1/72 Academy F-86E Sabre El Diablo

 by John Huijding

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History:

The history of the Sabre is described in many places, so I will not spent a lot of words on this part except that it became most famous during the Korean war where it was America’s prime fighter.

I decided to build this model some time ago. It started with the idea after reading a book about the Korean war and a TV documentary about dogfights describing the battles between the adversaries F-86 and Mig-15. I wanted to build them both.

The Model:

I didn’t build an Academy kit before, so this was my opportunity to build the Sabre using a Academy kit. I was surprised when opening the box. It contains the grey sprues and one clear sprue. The first impression is that the parts have nice details. The cockpit is not just a flat panel with decals for the instruments but engraved into the plastic. For extra details you will need some aftermarket detail sets. Another good point of this model is the possibility to open the slats and airbrakes. The clear canopy has nice details and is not too thick.

Building:

Building OOB didn’t give any problem. I started with creating the cockpit giving as much detail as possible with paint and adding some Tamiya tape for the seatbelts that are not included. Before closing the fuselage I located some extra weight in the nose. For putting together the fuselage and wings I only needed a little bit of putty in the wing connection. 

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Painting:

For the painting of the model I used Alclad 2 paints. I have been using them before for other models but only for small parts (exhaust). After looking at some walk arounds I decided to use several colors of Alclad 2. I used the duraluminum as a base. I painted several parts on the wings and fuselage with dark aluminum and a few panels with light aluminum. I used stainless steel for the area around guns and near the exhaust. And last I used jet exhaust color for the exhaust. Using Alclad is perfect for metal finish planes.

I didn’t use the decals with the yellow/black bands (see decals chapter).  So I had to use my Tamiya acrylic paint for the bands. Trying to get them as good as possible I used tape for the outside using the size of the decals. First I painted the yellow on top of the metal colors than using tape for the black bars and airbrushing them.  I must say It’s not as good as I wanted them (some bars did not have the same width everywhere) but it’s much better than using the decals.

Decals:

This is the only disappointment of the kit. They are too thick and not flexible even after using MicroSol I couldn’t get them into the engraved panel lines. So I removed the yellow/black decals and painted them as described above. I have been using all other decals. A good point is that there are many details for such a small plane.

Weathering:

For the weathering I painted some smoke color using a lot of thinner and afterwards I used some Pro Modeller dark wash.

Conclusion:

It has been a great joy to build and with some effort you can get a good looking F-86E Sabre. And also important it is not an expensive model. If you want to build a nice F-86 Sabre. I would recommend this one to you.

I hope you enjoyed seeing this model.

Keep on modeling....

John

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Photos and text © by John Huijding