SPA Modeler

Thanks to Revell, USA for the sample.

And here it is! The review build of Revell USA's F-86D Sabre Dog in 1:48 scale! Our gracious host LyleW has agreed in letting me do what is my first ever review. Beats me why but hey, ill gladly take it!



Ok, let's get to work here...

F-86D Sabre Dog Historical Background

The F-86 Sabre is a wellknown, iconic aircraft that only very few of us have never heard of. Known as F-86, Sabre, Sabrejet or Mig Killer. This aircraft, to many of us is THE representation of aviation in the 50's and still tickles the imagination of aviation enthousiasts and modelers all around the globe. To write down an extensive historical background would be overkill so i will spare you the boredom

Less known but in no way any less significant is The "D" variant, or Sabre Dog. The subject of this kit.

Initially designated F-95, the Sabre Dog received it's final F-86D designation for mostly political reasons. In order to obtain funding for the development from congress it was easier to justify "development" of the F-86 project already underway than it was to start up an all "new" development project. Strangely enough the F-86D only shares very little commonality with the fighter variant of the F-86 and should not be mistaken as such.



The F-86D was intended as an "all weather interceptor", meant to defend US home lands from russian bombers. It received a powerful, afterburning engine and for the time, sophisticated state of the art avionics and radar equipment.
Instead of the 6 .50 cal machineguns found on the Sabre, the Dog was equipped with a rocket pod in the shape of a tray that would slide out from underneath the belly of the aircraft and fire it's 24 2.75 inch "Mighty Mouse" rockets head on into a bomber formation. The low accuracy of these rockets would be offset by the enormous damage they would inflict in case of a single hit. On one occasion a rocket was accidentally fired during a landing procedure causing a 15 foot crater in a wall a mile and a half away!



The F-86D derived it's distinct shark like features from the added nose cone which housed the antenna for the powerful AN/APG-36 search radar that gave the aircraft it's all weather capability. Being a single seat interceptor, pilot workload was to be reduced by giving the aircraft multiple automatically operating features such as automatic fuel injection, giving the pilot less to worry about when in combat. Back in the day the afterburning engine was referred to as being "a blowtorch with a brain"



About 2500 F-86D's were produced in several "block" variants during it's operational life spanning from 1951 to 1958 after which it was phased out of the USAF. However, the export variants such as the F-86K, armed with 20mm cannons instead of the rocket pod served in a multitude of countries as late as the early 90's.



Thus concludes our history lesson for today folks, coming up: the first look inside the box!

First Look:

Upon opening the sturdy, top opening box we find a total of 4 sprues, bagged in pairs and molded in the typical light grey styrene we are accustomed to from Revell. Also we have a separate bag with the clearparts added.



Initially i frowned upon the two sprue per bag way of packaging until i noticed this:



Very nice touch by Revell and i cannot say other than it protects the sprues from rubbing against eachother perfectly!

Next up is a huge decalsheet with a multitude of small and detailed markings. The decal process is generally not very liked by the average modeller, this frog included, but i do appreciate the thoroughness of the sheet. Apart from these extensive markings we find markings for two different aircraft serving with the USAF





And last but not least, the instruction sheet. Again in typical Revell fashion in the shape of a black and white booklet.



These instructions are more than adequate and i have no doubt i can build this kit without having to puzzle my way through them but as a side note and being a bit nitpicky here i would have liked to see a more contemporary, computer aided instructionsheet rather than these drawn diagrams. It feels a little antiquated in this area to me. But again.... thats me being a whine

Opening up the bags with the sprues i was genuinely struck with the detail of this kit! Beautifully engraved panellines, a pit with all the knobs and buttons and highly detailed wheel wells and landing gear only to name a few features. This is one sweet kit! Especially after we notice the stamp inside the lower wing:



And regarding this detail: just take a look for yourself, don't take my word for it!






A nice addition is the pilot figure. Pretty well detailed and separate arms so you can position them as needed.



Unfortunately i did find a thing or two that i didn't particularly like.... One of them being the clearparts. They are nicely detailed but rather thick. Maybe a dip in future will help us here but if we really don't like it we can always obtain a vacform canopy at very low cost. Not a real biggie but still a bit of a letdown after all the bristling detail we saw earlier.



Another thing i noticed that was less than 5 out of 5 stars was the presence of sinkholes in unfortunate places such as these:



Again, not a dealbreaker and easily remedied by some careful filling and sanding.

Concluding my first look i have to say the negative points to me far outweigh the positive ones. Looking at the sprues i have no doubt that this will build into a highly detailed model that can be displayed on the modeler's shelf with pride. Can't say nothing yet about fit and buildability/ engineering but things look promising in every way. Even more so when we take into consideration the very gentle pricetag that the kit has.

The demanding modeler can also fall back on an extensive availability of aftermarket gear should he or she want to superdetail. This kit is definately a good base for such endeavours.

Judging from what i see sofar and without having assembled it yet i can safely give the verdict "recommended" already! Well done Revell!

Stay tuned for a detailed report of the build. You can look over my shoulder as i start building!

Great start, my little frog! Already published on SPAModeler´s Facebook page!

"Attaboy, thaaaaat's my boy! Good dog!"
(Just for the record: I'm a professing cat lover.)

Having built a couple of these (both the RoG and Monogram boxings), I will follow this review build closely.
Curious to find out what your final conclusions will be and whether you'll experience the same challenges in fnishing this great kit.

Tot ziens!
Erik

AIRFIXER wrote:...
(Just for the record: I'm a professing cat lover.) ...

THE PIT

Completely out of the box, this cockpit is already a joy to build and paint. It just bristles with detail! I can only imagine how this pit will look with added aftermarket superdetailing.

The assembly starts off with constructing a multi part tube framing in which the seat will sit. Very nice! The only thing that i can note here is that the seat straps are molded onto the seat. This will require sanding if undesired:



The office space itself is another multipart deal with separate rudder pedals, control stick and control levers. The cockpit floor has really nicely done fine riveting:



Another nice thing is the way you will eventually center the cockpit within the fuselage by simply gluing it onto the intake ducting. Childsplay!:



Like i said in the previous posts, the sinkholes in the fuselage sides will have to be filled and sanded or you risk having it show up on your model after all the effort you put into painting and weathering your cockpit.



With all the assemly in this area done, i continued on by painting the pit with a combination of tamyia and vallejo acrylics. I then drybrushed with flat white. To finish everything off i also added AK Interactive's brown wash for yellow vehicles and light rust wash to certain area's. The three part instrument panel was treated in similar fashion and the dials and gauges were each filled with a drop of future floor polish.





I am pretty satifsied with this cockpit! And revell has done a good job here.

Watching this build. So far it looks promising. I saw this kit at Hobby Lobby a couple weeks ago and had debated on picking it up for my stash.

Sofar: Especially if you get a 40% off coupon from their website it's a complete no brainer

oh, gonna hurt my wallet. I have to have this to complete my Century Series collection. looks like my only option is to wait for my local shop to stock this. cost of shipping to Indonesia is horrendous