SebastianP Posted June 10, 2005 Share Posted June 10, 2005 (edited) This thing has got "Old-style Italeri" written all over it - same type of plastic, same type of detail as their old 1/72 Tomcat. The bigger parts are well done, with the exception of some soft details (and raised panel lines) on the bottom half of the fuselage - trimming the flash off the smaller parts will be akin to surgery, though, since the sprue attachment points are so badly located. This will take *work* to finish... The decals looked OK for the most part - no color bleed, and since most of them are single-color, no need to worry about if they're in register. The Ukrainian roundels look larger than I expected - they're a little bigger than the ones on Revell's Su-27 sheet - and they're ever so slightly out of register - I only noticed because I was looking for it. It's nothing at all like Airfix' crappy things, at least. From the look of things, the plastic will be a little soft - I hope it takes well to the glues I've got availabe (though not too well - I had a car kit that melted once...) One very nice touch is that the painting guide lists Humbrol's paint numbers - this is great for me, since Humbrol is about what I've got available (and that works for me - I *HATE* *HATE* *HATE* acrylics) SP Edited June 10, 2005 by SebastianP Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Avenger Posted June 10, 2005 Share Posted June 10, 2005 nice quick in-box review! :) what are you going to do to deal with the underside raised panel lines? I've got a headache everytime I look at the kit, as I haven't tried to rescribe the lines before :) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SebastianP Posted June 11, 2005 Author Share Posted June 11, 2005 To answer the question first, I'll leave the panel lines as they are. I've tried scribing, and it's not for me - I get crooked lines all over the place when I try... My first impressions *do* seem a little too favorable, now that the kit is mostly built. The two biggest problems I've encountered with it is flash - thick stuff that is *everywhere* - and ejector pin marks. Sometimes in combination. This kit *stinks*, quite literally. I almost gagged when I opened the bag - I don't know why, but the plastic smells something awful. The locator pins need removing - all of them, they're misaligned. There are serious ejector pin marks of the raised variety all over the inside of the fuselage halves, that need removal (some of them are several millimeters tall and hinder the closing of the fuselage), and the inside edge of the shell has a pronounced ridge that needs shaving off - from both fuselage halves. The cockpit area was flashed over almost completely, and the cockpit tub has a very inconvenient ejector pin mark in the bottom, on the inside. I trimmed the flash away and I'm planning to just glue the seat to the pin mark, since it's not all that tall... The main gearwell inserts also had serious raised pin marks of the tall variety, and were hard to fit due to molding flaws. Surgery was needed to place them correctly. Once all these mods were performed, I put her together and lo and behold, I got a nice join all over. The wings, stabs and tailplanes are one piece each - despite being kind of thick, there were no sinkmarks in the wings, which I'm very glad for. The locating slots in the fuselage were too small, so I widened them with my number 11, gluing one wing before doing the other side. I'm not quite sure the wings are correctly positioned according to the drawings - I don't really want to check. They're level with each other, at least, so it's not lopsided. The other control surfaces were easier - I glued the tailplanes, but not the stabs - these are probably the most well-fitting parts on the kit, I can lift the plane in one unglued stab... The intakes are.. crude. The forward/rear trunk joins are horrible - I've spent more time sanding those joins today than I did on the rest of the assembly, and that's using 400-grit sandpaper. It needs a good puttying and much more sanding. The kit ordnance is headed not for the spares box, but for the garbage disposal - the absolute worst junk I've ever seen. The pylons are a little better, but they're attached awkwardly to the sprues and will need manual reshaping of the ends. I spent twenty minutes trying to sand down one of the two-piece exhausts so the inner part would bottom out - I didn't quite manage, so in the end I just jammed it in as far as it would go, which left half a millimeter or so. No chance of gettng that part out again. Then I removed the opposite parts from the sprue, and they fit like kand in glove - that exhaust turned out to be a whole millimeter shorter than the other. Big bummer - I'm