DMold 1/48
F6F-5 Corrected Cowling

Here we go again! Another Eduard Hellcat release and another resin cowling correction set from DMold, a relatively new aftermarket resin company. Let's take things from the start though.

The intake of the Hellcat must be one of the most difficult shapes to capture since to this date no company has managed to get it just right in injected plastic form.

How wrong is wrong you might ask. Don't we all have models in our collections that were made only once by one company and they are full of mistakes but we suck it up because we know nobody will touch such subjects.

The Hellcat is not one of those models. It is a very popular kit and a best seller for whatever company makes one. This is why we can be a little picky with the details.

The Hasegawa lit is a fine kit overall that is let down by the shape of the cowling and wheel wells. Many companies since have tried to address the cowling issue with varying degrees of success.

The best correction set at that time was the Obscureco cowling with a pretty accurate outline as viewed from the sides.

Then amidst big publicity came the Eduard Hellcat. I recall very well at the Orange County Nationals last year how everybody was talking about the Eduard Hellcat. The kit came out and it is a pretty nice kit with an interesting lapped panel effect on the fuselage. But is it really that much better than the Hasegawa kit? The cowling for example is better than the Hasegawa one but it has very similar shape issues and exactly the same inaccuracies as far as the intake lip is concerned.

Here is a drawing to demonstrate the points above. The bottom of the cowling profile has not been done right by either Hasegawa or Eduard but has been captured correctly by Obscureco and DMold. The shape of the intake lip and how it opens up inside the cowling is captured correctly only by DMold.

Here are two pictures with a parade of cowlings starting with DMold, Obscureco, Eduard and Hasegawa.

Since the release of the DMold sets (48005 and 48006 for the -3 and -5 Hellcats) I had the opportunity to be near a Hellcat at the Paul Allen collection in Seattle. Sure enough the drawing above is accurate with the profile of the lower portion of the cowling and the intake lip treatment.

I am including three pictures of the museum Hellcat to illustrate the point. I enhanced one of them with increased brightness to help see the intake details.

I am of the opinion that the best two aftermarket cowilings are the DMold for correcting all the errors of the plastic kits with the Obscureco coming in second for a good profile but an inaccurate intake lip treatment.

The DMold cowling fits the Hasegawa kit great and it takes into account the two locating groves present on the fuselage.

If you want to use the DMold correction set on the Eduard kit, you will need to trim the inside of the resin cowling and remove the tiny resin locating tongues since the Eduard kit does not have locating grooves on its fuselage.

So what is the conclusion for this comparison? If you have the Hasegawa Hellcat, get the DMold cowling and you are set.

If you have the Eduard kit you will still need the DMold set to get a great looking kit. You will also need a set of resin wheels if you are doing a later -3 variant.

I purchased my correction set from Relish Models for £8.99 at http://www.relishmodels.co.uk/dmold-modelworks.html. The best news is that DMold is now going to be imported exclusively for the US by North American Hobbies.

This set is very highly recommended as the most accurate Hellcat cowling.