Hasagawa F6F Hellcat

by Scott Murphy

The cockpit is finally done, time to start on the engine and all the stuff forward of the firewall.

I had to add two 0.125" square stiffners under the cockpit floor to keep it from bowing under the weight! The superchargers and ducting still need to be made and installed, adding a good bit more weight!. I may wind up having to add weight to the tail!

Still lots of detail to be added here and on the cowling. This thing is going to be heavy as crap! Thanks to careful planning and construction, the alignment is perfect (the white piece of styrene in the bulletnose is a little bent). It is perfectly centered in the cowling opening when everything is in place.....whew!

The accessory section for the back of the Hellcat's engine is finally done. Right now everything is just stuck into place (pins) I will wait until it is painted to assemble everything. It is about 1 inch high and deep. The body is about 3/4" in diameter. I still have to put screening over the top of the air intake. This is what happens when you have an aviation museum 25 minutes from the house. I probably took about 20 reference photos of just the R-2800. 2/3 of them were just on the accessory section.

Including all the rivets (0.010 rod inserted into holes and snipped with scissors) there are at least 200 pieces in it, more than 95% of all the kits out there (except Trumpeter)

Here is the Hellcat engine so far. The distributor closest to the camera is a scratchbuilt replacement. I was painting the damn thing last night when it fell and the original piece went off into never never land! While I was at it, I made some improvements to the other one as well, rivets, wire attachment points, etc. Teknics even duplicated the rough surface of a cast bulletnose. The rest of the crank case is smooth!

The engine was good for over three weeks (still not done, I have to add the exhaust stubs) but that will be later......

The oil system is complete with the exception of the plumbing. The engine mount was made extra sturdy since I knew there would be a lot of weight on it by the time it was done. I was right! I took the photo before the armor for the oil tank was added since it obscured the tank detail.

© Scott Murphy 2004