Review by: Geoff Coughlin
Price: £15.00 approx (Feb 2012)
Our thanks to Revell for supplying our review sample.
Something to get you in the mood…
The Revell Kit
Revell are proving prolific these days with plenty of new-tool kits being released in various scales.
Now we have the Boeing E-4B Airborne Command Centre, nicknamed “Doomsday”, with new decals.
This continues the theme, with several smaller ‘new’ kits that are in fact older kits repackaged with new, high quality decals. And if you like airliners and clean military types as modelling projects, then you should take a good look at this one, even though it is a re-release of a much older kit.
Box and Contents
The box artwork is usually very good and it’s decent enough here, showing a Boeing E-4B streaking across the box lid. Let’s go inside…
The white plastic sprues are packaged in the usual poly bag and no damage is apparent. Taking the main components first, they are quite well tooled, feeling quite hard and brittle-like.
No distortion was apparent and a dry fit of the fuselage halves promises a decent fit and overall shape looks pretty good.
Moving to the wings, they are reasonable in outline shape and the small ‘extra’ sprue contains the small number of extra E-4B variant bumps and lumps.
Click on the thumbnails below and explore all the box contents for yourself!
Detail Sprues
The components feature raised panel lines which may not impress all of you, and detail is not as fine as, say, the newer kits from this manufacturer. The type is certainly impressive as you can see from the video at the start of this review, so this project is all going to be about fine preparation and that finished paint job – immaculate!
Needless to say, in this scale no cockpit detail is provided, as you simply wouldn’t see any of it on the finished model.
Quite a bit of excess flash is formed around most parts that will need to be cleaned up and removed to ensure the best fit possible.
This kit is pretty fairly priced at around £15.00 and will make up into an impressive model that has size and, in that United States of America Airborne Control Centre scheme, could look stunning.
Clear Parts
The clear parts look ok, although showing their age with again excess flash to remove.
Instructions and Decals
The Revell instructions follow their usual exploded stages format. Location of parts is clear but colour paint coding is for Revell paints only. However, the colour names are provided which will help you to match your own choice of paints.
This is a basic model and so should present little difficulty in working out where all the parts are located, even for inexperienced modellers.
The decals seem good, very good in fact, being newly created and designed by Daco and manufactured in Italy. Certainly colour saturation and register is good and all markings are accurate and sharp in their detail.
This is probably the best part of the package; good quality decals will make a world of difference to your completed model.
What you could build…
Here’s a few hot-off-the-press shots of what you could end up with if you take-on this kit.
Conclusion
If you are into 1.144 scale modelling, then this kit is worth a look.
There will never be a huge choice of Boeing 747, or its derivatives like the E-4B, available at any point so this one looks like it could prove popular.
Using different markings by cross-kitting and mixing decals other options and variants could be built from the base kit. If you’re prepared to spend some time being patient with your prep and spray work, you can get good results from these older-tooled kits.
Recommended for all scale modellers, whatever your experience.
FEATURE STAR RATING (out of five)
Quality of moulding ***
Accuracy ***
Instructions ***
Decals ****
Subject choice ****
Overall ***
Geoff C.