Grumman Hellcat Eduard 7077

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It looks like the Hellcat will never be a boring subject to me, even if it is reissued. This time it is the Hellcat kit in 1/72 scale, Profipack and stock code 7077.

Grumman Hellcat Eduard 7077
Grumman Hellcat Eduard 7077

Since this is a kit that is a few years old, I am impressed with the fact that during this build I did not find any fittings problems and there is absolutely no mold flash. Content is standard for this series of kits- four frets of injected plastic parts (one is transparent), protective mask, two set of etched parts (one is painted), excellent decals and nice instruction booklet. A nice feature in the booklet is the presentation of additional accessories on the back page so if you would like to add extra upgrades to this kit, you have good info there.

First step is as usual, painting of the parts before building them inside. There are several parts for the cockpit interior but I would like also to advise you to paint the rest of the parts such as engine parts, interior of cowling and wheels. In general there is not much paint used in kit. Assembly starts with the cockpit, where you have to replace some elements with etched ones. Details are top and some care needs to be taken with some small etched handles. Interesting that most of the time was spent on the cockpit–the rest of kit build is almost light flash.

Once the fuselage halves are joined with the cockpit section inside, work goes much faster, entire kit is assembled in some more than two hours. This kit demands almost no filler; I used it on join lines just in case. The engine consists of few elements;  each can be painted separately and joined together. Entire wiring is provided as an etched part and looks good when you look inside the cowling.

Painting of the kit is an interesting choice, Eduard provides four samples for final kit and all are in Sea Blue Gloss. My choice was the first sample in painting instructions, sample flown by David McCampbell, well known ‘Minsi III’, from USS Essex. Detail of interest is that it used bottom fuselage fuel tank and it was in light color, possibly white. I did not use it; I made it more clean configuration. There are not many decals to be used on the kit but they are so attractive, victory bars beneath the cockpit look so attractive.

No way will you regret if you get this kit, it is very authentic, easy to build and attractive markings, these are features we all prefer. I built this one with pleasure and warmly recommend it to you. Great thanks to Eduard for providing the sample product!

Srecko Bradic

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