F11F-1 Grumman Tiger Blue Angels 1/54 Plastic Model Kit Atlantis

I preordered 2 of these kits last year. One for me and one for a friend in my model club. When my girlfriend saw them she immediately said that she wanted one built up for her birthday in February. I built the model with the landing gear retracted as if in flight and mounted it in one of the Atlantis swivel stands. Only modifications I made to the kit were to open up the tailpipe at the back and replace the nose nipple on the nose cap with a refueling probe from a 1/48 A-4 Skyhawk kit. Painted with Blue Angels Blue and Chrome Yellow from Testors and covered the leading edges, intake lips and aft fuselage with Bare Metal Foil. The kit decals were outstanding and I built her models as Plane 1 from the 1958 demo year.

Remember this is not Tamiya/Hasegawa/Eduard; this is a kit first made at the dawn of plastic models in 1956. There was some sanding of the fuselage mating surfaces and the horizontal stabilizers do not match the curve of the fuselage which requires some filler to fix. I was able to mask the canopy to paint the frame. The decal sheet was excellent. This kit was last issued in '64-'65 as part of Revell's Famous Aircraft series.

a superb remolding of a great kit. I suggested that the decal sheet be reworked on this kit so that any of several aircraft of the Blues could be done. Atlantis responded with a spectacular decal sheet that covers all the demo aircraft for both years the "short nosed" Tiger was used. WELL, WELL done Atlantis! Keep it up!