| KIT: | Hasegawa 1/72 S2F-1 'Tracker' |
| KIT #: | 102 |
| PRICE: | The local hobby shop is selling these for around $18.00, but you can find them for $10 or less at swap meets |
| DECALS: | Two options |
| REVIEWER: | Scott Van Aken |
| NOTES: | Gets reissued from time to time |
In the early days of ASW operations, aircraft worked in tandem with one carrying the radar and the other carrying the weapons. This started with TBM Avengers and were followed by specially designed A2F Guardians. However, it wasn't always the best use of deck space. What was needed was a single airframe to carry both. Speed wasn't an issue. More important was the ability to go slow and stay in the air for a long time. As subs often operated beyond the range of land based planes, this one had to be carrier capable.
Grumman designed a four place aircraft that met the requirements of carrying a radar, weapons, and being carrier capable. First flying in 1951, over 1,000 were built and used by not only the US Navy, but by forces around the world. The type was able to carry the required sonobouys (located in the aft portion of the engine nacelles) and the torpedoes or depth bombs needed to sink the prey in a lower bomb bay. A searchlight was carried outboard on the right wing. After their replacement in the US Navy by the S-3 Viking in the early 1970s, those S-2s not sold to foreign air forces were given a new lease on life with the Forest Service as water bombers. Some versions have been re-engined with small turboprops to replace their R-1820 recips. Other versions made from the base S-2 airframe were the E-1 Tracer and the C-1 Trader. Your author spent several years maintaining the C-1 so has some personal knowledge of this ancient but strong airframe.
A sign of the times is that there has been no dedicated fixed wing ASW assets in the USN since the mid 1990s. The S-3 continued on for another ten years, but without its sub hunting abilities and used only for general search and air refueling. It is now gone and afloat ASW is left to helos.
My kit is one of the myriad of Hasegawa/Minicraft boxings that festoon vendors tables around the country. These are in longish boxes that open at each end and allow bits that are loose to disappear to another dimension, awaiting you to find/scratch-build a replacement before reappearing in our time-space continuum. More fortunate ones will find the boxing with the white/international orange plane on the cover. Mine was one of the former.
Greenish grey plastic with petite raised detail for everything except control surfaces and vents. Plastic twice as thick as one sees in modern kits, but generally accurate in outline and a good place to start working on a project. If you want to know more about the bits in the box, click on the preview link and have at it.
I decided I wanted to use the Pavla interior set on this. It includes an operator's compartment and new crew hatch and door so that you can at least see the stuff you've done in the back of the plane. As is so typical of resin sets I managed to break off a few finely done bits on the cockpit piece, but unless you know they are there, they won't be missed (I hope).
First job was to hack away at the fuselage. This took a considerable amount of time, even though I used a motor grinder to do most of the rough work. Down side of this thing is that every once it a while it gets away from you and puts a nick in the fuselage. Filler will fix that and I did get better as I moved along. After the rough shapes were done, I used files to smooth things out, test fitting the various bits that would fit there as I went along. On the inside I had to sand away the small ejector stubs and smooth out the grinding with rough sand paper. I filled the bigger holes with standard putty. Since the set gives no sidewall detail, I had to see what areas would be visible through the open door and hatch. The instructions to the Pavla set show just what needs to be removed.
I then painted all of the resin with Dark Gull Grey, the standard shade of most aircraft interiors of the period. Most of the instrument and panel faces were then painted with a matte black as was the background of the circuit breaker panels on the back wall of the cockpit. Don't forget to paint the ARC-27 radio that fits under the center console matte black as well. These planes were well used and it wasn't uncommon to find yellow primer showing and even bare metal areas in the most traveled areas. Though there were plenty of warning/caution lights on the panels, unless the 'lamp test' buttons were pushed, these were pretty well dark. It always brings a smile to my face to see the multi-colored instrument panels some people have as it is not at all the norm. I do confess to doing this little artistic bit myself to keep from looking at a monotonous black panel, though.
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Thanks to me and my fondness for anything different from the norm for this one.
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