines lined up but a few didn’t.

As quoted from Squadron/Signal Publications: "In Action books, despite the title of the genre, are books that trace the development of a single type of aircraft, armored vehicle, or ship from the prototype to the final production variant. Experimental or "one-off" variants can also be included. Our first In Action book was printed in 1971."

In the mid to late thirty's the U.S. Navy was looking for a new high speed, high altitude fighter. Chance Vought brought their design to the competition, the XF4U-1. The Navy was impressed with the design and Vought started on the prototype. During one of the flight tests the XF4U-1 reached a speed of 405 mph and this impressed the Navy enough to order it into production and thus was the beginning for one of the most famous fighter aircraft to come out of WWII.