leaving it as-is, no one will ever notice 'cause I'm never letting them see it. So there. I noticed a shiny speck in the middle of the spine of my kit, and gentle probing reveals it to be a large metal particle. I don't intend to dig it out, since it probably goes fairly deep - possibly straight through - but the plane looks a little weird with that fleck on the back (it's almost a millimeter across). Does this qualify the kit as multimedia? :-) The landing gear looks very simplistic - I haven't detached them from the sprue yet. Not too much flash, no ejector pin marks that I've seen, just no details. All four wheels are sturdily attached with four huge sprue attachement points, which is a gruesome job to clean up. (I've done one front wheel)... There looks to be an instrument shroud or panel for an UB, as well as a refuelling probe, on the sprue - no mention of these in the instructions. Plastic was not as soft as I feared - but not as hard or brittle as the ex-ESCI kits either. It's a little grainier than the stuff Hasegawa uses, but not bad. Markings in the kit are for a 1994 Russian aircraft wearing stripes (the boxtop scheme), or a 2000 Ukrainian aircraft wearing a disruptive scheme in the same colors. Conclusion, so far - arm yourself with a sheet of 400-grit before tackling this thing, and a tube of putty. SP Who thinks the MiG-29 looks positively puny next to most of the rest of his collection, despite being in the same scale... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Raymond Posted June 11, 2005 Share Posted June 11, 2005 hiya Great reviews Sebastian! was a good read! sorry to hear the kit is a mission, do u have any pics of the kit parts? would it be worth agumenting this kit with the Italeri? e.g. use the fuselauge and the rest from the italeri kit? sounds liek ur going well, look foward to pics! regards Raymond Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SebastianP Posted June 11, 2005 Author Share Posted June 11, 2005 No pics possible at present - I don't have access to a camera. It does look fairly good right now, but that's because it's three meters away... I just feel really lucky that the seams didn't need cleaning despite all the material I removed from the inside edges. I'm thinking about using the Ukrainian roundels on this thing right now - though it does need some paint first... SP Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Mandrake Posted June 11, 2005 Share Posted June 11, 2005 would it be worth agumenting this kit with the Italeri? e.g. use the fuselauge and the rest from the italeri kit? If you use the whole 9-13 fuselage you would stuggle at every stage to improve it by mating on Italeri parts. If you were going to kitbash, I would imagine using the spine from the 9-13 crafted onto the Italeri 9-12 would be a much better solution. However looking at the two kits I am not sure how one would go about doing it. It is not simply the hump area but the entire spine that is enlarged so you would have to "cut and paste" quite a long area and there could be issues when merging it at both ends around the canopy and between the engines. Ofcourse you could choose to craft a smaller central area and use putty/styrene to build up the remaining areas. Certinly could be done but it wouldn't be are easy as it first looks IMHO. So who is brave enough to try it first? B) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
grach25 Posted June 12, 2005 Share Posted June 12, 2005 To answer the question first, I'll leave the panel lines as they are. I've tried scribing, and it's not for me - I get crooked lines all over the place when I try...My first impressions *do* seem a little too favorable, now that the kit is mostly built. The two biggest problems I've encountered with it is flash - thick stuff that is *everywhere* - and ejector pin marks. Sometimes in combination. This kit *stinks*, quite literally. I almost gagged when I opened the bag - I don't know why, but the plastic smells something awful. The locator pins need removing - all of them, they're misaligned. There are serious ejector pin marks of the raised variety all over the inside of the fuselage halves, that need removal (some of them are several millimeters tall and hinder the closing of the fuselage), and the inside edge of the shell has a pronounced ridge that needs shaving off - from both fuselage halves. The cockpit area was flashed over almost completely, and the cockpit tub has a very inconvenient ejector pin mark in the bottom, on the inside. I trimmed the flash away and I'm planning to just glue the seat to the pin mark, since it's not all that tall... The main gearwell inserts also had serious raised pin marks of the tall variety, and were hard to fit due