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Scooters! (Minivan Edition)


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I'm hitting the home stretch on my Scooters. Landing gear and fiddly bits are attached to both kits, gloss clear is on and (not pictured) oil wash is complete. I'll give them a fresh look tomorrow and address any additional weathering needs.

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Ok, that's a wrap! Some final thoughts on these kits:

 

Classic Airframes

The good: This kit has some nice features like resin wheels, seats, and gear bays. It also comes with an ACMI pod and a really nice decal sheet with several neat Adversary schemes from VF-126, VA-127, and VC-8. I also like the single piece fuselage halves (see comments below).

 

The bad: This being a short run kit, it has short run kit issues like massive sprue gates (especially frustrating on small parts) and soft plastic. The fuselage fit was also a little dodgy and things got really sketchy when I mated the fuselage to the wings. It took a lot of trimming to get those parts to fit.  The dorsal vent was also non-existent. I had a spare Hasegawa part that I was able to swap in. The front instrument coaming kind of "floats" since there is no solid place to mount it.

 

Final thoughts:  I complicated this build a fair amount by adding Steel Beach horizontal stabilizer plates so that I could pose the stabilizers at a downward angle. This required sanding off the molded-on stabilizer plates and carving out some open space under the rear portion of the stabilizers. I also cut out the flaps and added Eduard's flap set. Except my PE skills suck...so instead of crafting new flaps out of the provided PE parts in that set, I just added the inner PE portions to the kit parts to show the rivet detail. Finally, I added Hasegawa aircrew. It's a super-tight fit in that cockpit and I had to modify both of the pilots a little bit to get everything to fit. I wanted this kit to look like it was taxiing...I'll likely make a base for it. I have to be honest, I wasn't holding out much hope for a good result on this kit--it presented several struggles which were compounded by decisions requiring aftermarket additions.

 

Hasegawa

The good: This kit is a known quantity--it (mostly) fits and has very nice details--this kit is much more refined than the Classic Airframes kit. The cockpit is nicely detailed, as are the landing gear and gear bays. The speed brakes fit nicely into the fuselage with just a minor amount of fitting. This was a better fit than on the last Hasegawa Skyhawk (A-4E/F) I built. I also like that there are nice canopy details like mirrors, etc, included in the kit.

 

The bad: My only serious gripe with this kit is the forward fuselage ahead of the windscreen is a separate section and the nose section doesn't blend into the rest of the fuselage as nicely as I would like. This required filling and sanding that I didn't have to deal with on the Classic Airframes kit.

 

Final thoughts: I've wanted to build "The MiG" since a guy in my club brought his 1/32 build of this jet to a club meeting back in the '90s. I was able to get ahold of Fightertown Decals' VA-127 sheet which had this jet, so I jumped on it. I added a 150 gal. centerline tank from Phase Hangar Resin as well as their Escapac seats; these are very nicely molded parts and I highly recommend them.

 

Between the two kits, Hasegawa is going to give you a more refined and easier to build kit.  That said, the end result of the Classic Airframes kit exceeded my expectations.

 

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Edited by picknpluck
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  • 3 weeks later...

Great schemes. Now I want a 1/48 Skyhawk too. Mig scheme is a real eye catcher, but the other one is very nice too. Adversary schemes really belong on the Skyhawk.

Ok. Where did I put the kids college funds?

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