What’s inside the box
The box sides depict images of the three examples, Marine VMFAT-01, BF-04 used in VSTOL trials onboard USS Wasp (which incidentally is what the box cover artwork depicts) and B-01 which is the International trial and demonstration aircraft.
Inside our sturdy tray & lid type box the kit parts come prepackaged in clear plastic bags, a set of detailed instructions, with a colour guide/decal chart and a set of applicable decals for three different examples.
The parts are individually numbered and are located by letter coded sprues A thru G. The sprues are logically arranged and group common parts together. The kit is moulded in dark gray plastic which feels good quality, although I can tell straight way these will need a wash in soapy water as there seems to be some releasing agent coating the surfaces.
Sprue gates are reasonably thin and are well positioned on seams where they won’t be seen for minimal cleanup.
The first thing you see and want to grab are the three primary fuselage pieces ‘A’ consisting of upper fuselage, lower fuselage and lower nose.
These are heavily detailed with raised panels and rivets. This detailing is consistent throughout the kit parts as you will see. At first glance it looks very ‘thick’ and out of scale, this could be primarily due to the dark shiny plastic, but I believe with a light sand and some paint it’ll work out ok in the end. In reality the panels are raised on the real aircraft, what is clear is that this will be one ‘monster’ masking job, especially the serrated edges of the panels, so designed to maintain the stealth capability of the aircraft. A word of warning, these are typically a different shade to the main airframe. Best to buy shares in a masking tape company now???
Let’s take a closer look at these intriguing parts. The complex shapes must have taken significant work to mould and a nice touch I like is the moulded detail on the cockpit sills that you can see in the Gallery Grid above.
The cockpit tub is reasonably detailed and the MB-Mk16 ejection seat appears fairly accurate, no doubt Eduard and other photo-etch detailing firms will soon come out with a raft of alternatives for the ‘super detailer’. The weapons bay detail looks ok too, but plenty room for improvement here.
One part that caught my eye is the lift fan intake, this looks like a very nice piece of slide injection moulding. The turbine blades, lift fan and engine casing are all very nicely cast
So is the engine, such a shame most of it won’t be seen unless you feel like cutting out some access doors??? The detailing continues with the wheel hubs and brake discs.
The kit also comes with a pilot figure, which has positionable arms and the head is encased in the unique visual interactive helmet that the flight control system is designed around. No HUD display on this bird.
The clear parts are contained in one separate sprue, my only comment here is that the canopy clarity has to be seen to be believed, outstanding.