to molding flaws. Surgery was needed to place them correctly. Once all these mods were performed, I put her together and lo and behold, I got a nice join all over. The wings, stabs and tailplanes are one piece each - despite being kind of thick, there were no sinkmarks in the wings, which I'm very glad for. The locating slots in the fuselage were too small, so I widened them with my number 11, gluing one wing before doing the other side. I'm not quite sure the wings are correctly positioned according to the drawings - I don't really want to check. They're level with each other, at least, so it's not lopsided. The other control surfaces were easier - I glued the tailplanes, but not the stabs - these are probably the most well-fitting parts on the kit, I can lift the plane in one unglued stab... The intakes are.. crude. The forward/rear trunk joins are horrible - I've spent more time sanding those joins today than I did on the rest of the assembly, and that's using 400-grit sandpaper. It needs a good puttying and much more sanding. The kit ordnance is headed not for the spares box, but for the garbage disposal - the absolute worst junk I've ever seen. The pylons are a little better, but they're attached awkwardly to the sprues and will need manual reshaping of the ends. I spent twenty minutes trying to sand down one of the two-piece exhausts so the inner part would bottom out - I didn't quite manage, so in the end I just jammed it in as far as it would go, which left half a millimeter or so. No chance of gettng that part out again. Then I removed the opposite parts from the sprue, and they fit like kand in glove - that exhaust turned out to be a whole millimeter shorter than the other. Big bummer - I'm leaving it as-is, no one will ever notice 'cause I'm never letting them see it. So there. I noticed a shiny speck in the middle of the spine of my kit, and gentle probing reveals it to be a large metal particle. I don't intend to dig it out, since it probably goes fairly deep - possibly straight through - but the plane looks a little weird with that fleck on the back (it's almost a millimeter across). Does this qualify the kit as multimedia? :-) The landing gear looks very simplistic - I haven't detached them from the sprue yet. Not too much flash, no ejector pin marks that I've seen, just no details. All four wheels are sturdily attached with four huge sprue attachement points, which is a gruesome job to clean up. (I've done one front wheel)... There looks to be an instrument shroud or panel for an UB, as well as a refuelling probe, on the sprue - no mention of these in the instructions. Plastic was not as soft as I feared - but not as hard or brittle as the ex-ESCI kits either. It's a little grainier than the stuff Hasegawa uses, but not bad. Markings in the kit are for a 1994 Russian aircraft wearing stripes (the boxtop scheme), or a 2000 Ukrainian aircraft wearing a disruptive scheme in the same colors. Conclusion, so far - arm yourself with a sheet of 400-grit before tackling this thing, and a tube of putty. SP Who thinks the MiG-29 looks positively puny next to most of the rest of his collection, despite being in the same scale... Pretexts for which do not wish to work, already I have made one of Kondor(same quality of the ICM, except decals), and for me is not problem,to exaggerate in that way the kit's defects.We are modelists,or not? Can see my model in gallery,put hands in action comrade. Marlon Guevara V. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SebastianP Posted June 13, 2005 Author Share Posted June 13, 2005 Pretexts for which do not wish to work, already I have made one of Kondor(same quality of the ICM, except decals), and for me is not problem,to exaggerate in that way the kit's defects.We are modelists,or not?Can see my model in gallery,put hands in action comrade. Marlon Guevara V. Hey, I didn't say I didn't want to build it - just that anyone who wants to try should be prepared for a lot of work. Once I figured out the problem areas, it wasn't all that hard to correct - just time consuming. I'm currently stalled in my build due to lack of appropriate paints - that's going to have to wait for a while since I'm moving in a couple of weeks, and I can't spare the money right now (I lack the camouflage and landing gear colors), but it *will* be finished. (And this project has nothing on the difficulty of my *other* Russian bird - a 1/72 Flanker that so far is made up of parts from three different kits: fuselage and control surfaces from Airfix, pylons and landing gear from Revell/Hasegawa, and a nosewheel from Heller - if I can find it...) SP Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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