Fujimi 1/72 Vought F7U-3 Cutlass by Pat Camp

One of the things I look forward to at club nights is when members bring along surplus kits to sell. Steve brought a fine selection along at July’s meeting and there was one I just had to have (even if it was in 1/72^nd scale!): Vought’s F7U Cutlass. I don’t know what I find so irresistible about this aircraft, but it first caught my imagination “when I was a nipper” and has continued to do so ever since. It looks great in the air and when on the ground is like some giant ungainly bird with its rear haunches squat on the deck and its head held high in the air by an unfeasibly long nose leg. There is no mistaking its incongruous looks and I have cherished memories of stumbling across a small scale Lindberg kit of an earlier version when on holiday with mum and dad in the West Country, back in the days of yore.

The Fujimi kit is quite old now, but it is very well engineered even by today’s standards and rightly received much acclaim when it was first released. This kit was not destined for my ever-increasing “to do” pile: it had to be built there and then, and I have to say that I really enjoyed doing so!

The main parts of the kit comprise of single piece upper and lower wing/fuselage pieces and a forward section with the usual left and right sides. Within these are fitted a very crisply moulded cockpit and air intakes. The fins and (enormous) ailerons (or elevons, flapperons, dive-brakerons or whatever they should be called!) fit neatly to the rear of the wing and slats are provided for the leading edges. The sliding hood comes as a large transparent moulding and this needed some scratches to be removed before polishing and dipping in Johnson’s Klear. The instruction sheet is brief and the location of some of the items is not shown too clearly and, as I couldn’t see some of them on photos, I decided to leave them off the model. Also supplied are a gun pod and pair of drop tanks, but I decided to leave these off as well as they spoil the fine lines of the aircraft. The decal sheet is excellent although I found it necessary to soak them for a long period before sliding them from the backing paper. The white markings were difficult to see on the paper but look good on the model, with even the tiniest script being legible.The cockpit comprises of a floor tray, rear bulkhead, instrument panel, joystick and ejector seat [3]. Decals are provided for the instruments, but after my fiasco with the Eurofighter Typhoon, I decided to paint them instead (and I couldn’t bring myself to file away such lovely detail!). The parts were tacked together using Liquitape and airbrushed with dark grey Humbrol enamel. Tacking the parts together like this meant that paint did not get onto the joint surfaces, although the tacky nature of the Liquitape allowed me to pull the parts free for detailed painting on their own and re-attach them again as I wanted. Dried Liquitape is removed using white spirit before the parts are finally glued together.

At the same time as working on the cockpit, I also prepared the engine intakes. There are two thinly moulded intake haves that were glued together before filling, sanding smooth and given an application of Alclad primer to the inner surfaces. These assemble to the lower wing half and butt against a bulkhead that has some engine compressor blade detail moulded on. This detail was painted with Metalcoat 27002 [4] and, once dry, a shade oil paint mix of Ivory Black, Paynes Grey and Liquin was brushed on and then removed from the leading edges of the blades using a “rubber brush” to leave highlights. This mix was also used on the control panel and cockpit side consoles. The following day the cockpit surfaces were given an airbrushed coat of matt varnish followed by dry brushing with mid grey.

Instrument dials were painted with an Ivory Black / Liquin mix, followed by Clear Cote for the instrument glasses. The coloured lamps visible in the reference photo were picked out in red and orange enamels. Silver pencils were used to represent scratches and wear (particularly the scuffed cockpit floor), and were found to be ideal for picking out the numerous small switches. The control column was painted interior green with a black grip at the top and mid grey fabric at the bottom.

The wing halves were held together and the bulkhead with the engine compressor blades was positioned. Plastic glue was applied to join the bulkhead to the lower wing, but the wings were not separated until the glue had set firmly. The engine intakes were then glued in place, followed by the upper wing half [5] and, once dried, the tail fins. The front halves were glued together, having previously been weighted with lead and the cockpit fixed in place. The forward wheel bay was then added and the front end assembly fixed to the rear end, propping the model up to keep everything in place whilst the glue set [6]. It all went together nicely and only a little Mr Surfacer was needed around the seams. However, the leading edges were given quite a bit of sanding to form a smooth curve, but this was probably unnecessary as the area is largely obscured from view by the slats that were added towards the end of the build.

The undercarriage bays were airbrushed Humbrol Green 150, which provides a nice representation of chromate green “in the shade”. This was given a wash of Tamiya IJN Green thinned with Tamiya X20A and the highpoints picked out with a pale green Humbrol enamel. Hydraulic cylinder rods were painted in Games Workshop’s Gunbolt Metal acrylic (which gives a nice bright steel colour: most useful for those military vehicle modellers amongst you). The model was now ready for painting [7]. 

