Review by Paul Kirsopp
I don’t think I’ve ever built a Hobbycraft kit before although I have a couple in the pending pile. So, what do we get?
Well let’s start with the box. Artwork, that’s OK and the box seems quite sturdy.
The blurb on the box side tells us that we have a detailed cockpit and landing gear and authentic markings. The parts come on three grey and one clear sprue with the clear parts wrapped separately.
Right then, the plastic. A detailed cockpit it says, hmmm. Well here’s the pictures. The cockpit tub is exactly that, a tub with no detail at all. There’s only one instrument panel so the guy in the back must just be there for the ride! Each seat is made up from two parts, the seat back, cushion and sides on one part and the ‘rail’ at the back. There’s been some attempt at moulding seat belts but that’s about the best I can say. There’s no moulded detail, no decals and poor seats, it’s just as well the canopy isn’t the clearest so you can’t see in.
The detailed wheel bays fare no better.
These are just empty boxes as you can see. The undercarriage legs are just that, legs with only the torque links for detail. The wheel hub on the outside face is quite nice but the inside face’s of all six wheels have ejector pin marks that will require treatment.
The engine fronts are represented by nice compressor faces. They might be a tad close to the front but I could live with them, the jet pipes are again rather poor having no detail inside them.
There’s two wing tip drop tanks and two smaller ‘drop tanks’ that are not included on the instruction sheet and I can’t find any pylons to hang them from either, strange.
Detail on the airframe is OK but not as sharp as it could be and the airframe has small blemishes all over it. As all the finishing options are for natural metal aircraft there’s some cleaning up required.
There’s enough images on the decal sheet for all the markings but there’s no stencil detail beyond the warning triangles. Some of the images are not very sharp and all are just a little out of register.
The instructions are OK in as much as they show clearly where things go but there’s no painting information, no history and to be honest they look a little amateurish.
Well. I seem to have done quite a hatchet job on this kit. I hate to trash a kit before I’ve built it but we’re off to a shaky start. IF I can clean the airframe up to an acceptable standard then we just might be able to make a half decent model.
I think I can get around the decals by using some from my stock, the airframe should polish up and as I’m going to paint the cockpit black the lack of detail shouldn’t be too noticeable.
The canopy can have the Klear treatment (see Canopies in Techniques Bank) and I’ll try and find two replacement seats. Other than this it’ll be an out the box build, (when I build up the courage to start).
I don’t actually mind the lack of detail, the kit was cheap enough, but don’t say it’s got detail when it clearly does not. I have no plans to start this kit immediately as I have enough on the go as it is but I hope to get to it soon, watch this space, as they say.
Paul K.