Hasegawa F-8E Crusader
Correction Notes

by José Herculano

Hasegawa's 1/48 scale F-8E Crusader will be available online from Squadron.com

The new 1/48 scale Hasegawa F-8E Crusader is a nice model, but with some pretty weird quirks.

Its launch was delayed by about a month, reportedly to allow Hasegawa to fine tune a few points. Perhaps it should have been delayed two months, even three. It is such a nice kit in so many areas – like dimensions and shape – that one cannot help wondering what an absolute gem it might have been.

It would be nice to see Hasegawa do the honorable thing, and go over the molds with some simple yet effective changes. Meanwhile, it is up to the modeler to go the extra mile and execute some procedures, that annoying though they are for a steed from such exalted stable, are pretty straightforward and rewarding.

The three main quirks and my suggested fixes are listed below:

1. Exhaust

Trim a bit the exhaust at the attachment point, so that it does not protrude beyond the rear of the fuselage.

2. Front Gear Leg

Do a very simple modification to the front gear leg.

As provided, the part is wrong for an F-8E. If you wish to know more about this, do a search on HyperScale's "Plane Talking" forum for some outstanding explanation on Crusader gear differences by former F-8 driver Tom Weinel.

The modification took me all of 2 minutes with a Two Bobs sanding stick. Just shave away the “horns".

3. Opening the Canopy

The final modification is more complex, and it took me about an hour of work. As you may know by now, the Hasegawa Crusader’s canopy cannot be assembled open out of the box. Incredible as it may seem, it is the sad truth. Part of it has to do with the limitations imposed by the necessary thickness of an injection molded canopy. But most of it has to do with a glaring error by a company that should know better.

The first to nail the problem on the head was Dave Klaus from Meteor Productions: the canopy ears and associated fuselage recesses are underscale. Once this dawned on me I went to camp to see if I could correct it.

First step was to find a perfect side picture of a real Crusader. Then crop the image to the wanted area. The image was resized and printed so that the total height would be the same 41 mm that the model has.

 

From that the problem was plain to see. The fuselage recesses have the right lower contour and location, but should extend further aft and higher.

Marking the correct profile with a felt tip pen, I took a slowly rotating blurring tool to it, finishing with a Squadron seam scraper, which I use for everything but.

 

And the end result is this:

 

Now one has to shave of and fabricate new ears for the canopy. There’ll be a bit of tension, so use either a soft plastic (Evergreen) of suitable (same as the canopy’s) thickness, or brass.

Now the canopy fits perfectly!

 

Text & Images Copyright © 2003 by José Herculano
Except Title Image Copyright © 2003 by Brett Green
Page Created 13 February, 2003
Last Updated 19 April, 2004

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