A wodge of moistened tissue paper was placed in the cockpit and a little PVA glue applied to the top to firm it up. Tamiya tape and Silly Putty were used to fill around the edges and Micro Liquimask (a liquid masking solution that I cannot recommend highly enough) applied to where the windscreen would be glued to the fuselage. The area behind the pilot’s seat was airbrushed interior green and the sides and front coaming airbrushed Humbrol Grey 67 followed by a very dark grey applied around the edges to emphasise the curved shape of this area. Detailed shading using Ivory black + Liquin was applied by hand brush around the gunsight [8A]. Liquimask was removed from around the canopy area [8B] and the windscreen tested for fit before being tacked into place using Liquitape followed by cyanoacrylate (which had unfortunately gone thick in the bottle and made the resulting join a bit untidy) [8C]. The windscreen and canopy had both been given a polish followed by a dip in Johnson’s Klear so there would be minimal risk of the cyanoacrylate fogging the transparencies. The transparent areas were masked using Tamiya tape followed by a coating with Liquimask. The gel-like consistency and long(ish) drying time of this fluid makes it fairly easy to apply right up to the edge of the frames [8D]. If you go too far, leave it to dry and trim the excess away with a scalpel. With the masking applied, the interior colour of Humbrol Grey 67 was airbrushed on, followed by Lifecolor “Faded Olive Drab” [8E].

The leading edges of the wings were airbrushed with Humbrol Orange Lining 82 followed by Revell SM330 Red, allowing the orange to show through as a highlight on the upward facing surface. Some green paint was added to the red (which makes the mix darker) and this was sprayed onto the inside surfaces of the slats. The slats were attached to an off-cut of wood by Blu-Tack for painting [9]. The cockpit hood was added and the olive drab areas masked off along with the areas of red along the wing leading edges [10].

The aircraft was given two medium coats of Alclad II primer, 30 minutes apart. Micromesh 6000 was used wet and the model carefully washed and dried off by light use of a hair dryer. Alclad “Dark Aluminium” was applied to the undersides and then “Aluminium” applied to the topsides. The finish looked awful in places: as if it had reacted with the plastic beneath. I suspect it was bad airbrush technique on my part: I didn’t start with the various nooks and crannies as we were instructed to do in Robin’s course. A light polish with Micromesh helped matters, but it was still a disappointing result. Individual panels were masked off [11] for painting in a different tone: Dark Aluminium and Metalcoats 27002 applied to dark and bright panels on the top and Dark Aluminium mixed with a little Metalcoats Black to the underside ones. The rear panels around the jet nozzles was a cocktail of “Dark Aluminium”, “Jet Exhaust” and Metalcoats bronze [12], and this was also applied to the small panels on top of the intakes: the result looked really good and the earlier setback is not too noticeable anymore. The top of the fins was painted medium blue followed by US Navy Blue ANA623, allowing the lighter blue colour to show through in places as a highlight. In a similar way, the nose was airbrushed Humbrol Grey 67 followed by shading beneath with a black/grey enamel. The tips of the fins were the only items that needed glossing for decaling and I tried out Hiroboy airbrush ready gloss coat without much success: something else to experiment with later!

 I decided against shading the panel lines as the model looks fine as it was. Photos of the aircraft in natural metal show them to have been kept fairly clean, so weathering was kept to some scratches of the paintwork around the cockpit area.

The undercarriage legs and wheels were airbrushed with Alclad primer, and the chromed parts given a coat of Alclad II aluminium before being masked off. The remainder of the legs were painted with a mix of pale grey and silver enamels, to represent the aluminium paint finish applied to the real aircraft. Some shading was applied using silver printer’s ink mixed with black and Paynes grey oil paint plus Liquin to get the right consistency. The wheels were hand brushed with silver and the tyres painted Tamiya German Grey, leaving a narrow gap around the rim. This was painted in a dark grey/black/brown shade to give the tyre some shape. The regions between the wheel spokes were painted with a dark grey oil paint mix [13]. The undercarriage located easily and strongly into the wheel bays. The doors also fitted well, although I left the front door off until decaling was completed. The hook part of the arrestor hook has been airbrushed with a steel coloured mix of Alclad paints and the arms painted white with black stripes [14].
Some small aerials were attached using PVA glue followed by cyanoacrylate once finally positioned. These have no locating tabs and will be easily knocked off. I would suggest making replacements from an aluminium soda can (with the inside and outside coatings removed) as this would be of a more representative thickness and can be left in a natural finish (or given a coat of gloss varnish to protect the lustre).

As mentioned previously, the decals took a lot of soaking before they would slide from the backing paper. They tended to grip the surface fairly quickly so positioning them was a little tricky at times. I used Micro Set and this seems to have worked well. At the time of writing this article, I have yet to apply some Micro Sol to tidy up one or two places. The (very nearly) completed model is shown in the final photos. To summarise: this is a well produced kit of a characterful aircraft that when combined with Alclad paints looks good and is enormous fun to build. I cannot recommend it highly enough and shall take a close look at any other Fujimi kits now there seems to be a resurgence of their products in this country.