Teknics 1/48
F9F Panther/Cougar AN/ARA-25 Nose Fairing

Enter the Panther

When Hobbycraft first announced their 1/48 F9F-2 Panther kit a number of years ago, there has been a great deal of anticipation at the prospect of an early Panther for many modelers. Last year, Trumpeter announced that they were also releasing a 1/48 F9F-2 and it turned out that Hobbycraft and Trumpeter jointly developed this nice kit. Monogram's F9F-5 is still the best game in town for this variant, whilst the only usable 1/48 Cougar is FM's F9F-8 until perhaps the Hobbycraft Cougars enter the market.

Count on Teknics and Meteor Productions to help the AMS modeler to build a more accurate early Panther. They've produced a number of interesting detail sets to enhance or even alter the basic Hobbycraft/Trumpeter kits.

In this release, Teknics has offers an interesting update for the Trumpeter, Hobbycraft, Monogram and FM kits. This is a fairing that fits under the nose of the Panther/Cougar family later in their service lives. These were fitted to line aircraft in the field and house the AN/ARA-25 UHF direction finding antenna system that, when connected to avionics in the cockpit, allowed a pilot to home in on a UHF signal.

So what does this set get you? This is literally a single part that simply mounts to the underside of the nose of your Panther or Cougar (or both) to help you replicate an aircraft late in its operational service life.

Conclusions

Thisis a simple modification to your Panther or Cougar project. Check your reference photos and if the aircraft that you'd like to replicate has two chins, this will make it easy to modify your stock Monogram, Hobbycraft, Trumpeter, or FM kit.

Definitely recommended!

My sincere thanks to Meteor Productions for this review sample!