Monogram's 1/48 scale
F9F-2 Panther

by Jerry Creager

Revell's 1/48 scale F9F-5P Panther is available online from Squadron

Not long ago I had an opportunity to buy an old Monogram kit of the F9F Panther. I believe Monogram issued this kit back on the 90’s. I have always wanted to build this kit but by the time got interested enough to do it the kit was out of production. Finally I found one and promptly added it to my stack of un-built models.

I like colorful airplanes and I just couldn’t get inspired about a glossy sea blue airplane so it sat around for several months until one evening I was looking at an old Squadron F9F Panther / Cougar book and there on page 21 was the scheme I wanted to do. It is an aircraft that was assigned to the Advanced Training Unit 206 based at Sherman Field at NAS Pensacola, Florida in the mid 60’s. I cleared off the work table and started work.

I searched around the net but couldn’t find any after market parts for the Panther so almost everything is out of the box. The only major modification is I re scribed all of the panel lines. For the most part, the kit went together pretty well with only a few minor fit problems. Since I have the air brakes in the lowered position I did not encounter the air brake fit problem that I have read about in other articles.

The challenging part of the project is that nobody makes decals for this aircraft, so I decided to make my own. My local hobby shop had a decal kit designed for ink jet printers made by Testor that contained clear decal paper and a can of decal bonder.

The next problem was I didn’t have a font in any of my programs that matched the military stile lettering found on aircraft.

After about an hour of surfing the net I found a free download of a military stile font. It is called “AMARILLOUSAF” but I didn’t write down where I found it so I can’t pass that info along.

Next, I started laying out my letters and used the size of the kit decals as a gauge to get the right height. This was trial and error and I did this on regular paper until I was satisfied with the size and arrangement of the letters.

The decal paper was advertised as compatible with ink jet printers but I had trouble with the ink “rolling” up within the printed areas of the letters and leaving a “cracked” appearance when dry. I solved the problem by first spraying a light coat of the decal bonder on the decal paper before I ran it through the printer. This worked perfectly, the ink laid down solid and even.

The next thing I discovered is to wait a good 24 hours before over coating the decal with the bonder. If the ink is not completely dry, and I mean completely dry, the ink will blur around the edges.

All of my letters were black so I don’t know how it will work on colors, but I think if one were to use the same procedures as described above, it should work

 

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Model, Text and Images Copyright © 2006 by Jerry Creager
Page Created 07 July, 2006
Last Updated 13 July, 2006

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