Grumman’s F9F Panther was one of the aircraft that pioneered the era of jet aviation for the U. S. Navy.  In 1:48 scale, Trumpeter’s three F9F-2/3 kits are good but certainly not flawless.  One clear area for improvement are the wingtip tanks.  The kit tanks are seriously undersized. 

Here, Model Monkey provides a pair of corrected replacement F9F wingtip tanks for the Trumpeter Panthers.  The set consists of four 3-D printed parts, with each tank separated into forward and rear halves.  While intended for the Trumpeter kits, these can also be adapted for use the Hobby Craft, Monogram, Revell, or Round 2 kits.

Two things really stand out:  first, being somewhat familiar with the process and effort involved in the 3-D design work, I would say that the underlying design work is outstanding:  precise, clean, and accurate.  The detail here is great.  But of course, 3-D models on a computer must be translated into a part, and those parts sometimes are only as good as their printers which brings me to my second point:  the printing here is flawless.  3-D resin manufacturing processes “print” parts by building up very thin layers of plastic or resin atop a previous layer.  Here, the layering is extremely fine.  It’s still visible, but you have to squint to see the printed layers.  All you’ll need is a little bit of your favorite primer or some Mr. Surfacer, and any texture should disappear.

Overall, Model Monkey’s 1:48 scale F9F-2/3 Wingtip Fuel Tanks gets two very enthusiastic thumbs up.  We extend our sincere thanks to Steve Larson at Model Monkey for the review sample.  You can visit them on the web and order their products directly at https://www.model-monkey.com .  Hats off also to Matthew Christensen who developed the 3-D model for this set.