Hobbyboss 1/48 F-80
Hobbyboss' 1/48 F-80 Shooting Star

Finished! Hobbyboss 1/48 F-80 Shooting Star.

The F-80 Shooting Star was an early US jet fighter. Originating during the end years of World War 2 as the P-80 Shooting Star, it entered service but didn't see combat in the war. Post war due to the restructuring of the USAAF into the USAF, the aircraft was redesignated with the new F-80 designation. The original model P-80 was armed with 6x nose mounted .50 M2 machine guns, with the later F-80s upgrading these to the M3 model which featured a significantly higher rate of fire. The F-80 went on to serve in the Korean War, where it initially was quite successful fighting against prop driven aircraft. However the introduction of Soviet Lavochkin La-15 and Mikoyan MiG-15 swept wing jet fighters proved to be too much for the straight wing F-80, and it gradually became relegated to a ground attack fighter-bomber role.

Externally the easiest way to tell apart the P-80 and F-80 is by the nose. The P-80 has a landing light fitted there, while the F-80 has a distinctive black radar cover.

This kit is advertised by Hobbyboss as being of the P-80/F-80A type, however it isn't, as the P-80/F-80A had the aforementioned nose light, AND had a standard pilot's seat, whilst the later versions of the F-80 featured an ejector seat. As such the kit is inaccurate to the P-80/F-80A.

The kit was somewhat reasonable, with the cockpit and pilot's chair going together very well, however the included decals for the instrumentation were too large, leading to poor fit and I am still a little worried it may peel off some day.

The cockpit module fits inside the aircraft well, however the aircraft has numerous minor fit problems and seams, and one major fit problem between the wings and the fuselage, which needed a lot of filler to fix. The filler I used was Perfect Plastic Putty, this was my first time using it, and I am rather pleased with the results.

Another issue however was the landing gear bay and doors. The bay itself is made of exceptionally thin plastic which was bent completely out of shape when I got the kit, and was in fact almost snapped. Whilst I managed to avoid damaging it any further, it did contribute to the poor fit around this area. An even poorer fit was the gear doors, which being intended to be displayed with the gear down, were somewhat too large for the bay itself. I fitted them in as best I could and tried to smooth out the edges with more filler. I am still not happy with this area however.


When painting the kit, I initially sprayed it with citadel chaos black as a primer. Normally I would use vallejo but the vallejo black primer was coming out slightly speckled, so I wanted to ensure a smooth finish as a good base for the aluminium. The aluminium I used was Vallejo metallic aluminium, which airbrushes easily and provides a nice matt but still somewhat shiny aluminium finish. I then used the Vallejo black to paint the anti-glare strip and wing stripes, and Vallejo yellow over a grey-white base for the wing tips. The engine exhaust was painted in Vallejo metallic gun metal.

Once this was dry I followed up with a coat of pledge floor polish, in order to give a smoother surface to apply the decals onto. The decals themselves were reasonable, with most of them going on just fine except for a couple of the larger ones, the those problems are not so noticeable from a distance. I was also happy I managed to get all of the smaller markings on, as some of them were extremely small.

Once the decals were dry, I followed up with a final coat of pledge to seal them in, which I am happy to say seems to have worked great.

In conclusion, whilst this kit has a lot of problems, it's not too bad, and I can definitely recommend it over the older Monogram F-80 kit, if you are looking for a model of this aircraft. Hopefully in the future we can get an F-94A Starfire too!